CURRENT PROJECTS / WORKS IN PROGRESS

 Legitimizing Legal Liberalism:  A Cross-National Study of Legal Academies and Courts

This book project compares the influence that legal academies in several common law countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia) have had on legitimizing legal liberalism within their respective supreme courts.  Contrary to skeptics who downplay legal theorists’ influence on judicial decision-making, this book argues that legal theorists play varied and important roles in legitimating legal liberalism.

 

Decision-Making in Transnational Courts:  A Longitudinal Study of the British Privy Council

This project explores how institutional power and independence shape decision-making patterns in transnational courts by focusing on an oft-neglected transnational court:  the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council sitting in London. 

 

Epistemological Equality and Deliberative Democracy

Critics of deliberative democracy have argued at a theoretical level that hierarchical power structures found in organizations, communities, and the wider culture present significant barriers to effective deliberation.  These structures foster inequalities in epistemological authority that thwart effective small group deliberations.  This project explores how rules for deliberation may ameliorate the effects of hierarchy.