Tracey E. George

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Photo of Tracey E. George

Tarkington Chair in Teaching Excellence .Professor of Law .Professor of Political Science .Director, Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program

Voice: (615) 322-6310
Fax: (615) 322-6631
Email: tracey.george@vanderbilt.edu
Office: Room 291A
View curriculum vitae (.pdf)

Links


Research Interest(s)

U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Courts of Appeals, U.S. District Courts, multidistrict litigation, judicial behavior, judicial selection, empirical legal scholarship, legal education, legal labor market, contract law

Education

J.D. Stanford Law School
M.A. (Political Science) Washington University in St. Louis
B.A. and B.S. Southern Methodist University

Biography

Tracey George brings a social science perspective to law and courts, examining how institutional design influences actions and outcomes. She also has published empirical studies of legal education and legal scholarship and serves on the LSAC Grants Subcommittee, which supports work on legal education and the legal profession. She was named director of the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program in 2011. In addition to Civil Procedure and Evidence, Professor George teaches Contracts and has earned multiple first-year teaching prizes for the course at Vanderbilt and Northwestern. She also teaches an introduction to law school course, The Life of the Law, which she created with colleague Suzanna Sherry, and together they authored a textbook and teaching materials now used at numerous law schools in addition to Vanderbilt. Before joining the Vanderbilt law faculty in 2004, Professor George served as a professor of law at Northwestern University Law School, where she was also faculty associate at the Institute for Policy Research. After graduating from Stanford Law School, she clerked for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and then practiced law in Washington, D.C., with Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin. From 1996 through 2001, Professor George served as an associate professor of law and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Missouri School of Law.

Representative Publications


Books

Articles

  • "Who Will Manage Complex Litigation? The Decision to Transfer and consolidate Multidistrict Litigation," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (forthcoming 2012) (with Margaret S. Williams)

  • "The New Old Realism," Northwestern University Law Review (2011) (with G. Mitu Gulati & Anne C. McGinley)

  • “Remaking the United States Supreme Court in the Courts’ of Appeals Image,” Duke Law Journal (2009) (with Chris Guthrie)

  • “From Judge to Justice: Social Background Theory and the U.S. Supreme Court,” North Carolina Law Review (2008)

  • “Chief Judges: The Limits of Attitudinal Theory and Possible Paradox of Managerial Judging,” Vanderbilt Law Review (2008) (with Albert H. Yoon)

  • "Six Degrees of Cass Sunstein: Collaboration Networks in Legal Scholarship," Green Bag (2007)

  • "The Dynamics and Determinants of the Decision to Grant En Banc Review," 74 Washington Law Review 213-274 (1999)

  • “Developing a Positive Theory of Decisionmaking on U.S. Courts of Appeals,” Ohio State Law Journal (1998)

  • “On the Nature of Supreme Court Decision Making,” American Political Science Review (1992) (with Lee Epstein)

Working Papers

  • "The Labor Market for Law Professors" (with Albert H. Yoon)

Presentations

  • "Special Courts in the U.S. Judicial System," Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Colloquium (Amsterdam, July 2012)

  • "Thinking and Blinking on the Bench: Political Science and Psychological Theories of Judging," Duke Law School Theories of Judging Seminar (June 2012)

  • "Who Will Manage Complex Litigation?," University of Chicago Judicial Behavior Workshop (March 2012)

  • "The Market for Law Professors," University of Houston Law School (January 2012), University of Illinois College of Law (April 2012)



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