
Fields of Interest
Biography

Michael McCann is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington. He held the title of Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship at UW from 2000 until his retirement in 2022. Michael served as chair of the Political Science Department for five years in the late 1990s and again for brief stints in 2010-11 and 2017-18. He was the architect and leading advocate of the Law, Societies, and Justice program as well as the Comparative Law and Society Studies (CLASS) Center, both committed to study of social justice and human rights, starting in the late 1990s; he served as director of each for a decade, until 2011. McCann also was a teacher and leader in the UW LSJ Rome Program in Comparative Legal Studies for over a decade in the 2000s. He was an original member of the Steering Committee for the UW Center for Human Rights, from 2008-2018. From 2014 to 2018, Michael served two terms as director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, a center of publicly engaged intellectuals who address issues of working people in Washington state and around the world.
McCann’s research focuses on the politics of rights-based struggles for social justice, with an emphasis on challenges to race, gender, and class hierarchies. He also was an important figure in the interpretive turn toward scholarly analysis of legal discourse as a constitutive form of power. McCann is author of over seventy article-length publications and author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eight books, including authoring Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (Chicago 1994) and (with William Haltom) Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis (Chicago 2004); both books won multiple professional awards. McCann has won a variety of awards for conference papers and journal articles as well. In 2018, he published a co-edited volume (with Anne Bloom and David Engel) titled Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress (Cambridge University Press). His most recent book, with George Lovell, is titled Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism (Chicago 2020).
Michael was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), a Law and Public Affairs Program Fellowship at Princeton (2011-12), and numerous NSF and other research grants. He was elected as president of the U.S based international Law and Society Association for 2011-13. Michael won a UW Distinguished Teaching Award (1989) and, in 2017, recognition as the Marsha Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award at UW as well as the Stanton Wheeler Mentoring Award from LSA. In 2023, he won the LSA Harry Kalven, Jr. Prize for Empirical Scholarship that has “contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in Law and Society.” Michael recently was recognized with the 2024 American Bar Foundation Fellows Outstanding Scholar Award.
Research
Selected Research
- Michael McCann, “Law and Social Movements: Old Themes and New Directions for Research.” Forthcoming in edited book on The Uses of Law by Social Movements, Julie Ringelheim, ed. 2020
- McCann, Michael W. Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism. University of Chicago Press, 2020.
- George Lovell, Michael McCann. A Union by Law: Filipino Cannery Workers and the Transpacific Struggle for Equal Rights. University of Chicago Press, 2020.
- McCann, Michael W. "A Transformative Politics of Rights: Lessons about Legal Leveraging and Its Limitations." w/ George Lovell. Paul Gray, ed. From the Streets to the State: Changing the World by Taking Power. SUNY Press. 2018.
- McCann, Michael W. “Introduction.” (lead author). Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress. Primary essay author. Book co-edited with Anne Bloom and David Engel. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- McCann, Michael W. "Listening for the Songs of Others: Insiders, Outsiders, and the Legal Marginalization of the Laboring Underclass in America." In Mary Nell Trautner, ed., Insiders, Outsiders, Injuries, & Law: Revisiting "The Oven Bird’s Song." New York: Cambridge University Press. 2018.
- McCann, Michael W. Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- McCann, Michael W. “Seeing Through the Smoke: Adversarial Legalism and U.S. Tobacco Politics." The State of Adversarial Legalism, Eds. Tom Burke and Jeb Barnes. New York: Routledge, 2017.
- McCann, Michael W., “Preface: The New Legal Realism, Vols I & II.” 5000 word preface to each volume. Eds. Elizabeth Mertz, Stewart Macauley, Bryant Garth, Heinz Klug, Sally Merry, Kim Scheppele. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- McCann, Michael W. “Academics, Advocates, and Activists: The Puzzles of Praxis.” Law & Courts, solicited 3000 word essay. Spring 2016.
- McCann, Michael W. “On Labor Scholarship and Labor Activism.” Perspectives on Politics, Invited “Praxis” section article. 8000 words. Summer 2016.
- George Lovell, Michael W. McCann, Kristine Taylor. "Covering Legal Mobilization: A Bottom-Up Analysis of Wards Cove v. Antonio". Law and Social Inquiry, 2015.
