Research Interests
Keywords
My research asks how the people who decide cases, and the pressures they work under, shape who wins and loses in American legal institutions. I study judges in administrative and immigration courts, where high caseloads and specialized training make it possible to isolate what drives decisions. A second line of work examines Latino political behavior.
judicial politics, political behavior, American institutions, administrative courts, gender, race and ethnicity
Book
How Women Rule: Judicial Empathy and Gender (under contract, NYU Press)
Why do female and male judges rule differently in some courts but not others? I argue the answer is empathy. When the stakes of a ruling for the losing party are hard to measure, judges must imagine them, and judges who perceive those stakes as higher rule more leniently. Because women on average score higher in empathy, gender gaps appear where this kind of judgment matters most. I test the theory with court data from Social Security and other administrative courts, experiments with law students and the public, and interviews with current and former judges. The book also takes up the ethics of empathic judging and the design of administrative courts.
Under Review
Can Empathy Explain Gender Differences in Judicial Rulings? Theory and Evidence from Experiments (Political Behavior)
A formal model predicts that empathy produces leniency when the penalty is severe for the person being judged. In experiments where participants rule on stylized cases, gender differences appear exactly where the model predicts and are partly explained by measured empathy. Law students and the public behave almost identically, which casts doubt on the idea that legal training erases these differences.
Public Perception of Judge Bias (revise and resubmit, Political Research Quarterly)
Most Americans see judges as less biased than the average person, but still expect some bias. Using a survey experiment and conjoint analysis, I find the public sees female judges as more lenient and male judges as more biased, and prefers female judges when a judge’s record is unknown.
Catch and Release? Bond Hearings and Outcomes in Immigration Courts (with Benjamin Marx - GSU Economics, AER: Insights)
The government now argues that most detained immigrants are not entitled to a bond hearing, and the Supreme Court has agreed to decide the question. Both sides rest on claims about what release does. Using more than 500,000 bond requests, we compare similar cases heard by judges who differ in how often they release people. Release nearly eliminates removal from custody. About one in five people released at the margin are later ordered removed after missing court, far fewer than the debate assumes, while others win relief or see their cases dismissed years later by a different administration. Ending hearings would mostly detain people who would have returned to court.
Empathy on the Bench: Gender and Discretion in Administrative Adjudication (Politics, Groups, and Identities)
Drawing on interviews with 21 current and former administrative law judges, I show how empathy, rather than gender itself, links judges’ identities to their rulings. Judges mostly deny weighing what is at stake for claimants, yet describe decision processes shaped by it. Case completion quotas squeeze judicial independence hardest in the busy courts that serve the most vulnerable people.
The Diploma Divide among Latino Voters (Journal of Hispanic Higher Education)
Does a college education shape how Latinos vote and whether they participate? Using 2024 polling of Hispanic voters in Florida, nationally, and in several other states from the FAU Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab, I examine whether the education gap reshaping American politics also divides Latino voters.
Works in Progress
Under Pressure: Case Allocation in Immigration Courts (with Benjamin Marx)
Studies of judge effects assume cases are assigned to judges at random. In immigration courts, which have faced two decades of exploding caseloads, we find they are not: a judge’s strictness in other cases predicts characteristics of the people who come before them, such as the language they speak. This calls into question a common research design.
Habeas Petitions and Immigration Detention
As challenges to ICE detention move into federal district courts through habeas petitions, these courts have become a front line of immigration enforcement. This project builds an original dataset of filed petitions to ask who files, which judges grant relief, and what that reveals about the limits of judicial oversight of detention.
Wasting Away: The Nomination Process in the Federal Judiciary
Why do some federal judicial vacancies sit open far longer than others? Using an original dataset of vacancies, I show that the cost of finding a nominee, not Senate confirmation, drives delay. Presidents fill higher court seats faster and move quickly after a failed nomination, but vacancies linger even under unified government when many seats are open at once.