Manoj Mate is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and will be a Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Law at Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall School of Law), starting Fall 2008. An attorney at the California Bar, Manoj received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Manoj is presently a Mellon-Sawyer fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society in Berkeley for the seminar "The Dilemmas of Judicial Power in Comparative Perspective at the Center for Law and Society" in 2007-2008. His research interests include comparative law, American constitutional law, election law and voting rights, and South Asian politics.
At Berkeley Law School, Manoj will revise his dissertation, "The Variable Power of Courts: Transformation and Change in the Post-Emergency Indian Supreme Court" into a book manuscript. His dissertation builds on methodologies informed by political science and law, analyzing the conditions under which courts are able to successfully assert power and act independently of the political regime in advancing their own jurisprudential agenda and institutional power, through a study of the Indian Supreme Court. In addition, Manoj will work on an interdisciplinary research project at the Law and Political Science programs at Berkeley, analyzing the political dimensions of decision-making at the subnational level in India, through a study of State High Courts 1950 to the 2007.