- McCann, Michael. “Money, Sex, and Power: Gender Discrimination and the Thwarted Legacy of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” Denver University Law Review, vol. 91, no. 4, Denver University Law Review, 2014, p. 779–.
- William T. Haltom, and Michael McCann. “Litigation, Mass Media, and the Campaign to Criminalize the Firearms Industry.” Oñati Socio-Legal Series, vol. 4, no. 4, Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 2014, pp. 725–49.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Representing the Race," by Mack, Kenneth. and "How sex Became a civil Liberty," by Wheeler, Leigh Ann. in “The Personal is Political: On Twentieth Century Activist Lawyers for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.” Tulsa Law Review 2014.
- William Haltom and Michael McCann. "Lawyers, Guns, & Money: Public Interest Litigation, Mass Media, and the Politics of Responsibility." International Institute of Law Journal, 2014.
- Jeff Dudas, Jon Goldberg-Hiller, and Michael W. McCann. "Rights and Ritual: The Past, Present and Future of Rights Mobilization Scholarship." in The Wiley Handbook of Law and Society, edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick, 2014.
- Michael W. McCann. "The Personal is Political: On Twentieth Century Activist Lawyers for Civil Rightsand Civil Liberties." Tulsa Law Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2014.
- Michael W. McCann. "The Unbearable Lightness of Rights: On Sociolegal Inquiry in the Global Era." Law & Society Review, vol. 48, no. 2, 2014.
- Michael W. McCann. "Legal Rights." In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Science, Elsevier Science, 2013.
- Michael W. McCann. "Going Global: Reflections by an American Fellow Traveler." Law & Courts, Fall 2012.
- Michael W. McCann. "Expanding the Horizons of Horizontal Inquiry into Rights Consciousness: An Engagement with David Engel." Indiana Journal of Law and Globalization, 467, 2012.
- Michael W. McCann. "Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Politics of Rights Mobilization in the Experiences of Asian Americans." Seattle Journal for Social Justice, vol.11, no. 1, 2012.
- William Haltom, Shauna Fisher, and Michael W. McCann. "Criminalizing Big Tobacco: Legal Mobilization and the Politics of Responsibility forHealth Risks in the United States." Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 37, no. 2, 2012.
- Lief Carter and Michael W. McCann. "Measuring Humanity: Rights," in the 24th Century." Law and Justice on the Small Screen, edited by Peter Robson and Jessica Silbey, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012.
- William Haltom and Michael W. McCann. "Mass Torts: Reassessing the Legacy of Regulation through Litigation." In New Directions in Judicial Politics, edited by Keven T. McGuire, Routledge, 2012.
- Michael W. McCann and Stuart A. Scheingold. "Should We Take Seriously the Conservative Communitarian Critique of Rights?" In Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, edited by Austin Sarat. Emerald: Bingley UK, 2012.
- McCann, Michael W. “Law and Society,” 4000 word entry in the International Encyclopedia of Political Science, 2011.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Bench Press: The Collision of Courts, Politics, and Mass Media," by Bybee, Keith. In Law and Politics Book Review. Fall, 2009.
- McCann, Michael W. Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice. Stanford University Press, 2009.
- Michael W. McCann and David Engel(eds.). Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2009.
- Michael W. McCann. "Interests, Institutions, and Ideas: Thinking Comparatively about High Courts." Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 62, no. 4, 2009.
- David Johnson and Michael W. McCann. "Rocked but Still Rolling: The Enduring Institution of Capital Punishment in Historical and Comparative Perspective" edited by Austin Sarat and Charles Ogletree, New York: New York University Press, 2009.
- William Haltom and Michael W. McCann. 2009. "Framing Fast Food Litigation: Tort Claims, Mass Media, and the Politics of Responsibility in the United States," in Fault Lines: Tort Law as Cultural Practice, edited by Engel and McCann. Stanford University Press.
- McCann, Michael W. “Litigation and Legal Mobilization.” In Keith Whittington, Daniel Keleman, and Gregory Caldiera, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Law and Litigation. pp. 522-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- McCann, Michael W. and William Haltom “Ordinary Heroes vs. Fallen Lawyers: Public Interest Litigation in the Movies,” Law and Social Inquiry, Fall, 2008. Vol. 33: 4, 1043-1078.
- McCann, Michael W. and William Haltom “Nothing to Believe In: Lawyers in Contemporary Films about Public Interest Litigation.” In Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold, eds., The Cultural Lives of Cause Lawyers. pp. 425-62. Stanford University Press, 2008.
