Thomas Hilbink is a program officer for the Democracy Fund at the Open Society Foundations, where he works on issues of government transparency and integrity, judicial independence, federal judicial nominations, and transparency grantmaking in the Gulf Coast.
Prior to joining the Open Society Foundations, Hilbink spent five years as a professor in the department of legal studies at the University of Massachusetts. He taught courses on law and social change; race and inequality; religion, law and politics; and, the sociology of law. He received his JD from NYU School of Law where he was a Root-Tilden Public Interest Scholar. He received his PhD from the NYU Institute for Law & Society. His research has been published in academic journals and books, including Law & Social Inquiry, and Cause Lawyers & Social Movements. His most recent research is on popular constitutionalism in recent U.S. history.
Hilbink serves on the editorial boards of the academic journals Law & Society Review, and Studies in Law, Politics & Society. Before teaching, he clerked for Judge Stephanie Seymour of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. He has also worked for the ACLU, the Supreme Court Historical Society, Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, the U.N. International Law Commission, and SOS Racisme (a Spanish human rights organization).