Faculty/Staff Detail
Judith Best
Judith Best is a Distinguished Teacher of Political Science at SUNY Cortland. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Cornell University in 1971 and her Masters Degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan in 1963. She received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1977; the American Higher Education and Carnegie Foundation Honor Salute for Educational Leadership in 1986; and the Gerald DiGiusto Award to the Outstanding Member of the Faculty in 1989. She was promoted to the rank of Distinguished Teaching Professor by the SUNY Chancellor in 1984.
Before coming to Cortland, Dr. Best taught English at Ithaca College and later American Government at Cornell. At Cornell, she also was a member of the Cornell Energy Project where she worked on and published articles on state regulations concerning power plant issues. On their request, she testified before the Atomic Energy Commission and the Federal Power Commission.
Teaching
Courses taught: Introduction to American Government and Politics, Introduction to Political Theory, American Political Thought and two seminars: Justice and Society and Legal Theory. In addition, she was one of a group of professors who developed and for several years taught a course in Modern Western Thought which thereafter became, for several years, a GE requirement.
Publications
Books: The Choice of the People? Debating the Electoral College; National Representation for the District of Columbia; The Mainstream of Western Political Thought; and The Case Against Direct Election of the President, A Defense of the Electoral College.
Journal Articles: Dr. Best has published over 45 articles on various subjects including: the Electoral College, the rule of law, fundamental rights, written and unwritten constitutions, the budgetary process, the item veto, the balance of government, the framing and ratification of the Constitution, legislative tyranny, John Locke's theories, the presidential power of the purse, the executive power, the limits of international law, national representation ofr the District of Columbia, Plato's Minos, and teaching political Theory.
Service
Dr. Best has testified before the United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution in 1977, 1979, 1992, and before the United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Sub Committee on the Constitution in 1997. The latter testimony was published in Current Debates in American Politics in 2006. She was also chosen by the Board of the American Political Science Association to be their Featured Key note Speaker in 1977. She has also been an invited speaker at The Organization of American Historians, MIT, Northwestern University Law School, The Freedom Forum, The Twentieth Century Fund, The Center for the Study of the Presidency, The National Press Club, The American Enterprise Institute, The Liberty Fund, Cardozo Law School and Colgate University, among many others. She was also very honored to be asked to speak at the bicentennial celebration of the U.S. Constitution held in Philadelphia.
Dr. Best has also given multiple press, radio and television interviews including: CNN, PBS - The News Hour, Fox News, CBC, NPR, TASS, USA Today, Scripts Howard, Wall Street Journal, NBC, Knight Ridder, Gannet Papers, Detroit News, Voice of America, Congressional Quarterly, and the Congressional Digest. Her work has been quoted extensively in a number of outlets including Time Magazine.
She served on The Board of Editors for Presidential Studies Quarterly from 1984 to 2000. She was also asked to give an address at each of the two national conferences they held in various parts of the country each year. What was particularly exciting was the opportunity to meet and speak with many of the primary political players of the time - from Presidents and CIA Directors to military brass.
Grants
She was the Co-Project Director of the Women's Academic and Career Choices, funded by a grant from the Department of Health Education and Welfare from 1978 through 1979. This project funded a credit bearing course on the SUNY Cortland campus, the ability to bring expert speakers to the campus, and also the research undertaken by a group of female professors on the campus.