- McCann, Michael W. “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Methodology,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. Ed. Austin Sarat. Boston; JAI/Elsevier Press. 2007, pp. 19- 60.
- McCann, Michael W. “Legal Rights Consciousness: A Challenging Analytical Tradition.” In Benjamin Fleury Steiner and Laura Beth Nielsen, eds., The New Civil Rights Research. pp. ix-xxx. Dartmouth-Ashgate. 2006.
- McCann, Michael W. and Jeffrey Dudas “Retrenchment…and Resurgence? Mapping the Changing Context of Movement Lawyering in the United States,” in Austin Sarat and Stuart A. Scheingold, eds., Cause Lawyers and Social Movements. pp. 37-59. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006.
- McCann, Michael W. and William Haltom “On Analyzing Legal Culture,” article in symposium addressing our book Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis. Law & Social Inquiry 2006. 31:739-56.
- McCann, Michael W. “Law and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science. Vol 2, Fall 2006. pp 17-38.
- McCann, Michael W. Law and Social Movements: International Library of Law and Society. Routledge, 2006.
- McCann, Michael W. and William Haltom “ATLA Shrugged: Why Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Are Not Effective Public Defenders of Their Own Causes.” In The Worlds that Cause Lawyers Make: Structure and Agency in Legal Practice, ed. by Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold. pp. 425-62. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, spring 2005).
- McCann, Michael W. "Law and Social Movements: Emerging Research Approaches," in A Law & Society Reader, edited by Austin Sarat. pp. 506-22. (London: Blackwell/ Dartmouth, 2004).
- McCann, Michael W. and George Lovell “A Tangled Legacy: Federal Courts and the Politics of Democratic Inclusion,” with Chapter 12 in Christina Wolbrecht and Rodney Hero, with Peri E. Arnold and Alvin B. Tillery, eds., The Politics of Democratic Inclusion. pp. 257-20. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
- McCann, Michael W. Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crises. University of Chicago Press, 2004.
- McCann, Michael W. and Stuart Scheingold “Rights, Legal”, in the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Science, Elsevier Science. Pp. 13334-39. Fall, 2001.
- McCann, Michael W. "Java Jive: The Genealogy of a Juridical Icon," w/ William Haltom and Anne Bloom, "Special Edition on Law & Society Research," University of Miami Law Review Volume 56, number 1 October, 2001, pp. 113-176.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "The Common Place of Law," by Ewick, Patricia and Silbey, Susan S. In the American Journal of Sociology, fall, 2000.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Boycott in America," by Minda, Gary. in Law and Politics Book Review, fall 2000.
- McCann, Michael W. and Sarah Pralle “New Property Rights Debates: The Dialectics of ‘Naming, Blaming, and Claiming,’" In William Robbins and James Foster, eds., Land in the American West: Private Claims and the Common Good (University of Washington Press, 2000)
- McCann, Michael W. “Social Movement Scholarship: New, Old, and Continuing Approaches.” Kobe University Law Review. Volume 31 1999 pp. 90-116.
- McCann, Michael W. “Legal Mobilization and Social Reform: Looking Beyond the American Experience.” Waseda Journal of Comparative Law. Vol. 33 (1) 1999 pp. 165-190.
- McCann, Michael W. “How the Supreme Court Matters for American Politics: New Institutionalist Perspectives,” in Howard Gillman and Cornell Clayton, eds., The New Institutionalism and the Politics of the Supreme Court. pp. 63-97. (University of Kansas Press, 1999).
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History," by Smith, Rogers M. In Law and Politics Book Review. February, 1998.
- McCann, Michael W. "How Does Law Matter for Social Movements?" in How Does Law Matter? ed. by Bryant Garth, Felice Levine, Austin Sarat. pp. 76-108. (Northwestern University Press, 1998)
- McCann, Michael W. “Gaining Even When Losing: Legal Advocacy and the Politics of Pay Equity.” In Ronnie Steinberg and Deb Figart, eds., The Politics and Practice of Pay Equity (Temple University Press, 1998)
- McCann, Michael W. "Law, Political Process, and Social Movements." In Andrew McFarland and Anne Costain, eds, Social Movements and the Political Process in the U.S. (Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
- McCann, Michael W. and Helena Silverstein "Beyond the 'Lure of Litigation': Toward a Relational Analysis of Cause Lawyering," In Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold, eds. Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities, pp. 261-292. (Oxford University Press, 1998).
