Rate My Professor Scott Boddery

Scott Boddery served as Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Law at Gettysburg College from 2017 to 2025. He earned a B.A. from Coastal Carolina University, a J.D. from Florida State University College of Law, and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. Before joining Gettysburg, he was a visiting professor at Davidson College for two years. At Gettysburg, he advanced from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, served as pre-law advisor, directed the Eisenhower Institute’s Fielding Center for Presidential Leadership Study, and advised The Gettysburgian as faculty advisor from 2019 to 2025. He led Gettysburg seniors on international research trips to London, Oxford, Amsterdam, and The Hague as head of the Eisenhower Institute Fielding Fellows program.

Boddery’s research focuses on judicial politics, institutional design, Supreme Court legitimacy, public opinion on courts, executive-judicial interactions, judicial behavior, and the effects of opinion writers, media cues, and confirmation tactics on public support for Supreme Court decisions. His publications include “Courts and Executives” in The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior (2017), “Electronic Wills: Drawing a Line in the Sand Against Their Validity” (2012), “Do Policy Messengers Matter? Majority Opinion Writers as Policy Cues in Public Agreement with Supreme Court Decisions” (2014), “Presidential Use of Diversionary Drone Force and Public Support” (2021), “Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes” (2019), “Signals from a Politicized Bar: The Solicitor General as a Direct Litigant before the U.S. Supreme Court” (2019), and “Emerging Hardball Confirmation Tactics and Public Support for the U.S. Supreme Court” (2022). He authored op-eds such as “What Senators Should Ask Brett Kavanaugh” (2018). Boddery taught courses including constitutional law, civil liberties and rights, American government, legal policy, research methods, and Legal Analysis. He received the Ralph Cavaliere Endowed Teaching Award in 2018.