University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Professor Maxwell Stearns (pictured above at right) and Clinical Instructor Sara Gold (pictured above at left), director of the Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, are recipients of University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents Faculty Awards, the highest honors presented to exemplary faculty across the 12 USM universities. The faculty awards recognize excellence in the categories of mentoring, teaching, public service, scholarship, or research.
Stearns, who is the Venable, Baetjer, and Howard Professor of Law, received the Excellence in Scholarship award. His work focuses on integrating economic analysis into the study of constitutional law, lawmaking institutions, and democracy. On the faculty since 2006, Stearns teaches Constitutional Law and Law and Economics.
Stearns is the author of Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy (JHU Press 2024), Law and Economics: Private and Public (West Academic 2018), and Constitutional Process: A Social Choice Analysis of Supreme Court Decision Making (University of Michigan Press 2001). His scholarly articles appear in leading academic journals, including the Yale Law Journal, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal.
“This award is especially meaningful to me because it recognizes the need to bring rigorous, interdisciplinary tools to bear on our nation’s most urgent challenge—the crisis of our democracy,” said Stearns. “My book, Parliamentary America, focuses on identifying the root causes of our system’s dysfunction before proposing reforms that are ambitious—and yes, radical—yet achievable. I’m deeply honored that the Board of Regents has recognized the importance of this work.” In 2025, Parliamentary America won a silver Independent Publisher Book Award.
Gold received the award for Excellence in Public Service.
As director of Maryland Carey Law’s Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, she and her students have represented hundreds of low-income individuals living with HIV in cases involving public benefits, medical decision-making, family, and housing. The legal clinic, established more than 35 years ago, is an innovative collaboration with University of Maryland, Baltimore, HIV health practices that together ensure legal care as part of health care for clients.
Before joining the faculty in 2011, Gold was pro bono manager at a Washington, D.C. law firm, chief of the Child Protection Section in the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, and acting deputy attorney general for the Family Services Division. She also co-taught the Domestic Violence Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center.
“This honor reflects the amazing work of so many committed and passionate law students, as well as our incredible collaborative partners in medicine, social work, nursing and beyond,” said Gold. “It truly takes an interdisciplinary team to contribute to improving legal, health, and overall outcomes for clients.”
Working with the USM’s shared governance councils, nominating committees identify candidates for the awards to Board of Regents committees that make final recommendations for the approval of the board itself. Each honor carries a $2,000 award.
“It’s an enormous privilege every year to recognize the USM faculty and staff whose excellence transforms our universities and our communities, and who put our students on a path toward their goals,” said USM Board of Regents Chair Linda Gooden. “Of course, across our System, we have thousands of exceptional people — faculty and staff doing similarly important work and doing it incredibly well — but they’re the very ones who nominated their colleagues and said they embody our mission to educate, and discover, and serve; they represent the very best of who we are…”
Gold and Stearns join 18 other faculty members drawn from the 12 system universities honored this spring. USM Chancellor Jay Perman and Gooden recognized the winners at a reception at Hidden Waters, the chancellor’s official residence, on April 26.