- McCann, Michael W. “Law and Political Struggle: Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Promises for Future Research” in Stephen E. Gottlieb and David Schultz, eds,. Leveraging the Law: Using Courts to Achieve Social Change (Peter Lang, 1998)
- McCann, Michael W. “Legends of Law: Media Coverage of Personal Injury Lawsuits and the Mass Production of Legal Knowledge,” Law and Courts (Summer, 1997)
- McCann, Michael W. and Tracey March “Legal Tactics and Everyday Resistance: A Political Science Assessment," Studies in Law, Politics, and Society vol 15 (Winter, 1996), pp. 207-236. Reprinted as “El Derecho y Las Formas Cotidianos de Resistencia:Una Evaluacion Sociopolitica,” in Mauricio Garcia Villegas, ed., Sociologica Juridica: Teoria y Sociologia del Derecho en Estados Unidas. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2001.
- McCann, Michael W. “It’s Only Law and Courts, But I Like It,” Law and Courts, (Spring, 1996), pp. 6-9..
- McCann, Michael W. “Causal versus Constitutive Explanations: Or On the Difficulty of Being So Positive...” Law and Social Inquiry, v. 21, no. 2 (1996), pp. 457-482. Reprinted in Law and Social Movements, ed. Michael McCann, Ch. 3. Dartmouth/Ashgate, 2006. And elsewhere.
- McCann, Michael W. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Review Essay: Undergraduate Texts on Judicial Politics and the Legal System." Comprehensive essay written as series editor based on individual reviews of 21 texts by other scholars. Law and Politics Book Review. Feb-March, 1995
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Comparable Worth: Is It a Worthy Policy?" by Sorenson, Elaine, and "Incomparable Worth: Pay Equity Meets the Market" by Rhoads, Steven E. In the American Political Science Review, 89 no. 2 (June, 1995)
- McCann, Michael W. "As a Matter of (Social) Fact." In "Symposium: Social Facts and Constitutional Change." Law and Courts (Summer, 1995)
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "With Liberty and Justice for Some: A Critique of the Conservative Supreme Court," by Kairys, David. In Legal Studies Forum, XVIII (no. 2), 1994
- McCann, Michael W. "Social Movements and the American State: Legal Mobilization as a Strategy for Democratization," co-authored with Helena Silverstein, in David Langille, Gregory Albo, and Leo Panitch, eds. A Different Kind of State. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 131-143.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Between Feminism and Labor," by Blum, Linda M. In Women and Politics, 1992.
- McCann, Michael W. "The Legal Construction of Privacy," in Kermit L. Hall, ed., Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
- McCann, Michael W. "Reform Litigation on Trial," Law and Social Inquiry 17 no. 4 (Fall, 1992), pp. 715-743.Reprinted in Walter Murphy, C. Herman Pritchett, and Lee Epstein, eds., Courts, Judges and Politics: An Introduction to the Judicial Process (McGraw-Hill, 2002).
- "Resistance, Reconstruction, and Romance in Legal Scholarship," Law and Society Review 26 no.4 (1992), pp. 733-750.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Sovereignty and Liberty: Constitutional Discourse in American Culture," by Kammen, Michael, In American Political Science Review, 85 Spring, 1991
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Private Property and American Constitutionalism: The Madisonian Framework and Its Legacy," by Nedelsky, Jennifer. In Law and Politics Book Review, 1991
- McCann, Michael W. "Legal Mobilization and Social Movements: Notes on Theory and Its Applications," Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 11 (1991), pp. 225-254. Reprinted in Law and Social Movements, ed. Michael McCann, Ch. 1. Dartmouth/Ashgate, 2006.
- McCann, Michael W. "Equal Protection for Social Inequality: Race and Class in American Constitutional Ideology," in McCann and Houseman, eds., Judging the Constitution: Critical Essays on Judicial Lawmaking. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), pp. 191-224.
- McCann, Michael W. Judging the Constitution: Critical Essays on Judicial Lawmaking. Boston: Scott Foresman & Co., 1989.
- McCann, Michael W, "Equal Opportunity vs. Equal Results," Law and Social Policy Vol.II (Fall, 1988), pp. 141-176.
