Robert Gelles (he/him) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
His research investigates the semiotic processes through which conservative legal scholars develop and spread their preferred forms of legal interpretation, their knowledge practices, throughout the legal academy and profession. It does so by exploring ethnographically the efforts of conservative legal scholars and law students to claim a space for conservatism within what they experience as a liberal or left-leaning profession. By considering how conservatives claim public space for their perspective in the legal academy, it also thereby examines how they assert the legitimacy and authority of their preferred forms of legal interpretation—the jurisdiction of their jurisprudence—in legal practice. By investigating the conservative legal movement’s intellectual project, this dissertation research aims to elucidate the legal consciousness of lawyers and the dynamic relationship between law and politics in the United States as they are constructed in practice.
Robert has an M.A. and B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.