UCLA School of Law professor Stephen Gardbaum has been named a 2025 recipient of the university’s highest honor for classroom excellence, the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award.

The UCLA Academic Senate has presented the award since 1961 “to increase awareness of UCLA’s leadership in teaching and public service by honoring individuals who bring respect and admiration to teaching, at UCLA.” Each year, only six faculty members across the UCLA campus are so recognized. In addition to the honor for members of the university’s tenure-track faculty, awards go to leading lecturers and teaching assistants.

Gardbaum is the 38th member of the UCLA Law community to earn this campus-wide accolade.

A leading scholar of comparative constitutional law and theory, Gardbaum joined the UCLA Law faculty in 1998 and holds the Stephen Yeazell Endowed Chair in Law. He has held many important leadership positions outside and within UCLA Law, including as the faculty director of The Promise Institute for Human Rights.

Gardbaum’s scholarly impact spans the globe. He is a past Guggenheim Fellow. He wrote the widely reviewed book The New Commonwealth Model of Constitutionalism (Cambridge University Press, 2013). His work has been cited by the Supreme Courts of the United States, Canada, and India. And he has lectured, taught, and presented work around the world.

As a teacher, Gardbaum is driven by an emphasis on respect for students as a key value. It is an ethos for which he is well-admired, as UCLA Law Dean Michael Waterstone underscored in a message to the law school community announcing this honor.

“Basic human equality and dignity are not only principles that he researches and teaches – they are the touchstones that guide his work every day in the classroom,” Waterstone wrote.

“In his Constitutional Law and Comparative Law courses, Professor Gardbaum is known for smoothing the learning experience by striving to make a personal connection with each of his students. One way he does this is by asking them to complete a voluntary questionnaire to find common points of interest with them. He also employs methods to give each of his students an equal shot at success, such as through offering syllabi for older [and less expensive] casebook editions. In turn, many – notably first-generation and international students – have relied on him as a valued and trusted mentor. And all have benefitted greatly from his careful instruction.”

As one of his students wrote in support of Gardbaum’s nomination for the Distinguished Teaching Award, “Professor Gardbaum genuinely cares about teaching and never treats his interactions with students as a mere obligation. His approach combines rigor with accessibility, making students feel both challenged and respected.”

Gardbaum earned his B.A. from Oxford University, M.Sc. from London University, Ph.D. from Columbia University, and J.D. from Yale Law School.

“In these challenging times for constitutional democracy in the United States and around the world, teaching domestic and comparative constitutional law has never been more difficult, or meaningful,” Gardbaum says. “So I am especially appreciative of receiving this award now and deeply grateful to my students for their engagement with the issues.”