Aziz Rana, the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College, has been named a winner of the prestigious 2025 Society for US Intellectual History (S-USIH) Book Prize. Professor Rana was recognized for his groundbreaking work, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
The S-USIH prize acknowledges outstanding contributions to the field. Professor Rana’s book explores the modern emergence of constitutional veneration in the twentieth century—especially against the backdrop of growing American global authority—and how veneration has influenced the boundaries of popular politics. The prize committee recognized the book for its significant insights and rigorous scholarship, writing in a recent release that Rana “reminds readers that Americans a century and more ago did not see the Constitution as a historical relic, but as a living document and active interlocutor on the prospect of ‘democracy.’”
Professor Rana is an expert in American constitutional law and political development, examining how evolving ideas of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped US legal and political identity. His previous book, The Two Faces of American Freedom, also explored critical themes in constitutional practice. Professor Rana is a prolific scholar of articles in leading law reviews, and has published essays and op-eds in prominent publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many others. He holds editorial board positions for Dissent, The Law and Political Economy Blog, and Just Security, and is a Life Member of the Council of Foreign Relations.
S-USIH also named a co-winner of this year’s prize: Keidrick Roy, for American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism (Princeton, 2024).
For more details on the prize, visit the S-USIH website. You can find more information about Professor Rana on his BC Law faculty page.