My research examines the institutional developments and changes of judicial institutions in the United States, with three particular foci. First, I seek to understand how the U.S. Supreme Court helps build the American state through its constitutional jurisprudence, situating these developments historically. Second, I research how subnational and national actors use courts to advance and entrench their policy agendas, and how these actors shape federalism, constitutional development, and state building. Third, my research studies the practices and decision-making of lower-level federal courts, and the role that these practices play in both holding the federal government accountable and upholding tenets of liberal democracy.

The US Supreme Court and the Centralization of Federal Authority

My monograph appears in SUNY Press’s “American Constitutionalism” series. This book unearths the constitutional arguments used to expand the federal government. Political characterizations of the national state as “strong” or “weak” (or as “big” or “small”) miss the nuanced ways the national state and constitutional law have evolved over time. Both scholarly and public communities have misunderstood the strength and growth of federal government in the typical periods that comprise American political history. After this systematic and empirical analysis of constitutional decisions, it becomes clear that no matter the justice’s ideology or the historical era, the Court has persistently expanded and centralized federal authority across each constitutional issue area.

Thus, my book uncovers when and where the federal state’s authority grew in size and scope thereby revising our understanding of American state-building. I explore this theme with an original database of constitutional decisions gathered from fifty-eighty constitutional casebooks and treatises published between 1822 and 2010.

Special Issues Edited: 

2025. “Annual Review of American Federalism, 2024-25,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 

2024.  “Global Perspectives on Judicial Politics and Democratic Backsliding,” Law & Policy 

2024. “Annual Review of American Federalism, 2023-24,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism

Articles:

“The State of American Federalism 2024–2025: Resisting and Reinforcing the Rise of the Transactional Presidency” (with Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo), Publius: The Journal of Federalism

This article explores the evolving dynamics of American federalism, focusing on the expanding influence of the administrative presidency and the rise of transactional federalism. It examines how recent presidents, particularly Trump and Biden, have utilized executive actions to shape policy, often leading to clashes with state governments. The analysis discusses the impact of the 2024 elections and key Supreme Court decisions about the balance of power between federal and state entities, highlighting the judiciary’s role in both limiting and expanding federal and state authority. The article also discusses various state and local government responses to these presidential actions, which reveals the increasing complexity of intergovernmental relations in the United States.

“Stewards, defenders, progenitors, and collaborators: Courts in the age of democratic decline,” (with Igor Logvinenko), Law & Policy

In this introductory essay to the special issue of Law & Policy, “Global Perspectives on Judicial Politics and Democratic Backsliding,” we critically examine the paradoxical role of courts during episodes of democratic backsliding. Despite operating without direct democratic accountability—relying instead on legal precedents and doctrinal interpretations—courts are pivotal in defending democratic integrity during episodes of backsliding. This issue, featuring 10 articles by 15 scholars, offers a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of judicial politics of autocratization. Half of the articles deal directly with the U.S. judiciary, highlighting its unique standing that allows it to both enable and resist democratic backsliding. The other half of the issue explores case studies from Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, highlighting a great deal of variability of tactics, approaches and outcomes. Published during a critical electoral year in 2024, this collection emphasizes the need for ongoing research into the judiciaries’ dual capacity to both safeguard and undermine democratic norms.

“The State of American Federalism 2023–2024: Judicialization of Gridlocked Politics” (with Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo), Publius: The Journal of Federalism

Contemporary American federalism, while characterized by nationalized policy battles in the states, is also increasingly defined by the centralization of power in the federal judiciary. In this introductory piece of the 2023–2024 Annual Review issue, we unpack the judicialization of federalism politics. This process, we argue, has been facilitated by national political gridlock, defined by increasing dysfunction in Congress, and the growth of the administrative presidency. In policy conflicts on subjects ranging from education and the environment to abortion and other individual rights, courts have played an increasingly significant role as the arbiter of the federal–state balance of power. As the articles in this Annual Review illustrate, with a few exceptions, judicialization of federalism has often resulted in the devolution of authority to the states, with significant implications for public policy and democratic institutions.

“ ‘Culture and practice eat documents for lunch:’ Norms and procedures in the 2020 election cases”(with Igor Logvinenko), Law & Policy

The US Supreme Court has been rightfully criticized for its role in contributing to the anti-democratic processes in the United States. However, the focus on the apex court overlooks the potential for the judiciary as a whole to support democratic institutions. In the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election, a series of lawsuits contesting the results were filed in federal courts, overseen by judges appointed by presidents from both major parties. Despite the prevailing perception of courts as politically influenced, every one of these cases ruled against the former President Trump’s claims. This research delves into the influence of judicial norms and legal profession culture, intertwined with specific procedural doctrines such as Article III standing and justiciability. The study contends that these procedural rules, deeply ingrained within the culture of the legal profession in the United States, served as a crucial mechanism upholding judicial independence. The analysis draws from the texts of the 2020 election-related court decisions and interviews with 17 legal experts, primarily consisting of federal and state Supreme Court judges.

