I am Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory University. My research and teaching interests are in judicial politics, rational choice institutionalism, constitutional theory and design, democratic political institutions, and applied formal theory and statistical methods. On this webpage, you will find links to information about my past and on-going research projects, which are focused on judicial learning and rule-making, interactions among actors within the judiciary, representation on the courts, empirical techniques for estimating judicial preferences and the content of judicial decisions, and the interaction between the judiciary and other institutions. My current research focuses on the theoretical and empirical analysis of legal rules and doctrine, the informational properties of litigation, and social media discourse about the judiciary. I am currently writing a book, entitled The Supreme Court: An Analytic History of Constitutional Decision Making. My past research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Political Analysis, the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Science Research & Methods, the Journal of Law & Courts, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Wisconsin Law Review, and the Criminal Law Bulletin. My book, The Limits of Judicial Independence, was published in the Series in Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions at Cambridge University Press and won the 2012 William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy from the Political Economy Section of the American Political Science Association.
In addition to my appointment in the Political Science Department, I also hold a courtesy appointment in the Emory Law School. I have had visiting appointments at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, in the Woordrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University (2015-2016) and at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Toulouse School of Economics (Summer 2016). I received my B.A. (2003) in Political Science from Rutgers University and my M.A. (2005) and Ph.D. (2008) in Politics from Princeton University. I have also provided consulting services in constitutional litigation for cases before the US Supreme Court and in the Georgia State courts.
My Erdős number is 4.