Welcome to my academic website! I am an Assistant Professor of Public Law and American Politics at Bradley University. I study the U.S. Supreme Court with a focus on the Interim Relief Docket and the legitimacy of the Court.
This August, I signed an advance contract with UVA Press for my book “In the Shadow of the Emergency Docket: Emergency Applications and the Evolution of Judicial Power” to appear in UVA Press’s book series Constitutionalism and Democracy. My research focuses on mapping and understanding the U.S. Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” — the cases the Court hands down that are not orally argued and are not accompanied by a majority opinion. Drawing on an original database of the emergency docket and a pre-registered survey experiment, my research looks at the Supreme Court’s “third shift” and its impact on policy, precedent, and public opinion. I hope to clarify the picture we have of Supreme Court decision making by including this data with the existing Supreme Court Database and providing evidence to evaluate the impression that the Court has turned more frequently to make even more consequential decisions “in the shadows.”
In addition to the Shadow Docket, my research interests broadly focus on U.S. Supreme Court decision-making, the judicial process, survey experiments, and text analysis. I have been analyzing oral arguments in the United States Supreme Court using text as data to uncover potential systematic differences across justices. Most recently, I have been running surveys to investigate public opinion of the Supreme Court in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
Prior to my doctoral studies, I received a Masters Degree in Political Science from the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. In 2017, I graduated cum laude with honors with a B.A. in Political Science (Middle Eastern Studies Minor) from the University of Central Florida. I also graduated cum laude with a B.A. in History from the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Central Florida in 2017.