Tracey E. George
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
Charles B. Cox III and Lucy D. Cox Family Chair in Law and Liberty
Professor of Political Science
Tracey George brings a social science perspective to a range of topics, including judges and courts, judicial selection and elections, legal education and the legal profession, and contract law and theory. She has published numerous studies in which she examines how institutional design influences actions and outcomes in state and federal judicial systems. She is also a recognized expert on the study of legal education. She and UCLA Law Professor Russell Korobkin have published an innovative casebook on contract law, a subject for which she has earned Vanderbilt's student-selected Hall-Hartman Award for Outstanding Teaching eight times.
Before joining the Vanderbilt law faculty in 2004, George was a professor of law at Northwestern University Law School, where she was also faculty associate at the Institute for Policy Research. She was appointed to the Charles B. Cox III and Lucy D. Cox Family Chair in Law and Liberty in fall 2013. She currently serves as University Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, overseeing faculty hiring and retention, appointments and promotions, awards and honors, and development and support.
Research Interests
Federal courts and judges, state judicial systems, judicial selection, judicial elections, multidistrict litigation, legal education, the legal profession, contract law
Representative Publications
- K: A Common Law Approach to Contract Law, Wolters Kluwer (3rd edition, 2021) (with Russell Korobkin)
Full Text | WWW
- What Every Law Student Really Needs to Know: An Introduction to the Study of Law, Wolters Kluwer (3rd edition, 2020) (with Suzanna Sherry)
Full Text | WWW
- "The Emerging Authority of Magistrate Judges within U.S. District Courts," 10 Journal of Law and Courts 37 (2022) (with Christina L. Boyd and Albert H. Yoon)
Full Text | WWW
- “Measuring Justice in State Courts: The Demographics of the State Judiciary,” 70 Vanderbilt Law Review 1887 (2017) (with Albert H. Yoon)
Full Text | WWW
- The Gavel Gap: Who Sits in Judgment on State Courts? (2016) (with Albert H. Yoon) (gavelgap.org)
Full Text | WWW
- "The Role of Personal Attributes and Social Backgrounds on Judging" in The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Judicial Behavior (Lee Epstein and Stefanie Lindquist, editors) (2016) (with Taylor Grace Weaver)
Full Text | SSRN
- "Article I Judges in an Article III World: The Career Path of Magistrate Judges," Nevada Law Journal (2016) (with Albert H. Yoon)
Full Text | SSRN
- "Courts of Good and Ill Repute: Garoupa and Ginburg's Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory," University of Chicago Law Review (2016) (with G. Mitu Gulati)
Full Text | SSRN
- “The Labor Market for New Law Professors,” 11 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 1 (2014) (with Albert H. Yoon)
Full Text | SSRN
- "Who Will Manage Complex Litigation? The Decision to Transfer and Consolidate Multidistrict Litigation," 10 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 424 (2013) (with Margaret S. Williams)
Full Text | SSRN