The Department of Rhetoric selected Marianne Constable as the inaugural recipient of the Distinguished Rhetoric Faculty Fellowship. Constable is a UC Berkeley professor, a leading authority in law and language, and a co-founder of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.
“Marianne Constable has amassed a glittering record in scholarship, teaching, and service over the course of her 34-year career at Berkeley,” said James I. Porter, the Department of Rhetoric chair. “She is fully deserving of this honor.”
Two UC Berkeley rhetoric alums — Bettina Duval and Dana Slatkin — established the Distinguished Rhetoric Faculty Fellowship in 2024 to provide two years of funding for awardees to pursue research projects. Constable is currently completing Chicago Husband-Killing and the New Unwritten Law, an ambitious history of the exoneration and acquittal of women who killed their husbands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her first book, The Law of the Other, won the James Willard Hurst Prize in Legal History. She continues to supervise Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program participants and teach courses connecting language to philosophy and law.
Constable is well known for her mentorship of students and new faculty colleagues. She previously held the Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Teaching and won the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award in 2009. In May, a leading professional association, the Law & Society Association, recognized Constable’s “right combination of frankness and encouragement” with its Stan Wheeler Mentorship Award.
