Ryan Emenaker

Ryan is a professor at College of the Redwoods (CR) where he serves as the lead faculty for political science. In 2018 he started as a lecturer at The Johns Hopkins University where he teaches a course on U.S. constitutional law and political debates. In 2013 he won CR’s Dr. Eugene Portugal Award given to the outstanding faculty researcher of the year, and in 2014 the readers of the North Coast Journal selected him as the best faculty member at CR. In 2015 he was awarded the P. Terrence Hopmann Award for Excellence in Teaching at Brown University.

Ryan has a PhD from Brown University. Prior to his time at Brown University, Ryan earned an MA in Government from The Johns Hopkins University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude and was awarded the “Best Thesis in the area of Legal Studies.”

Ryan is an avid Supreme Court watcher and has attending numerous sessions of the Supreme Court, and in 2013 he served as a Supreme Court analyst for several NBC affiliates. SCOTUSblog, the premier news and research site on the Supreme Court, has featured his research on Court-Congress relations, and the site also published his article on why the Supreme Court should uphold the Voting Rights Act. His writings have appeared in the Journal of Legal Metrics, PS: Political Science, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, the Journal of Political Science Education, and the Encyclopedia of American Governance. In 2019, Oxford University Press published the second edition of his American Government textbook, Current Debates in American Government.

Currently, Ryan is completing a manuscript on the democratic dilemmas inherent in the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.

When not reading, writing, or teaching, Ryan enjoys walking in the redwood forest that surrounds his home.