- McCann, Michael W. "Public Interest Liberalism and the Modern State," Polity (Winter, 1988), pp. 62-88.
- McCann, Michael W. Taking Reform Seriously: Perspectives on Public Interest Liberalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
- McCann, Michael W. Review of "Liberalism and American Constitutional Law," by Smith, Rogers M. In American Political Science Review 80 (1986), pp. 682-683
- McCann, Michael W. "Resurrection and Reform: Perspectives on Property in the American Constitutional Tradition," Politics and Society 13 (1984), pp. 143-176.
- McCann, Michael W. and Kahraman Filiz. "Beyond the Binary: The Interdependence of Authoritarian and Liberal Legalities in Racial Capitalist Regimes" Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Forthcoming, vol. 18, 2021.
- Michael McCann, “A. Philip Randolph: Radicalizing Rights at the Intersection of Race and Class,” in Melvin L. Rogers and Chip Turner, eds., African American Political Thought: A Collected History. Forthcoming, University of Chicago Press. 2020.
- William Haltom and Michael McCann, “When Might Claims of ‘Too Much Litigation’ Be Other than Political Sloganeering?”. With William Haltom. Forthcoming in Onati Socio-Legal Series, 2020
Research Advised: Graduate Dissertations
- Anna Zelenz. 2020. "Oppositional Lives: Sustaining, skirting, and subverting systems of oppression in Palestine"
- Amanda Merritt Fulmer. 2020. "Human Rights and International Law from the Ground Up: Mining, Indigenous Communities, and the Community Consultation Movement in Latin America"
- Ahmed Zaki, Hind. 2018. "In the Shadow of the State: Gender Contestation and Legal Mobilization in the Context of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia"
- Filiz Kahraman. 2017. "Claiming Labor Rights as Human Rights: Legal Mobilization at the European Court of Human Rights"
- Angela Day. 2014. "When the Whistle Didn't Blow: The Politics of Organizational Dissent at the Hanford Nuclear Site." Diss., U of Washington.
- Milli Lake. 2014. "External Actors and Building the Rule of Law: Institutional Responses to Mass Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa." Diss., U of Washington.
- Kirstine Taylor. "From Violence to Law-and-Order: The Making of Racial Innocence in Postwar America." Diss., U of Washington, 2014.
- Shauna Fisher. 2012. "Issue Framing and Policy Argumentation: Recasting the Same-Sex Marriage Debate." Diss., U of Washington.
- Jessica Beyer. 2011. "Youth and the Generation of Political Consciousness Online." Diss., U of Washington.
- Jennifer Fredett. 2010. "On the Muslim Question: The Contentious Politics of Citizenship in France." Diss., U of Washington.
- Erin Adam. 2017. "Queer Alliances: Paradoxes and Power in the Formation of Rights-Based Movement Coalitions"
- Sarah K. Dreier. 2018. "Church, State and Sex: How Africa's transnational churches shape human rights"
Courses Taught
Summer 2018 B-term
Winter 2017
Autumn 2016
Summer 2016 B-term
Related News
Related News
- Professor Emeritus Michael McCann chosen for the 2024 American Bar Foundation Fellows "Outstanding Scholar Award" - November 1, 2023
- Review of Autumn 2021 Faculty Panel, "Is Democracy Dead?" - January 3, 2022
- Prof. Michael McCann and Grad. Student Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer on Yes! Magazine, "The Hidden Side of Fossil Fuel Investments: Private Equity" - November 2, 2021
- Faculty Panel November 16th: Is Democracy Dead? - September 10, 2021
- Prof. Michael McCann on KUOW Radio, "A moment where protest leads to change? UW professor sees an historic arc" - June 18, 2020
- Faculty Perspectives on the George Floyd Protests - June 4, 2020
- The Department in the News - June 28, 2017
- Professor Michael McCann Receives 2017 Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award - June 21, 2017
- The Seattle Times discusses Open Letter by Members of the Department - February 15, 2017
- Viral Web Series "Adam Ruins Everything" Features Professor Michael McCann - December 15, 2016
- Retrospective: Faculty Discuss Race, Prisons & Protests with Students - June 2, 2016
- Preserving the Lessons of the Seattle-SeaTac $15 Wage Victories - January 27, 2016