University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Assistant Professor Christopher Mathis joins nine other junior faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) as a recipient of the MPower Early Scholars Award. Mathis will use the funding to support his work on student free speech in schools.
Mathis’s scholarship explores critical race theory, access and equity within the P-20 education continuum, and the philosophical assumptions within legal education. His work focuses on the framework and incentive structures within the education system to identify factors contributing to inequality.
He teaches in the areas of torts; administrative law; education law, including higher education; and race and the law.
As part of an ongoing project, Students Shouting Louder than School Bells, Mathis, and his co-primary investigator, Edward Scott, have compiled and analyzed every federal case in which a student sued a school district asserting First Amendment rights and traced how courts have responded to these claims. The award will enable Mathis and Scott to assemble a research team, build the technical and archival infrastructure needed to sustain a comprehensive national database, and expand the project’s reach from documentation to practical solutions for protecting student speech.
“With this support, we can move beyond mapping legal erosion to developing policy tools, litigation resources, and outreach strategies that help safeguard students’ First Amendment rights across the country,” said Mathis.
Mathis’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Boston University Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Washington and Lee Law Review, the University of Colorado Law Review, Journal of College Student Development, and Education Sciences, among other outlets. Before joining Maryland Carey Law, he taught at the University of Iowa College of Law and at the University of Virginia.
The MPower Early Scholars Award program was created late last year to support those at UMB and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) who have felt the direct impact of recent cuts to research funding. Grants can be used for stipends, research, and other support.
“The MPower funding is an important investment in our early scholars,” said UMB Provost and Executive Vice President Roger J. Ward. “We are responding to a critical need to protect our emerging scholars and guarantee that society continues to benefit from important discoveries that improve lives and the human condition.”