Robert G. McCloskey

Robert Green McCloskey (18 January 1916 – 4 August 1969) was an American political historian.

McCloskey completed his doctorate in political science at Harvard University, and joined the faculty in 1948.[1] He was secretary of the Littauer Center of Public Administration until 1954, when Arthur Maass took the position.[2] McCloskey was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959.[3] In 1966, McCloskey was named Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Government at Harvard. The position had been vacant since 1963, upon the death of V. O. Key.[4] McCloskey died on 4 August 1969.[5][6]

McCloskey's book American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise was first published in 1951. The book was based on his doctoral dissertation,[7] and explored conservatism in the United States from the Reconstruction era to 1910, by considering the publications of William Graham Sumner, Stephen Johnson Field, and Andrew Carnegie.[8][9] The first edition of The American Supreme Court was published in 1961 as part of a series,[10] and described as "lucidly written, well-reasoned, and concise" by Robert J. Harris,[11] and "one of the best of a rare breed" by Paul W. Fox.[12] In 2011, Keith E. Whittington called it "the classic one-volume history of the Court."[13] Following his death, a student of McCloskey's, Sanford Levinson, continued updating The American Supreme Court.[14] A third book by McCloskey, titled The Modern Supreme Court, was posthumously published in 1974.[15]