Manoj Mate is an Associate Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at DePaul University College of Law. Professor Mate's interdisciplinary research centers on constitutional law, election law and voting rights, and comparative constitutional law.
His current research examines the interaction of federal constitutional law and state constitutional dynamics in election law and voting rights; federalism principles in constitutional law, election law, and administrative law and governance; race, law and inequality; and felony disenfranchisement. He is also working on a project that revisits the theoretical foundations of judicial review and its implications for the role of courts. At DePaul, Mate currently teaches constitutional law, election law, and the Supreme Court and Public Policy.
His academic writings have been published or are forthcoming in leading law reviews and journals, including Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Yale Journal of International Law, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Berkeley Journal of International Law, Tulane Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, and the Journal of Human Rights. He also has peer-reviewed chapters published in volumes by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Professor Mate was selected as a Public Voices Fellow for the Op-Ed Project in 2022, and his commentary and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Time Magazine, The Hill, and Jurist.
Professor Mate has received multiple awards for his teaching. Prior to joining DePaul Professor Mate was a professor and Canada Research Chair in International Trade Law at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law and the first law professor to hold the Canada Research Chair at Windsor Law. He has held visiting or faculty appointments at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, Harvard Law School, the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and Whittier College. At Berkeley Law, he also previously served as a Mellon Sawyer Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society and as a Fellow in Global Comparative Law.
Professor Mate is the faculty advisor for the DePaul Journal for Social Justice and a member of the steering committee for the DePaul University Migration Collaborative. Professor Mate also has held numerous external leadership appointments, including as chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) sections on Comparative Law and Law and South Asian Studies.
Professor Mate has significant experience in the areas of public policy and election law. He currently serves as a member of the academic community on the Illinois Racial Profiling Prevention and Data Oversight Board. Prior to entering the legal academy, he practiced in the areas of litigation and election law in California, worked on the 2006 Voting Rights Re-authorization Initiative at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and as a Senior Policy Advisor to Mayor Julian Castro in the City of San Antonio where he worked on public health and energy and sustainability polices.
Selected Works