State Attorneys General and their Challenges to Federal Policies: Insights from the Texas v. California Litigation Regarding the Affordable Care Act (with Phillip Singer), Publius: The Journal of Federalism 

This article explains a rising trend in American politics: the increasingly prominent role the state attorneys general (AGs) play in challenging federal policies. It focuses on one particularly important case—Republican efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act in Texas v. California. We consider how state AGs and solicitors general (SGs) drive policy efforts through litigation and the factors that contribute to their participation. We find, first, that although members of the out-of-power party in Washington are the ones who typically bring state lawsuits, the Texas litigation demonstrates that these lawsuits are also a vehicle by which members of the party in power try to achieve goals that are otherwise unattainable through the legislative process. Second, Republican AGs submerge partisan arguments in “constitution-talk” with the aim of achieving a policy goal that was defeated democratically. We reach these conclusions through content analysis of AG press releases and semi-structured interviews with litigators and other elite actors.

‘To Render Prompt Justice’: The Origins and Construction of the U.S. Court of Claims (with Logan Strother and Ryan Williams), Studies in American Political Development

This article examines the institutional development of the U.S. Court of Claims (USCC), in order to shed new light on the nature of constitutional and institutional change in the early Republic. From the founding period through the mid-nineteenth century, members of Congress believed that empowering other institutions to award claimants monies from the Treasury would violate two core doctrines: separation of powers and sovereign immunity. However, as claims against the government ballooned over the first half of the nineteenth century, Congress fundamentally changed its interpretation of the Constitution’s requirements in order to create the USCC and thus to alleviate its workload. This story of institutional development is an example of constitutional construction and creative syncretism in that the institutional development of the USCC came from continuous interactions among political actors, working iteratively to refashion institutions capable of solving practical problems of governance. This close study of the court’s creation shows something important about American constitutional development: Certain fundamental ideas of the early Republic, including sovereign immunity and separation of powers, were altered or jettisoned not out of some grand rethinking of the nature of the American state, but out of the need to solve a mundane problem.

Rethinking the Supreme Court’s Influence on Federalism and Centralization (with Ilya Somin), Publius: The Journal of Federalism

This article challenges the conventional wisdom about of the Supreme Court’s impact on federalism and centralization. In particular, we argue that the centralization impact of the Court is far less pronounced if decisions that uphold federal and state/local laws against challenge are classified as neutral rather than as centralizing and decentralizing, respectively. This reclassification dramatically alters our understanding of the Court’s role in establishing federal–state boundaries of power. After presenting our theoretical arguments, we briefly discuss the potential empirical effects of these revisions. Our analysis calls into question the traditional picture of the Court as a consistent force for centralization. It also challenges the conventional wisdom about the Court’s impact on centralization during specific key periods of American history.

Works In progress:

“Testing the Effects of Judicial Independence on Federal Judges: Evidence from the U.S. Court of Claims” (with Logan Strother and Ryan Williams)–NSF Proposal  

This project seeks to collect and code all U.S. Court of Claims rulings from 1855 to present-day. Our long-term goal is to detail how institutional structures enable (or impede) federal judges’ independence and autonomy as they keep the other branches of government in check, enforce the rule of law, and protect citizens’ civil liberties. To achieve this overall objective, we seek to (1) collect data on a wide range of variables on the universe of cases decided by USCC, as well as its judges, and (2) to present and maintain all of this data in a new Court of Claims Database. Our central hypothesis is that greater autonomy and capacity enables USCC judges to rule more frequently against the federal government. This hypothesis is based on existing literature examining courts abroad and US state courts, as well as on our preliminary data collection of USCC decisions from 1855-1875 and our original historical research published in Studies in American Political Development. The rationale underlying the proposed research is that USCC data offers a unique opportunity for scholars: causal identification in studies of the American federal judiciary is notoriously difficult, because controlled comparisons elude us, but it is possible here because of exogenous variation in the institutional nature and structure of the USCC. Once we collect and identify the outcomes of all USCC rulings, we can quantitatively estimate the causal effects of institutional changes on judicial outputs net of case- and judge-specific factors. We intend to first, quantify the universe of rulings handed down by the USCC, 1856-2022. And, second, test the effects of institutional and structural changes to the USCC on the outputs of the court and the behavior of judges