Associate Professor Keith J. Bybee, who studies public law, says that explaining the department's lack of senior public law Faculty often comes down to quibbling over qualifications. Several reasons, he says, could be given why any particular scholar should not be given tenure.
"Public law is kind of in the eye of the beholder," Bybee says. But he adds that this does not explain why Harvard has gone thirty years without such a professor.
"At different times in the past thirty years, there's been a sense of urgency [to find someone]," he says, even though today some of that sense of urgency may have subsided.
At the same time, Bybee cautions against reading too much into the government department's lack of Faculty in public law and other disciplines.
"Any department's going to have some holes," Bybee says, as long as different schools compete for faculty.
"It's not like only Harvard recognizes these people as great and famous."