David Michael O'Brien was born in Rock Springs, Wyoming on August 30, 1951. He received a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy, a master's degree in political science, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught politics at the University of Puget Sound and served briefly as chairman of its politics department. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1979 and taught politics there for almost four decades. He wrote, co-wrote, or edited more than a dozen books. His book, Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. He died of lung cancer on December 20, 2018 at the age of 67.
After many years on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote about and taught American constitutional law, civil rights and civil liberties, Gordon Silverstein moved to Yale Law School as assistant dean for graduate programs, overseeing the law school's PhD, JSD, LLM and MSL degree programs and teaching courses in American constitutionalism for Yale's department of political science. He is the author of two books-- Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics (Cambridge University Press) and Imbalance of Powers: Constitutional Interpretation and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press). He is the coeditor of Consequential Courts: Judicial Roles in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press) and has written numerous articles and book chapters on the separation of powers, law and American foreign policy, comparative constitutional law, and judicial review.
