Robert Downes
Ph.D Candidate
Education: Vassar College, BA, Political Science, Italian, Environmental Studies
Research: Robert is a PhD candidate in the Political Theory and Public Law subfields whose research interrogates how enduring normative concepts in political theory — such as authority, liberty, sovereignty, and justice — continue to inform and structure discourses of law, power, and ecology. His work engages the pluriverse of Indigenous political thought to examine how relational, ecological, and multispecies epistemologies of democracy unsettle (neo)liberal and settler-colonial conceptions of rights and the rule of law. His current research investigates constitutional theories of the unitary executive and the judiciary, focusing on how the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of separation-of-powers cases shapes institutional authority. Robert also studies the history of anarchist, libertarian, and U.S. political thought, along with Romanticism’s influence on radical and democratic theory.
Research Interests: Anarchism and Libertarian Thought; Constitutional Law; Separation of Powers; Judicial Politics; Indigenous Political Thought; Democratic Theory; Environmental Political Theory
Recent Publications:
