Aug 24, 2007 -- The government of the greater Paris region has appointed Michel Rosenfeld, the Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, to an International Blaise Pascal Research Chair. These chairs are awarded annually to preeminent scholars in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to conduct research and deliver public lectures in the Paris region. Rosenfeld, who is also director of the Program in Security, Democracy, and the Rule of Law at Cardozo, is only the second legal scholar to be appointed since these chairs were established in 1996. Since its inception 11 years ago, the Blaise Pascal Chair has been awarded to 50 international scholars; 19 have been Americans and include two Nobel Prize winners. They are administered by the École Normale Supérieure (ENS-Paris), France’s most prestigious institution for the training of academics. Each chair holder’s research project is sponsored by a Parisian academic institution; in Professor Rosenfeld’s case it will be the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), which includes France’s top law school. The Blaise Pascal Chair will enable Professor Rosenfeld to continue his research on “Rethinking Constitutionalism in an Era of Globalization and Privatization,” a project he started through Cardozo’s Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy. He is co-organizing two international conferences this fall, one in Paris and the other in New York, on November 4-5, 2007 to be held jointly by Cardozo and NYU Law School in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I. CON), of which he is editor-in-chief. Professor Rosenfeld plans to spend his spring 2008 sabbatical semester in Paris conducting research and participating at conferences, followed by shorter trips to Paris for conferences and public lectures during the 2008-2009 academic year. Professor Rosenfeld, who has been a member of the Cardozo faculty since 1988, is widely published in several languages in the fields of American and comparative constitutional law and legal theory. His books include Just Interpretations: Law Between Ethics and Politics and Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry. He was the president of the International Association of Constitutional Law from 1999-2004. Among his many honors is the French government’s highest and most prestigious award, the Legion of Honor.