CUSHMAN, ROBERT E. (1889–1969)

Robert Eugene Cushman taught constitutional law for many years at Cornell University. His landmark anthology, Leading Constitutional Decisions (1925; 16th ed. by Robert F. Cushman, 1982), quickly established itself as a standard casebook for constitutional law and history courses. Cushman founded and edited the Cornell Studies on Civil Liberty; the contributors to this series of monographs included Robert K. Carr, Milton R. Convitz, Walter Gellhorn, James Morton Smith, and Cushman himself. Cushman described his monograph, Civil Liberties in the United States (1956), as "a guide to current problems and experience." A synoptic description of the state of the law and an attempt to chart its future development, it was well-received, although some critics questioned its formalistic approach and its skeletal coverage of various issues. Cushman's major scholarly work, The Independent Regulatory Commissions (1941), a byproduct of his service with the President's Committee on Administrative Management (1937); prophetically proposed the separation in independent regulatory commissions of the prosecutorial and adjudicative functions. For many years he wrote the American Political Science Review 's annual survey of the work of the Supreme Court. From 1958 until his death, Cushman was editor-in-chief of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution; he was succeeded by merrill jensen.

Richard B. Bernstein
(1986)