Manoj Mate is Professor of Law and Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar at the University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York and is an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Center for Information Integrity. His interdisciplinary research centers on constitutional law, election law and voting rights,  comparative constitutional law, and law and society.

Professor Mate’s research focuses on the socio-legal and constitutional dimensions of electoral governance and democracy, rights, and equality.  His research critically examines how existing doctrinal approaches undermine efforts to address inequality in electoral governance; examines the Supreme Court’s approach to constitutional structure and federalism in election law; and explores the role and capacity of courts to regulate and protect democracy globally.

Mate has also held faculty appointments at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, the University of California, Irvine School of Law, the University of Windsor Faculty of Law, and served as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. At DePaul, Mate was appointed to serve as the inaugural director of the DePaul Racial Justice Initiative, and at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law, Mate was awarded the Canada Research Chair in International Trade Law by the Government of Canada.

Mate’s scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in leading law reviews and journals including Connecticut Law Review, Tulane Law Review, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Yale Journal of International Law, University of Chicago Legal Forum, Columbia Human Rights Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Public Affairs, Berkeley Journal of International Law, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, and the Journal of Human Rights. He also has had peer-reviewed chapters published in volumes by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.  Professor Mate was selected as a Public Voices Fellow for the Op-Ed Project in 2022, and his commentary and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Time Magazine, The Hill, Salon, and Jurist.

Professor Mate has held numerous external leadership appointments, including as chair of the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) sections on Comparative Law and Law and South Asian Studies. Mate also has extensive experience working at the intersection of law and public policy and was appointed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to serve as a member of the academic community on the Illinois Racial Profiling Prevention and Data Oversight Board. He also served as a Senior Advisor to San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro.

Professor Mate holds a B.A. degree (with highest honors, Departmental Citation in Political Science) from U.C. Berkeley, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from U.C. Berkeley. After law school, Mate practiced litigation at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, and also worked for the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at Berkeley on the 2006 Voting Rights Reauthorization Initiative.  Prior to joining the legal academy, Mate was a Mellon Sawyer Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society and a Fellow in Global Comparative Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.