Research & Writ­ing

“[I]f we look at gov­ern­ment agen­cies around us that stand out as ‘best,’ we will find they con­sist of cohe­sive groups of women and men who are ‘turned on’ by some­thing. But by what? Not their pay­checks, nor the lat­est reform gim­micks, but by the very work they are doing: stop­ping child abuse, fight­ing for­est fires, bat­tling epi­demics.”
—Charles Good­sell, Mis­sion Mys­tique

My work sits within the Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Devel­op­ment tra­di­tion, com­bin­ing insights from admin­is­tra­tive law and orga­ni­za­tional the­ory with his­tor­i­cal-insti­tu­tional meth­ods to study how the Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tive state has been built, con­tested, and reshaped.

I am also inter­ested in how pub­lic insti­tu­tions work on the ground, espe­cially how inter­nal cul­tures, pro­fes­sional norms, and orga­ni­za­tional rou­tines shape gov­er­nance in ways that legal doc­trine often obscures.

Agency Con­trol and Inter­nally Bind­ing Norms
131 Yale L.J. 1278 (2022) (Note)

Courts can’t agree on whether agency guid­ance can bind the agency itself—this Note shows why it must and pro­poses a new frame­work for judi­cial review.

Toward a Demo­spru­dence of Poverty
69 Duke L.J. 1473 (2020)

Courts treat poverty crim­i­nal­iza­tion as a prob­lem of process—inad­e­quate hear­ings, exces­sive bail. But poverty is crim­i­nal­ized long before any­one enters a court­room. This Arti­cle pro­poses that judges learn from poor com­mu­ni­ties and use their full toolkit to make that struc­tural real­ity vis­i­ble.

Gun Vio­lence in Court
48 J. Law, Med. & Ethics 90 (2020)

Lit­i­ga­tion has dri­ven change from tobacco to opi­oids, but the gun indus­try remains uniquely shielded. This paper sur­veys firearm suits and finds major pub­lic lit­i­ga­tion efforts con­spic­u­ously absent.