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Administrative Law, Statutory InterpretationLisa Bressman, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, is an innovative scholar in administrative law and statutory interpretation. Her most recent work, with Abbe Gluck of Yale Law School, includes an article in two parts discussing the results of the largest empirical study to date of congressional drafting and the implications for statutory interpretation and administrative law. Her prior work attempts to better account for the legal fiction of congressional delegation in statutory interpretation and to reimagine congressional delegation as a genuine feature of judicial deference doctrine.
Administrative Law and Regulatory Process, Regulatory Interpretation, Presidential Power Over AgenciesKevin Stack, Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Chair in Law, writes on administrative law, regulation, separation of powers, presidential powers, European Union administrative law, and the theoretical foundations of public law. His recent work has examined the interpretation of regulations, statutory interpretation, the constitutional foundations of agency independence, and theories of regulation. He was recognized with the ABA's 2013 Annual Scholarship Award for the best published work in administrative law for his Michigan Law Review article, "Interpreting Regulations."
American legal history, race and the law, property lawDaniel Sharfstein, Dick and Martha Lansden Chair in Law; Professor of History, researches and writes on the legal history of race in the United States. He received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship to support his work on a book-length exploration of post Reconstruction America, Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard and the Nez Perce War (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). His book, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2011), won the 2012 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for excellence in non-fiction as well as the Law & Society Association’s 2012 James Willard Hurst Jr. Prize for socio-legal history, the William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History, and the Chancellor’s Award for Research from Vanderbilt.
Class Actions, Attorneys’ Fees, U.S. Supreme Court, Judicial Selection, Federal Court LitigationBrian Fitzpatrick, Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, focuses his research on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection and constitutional law. He began his career as a judicial clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn.
Constitutional Law, U.S. Supreme Court DecisionsSuzanna Sherry, Herman O. Loewenstein Professor of Law, has earned national recognition as one of the most well-known scholars in the field of constitutional law and the U.S. Supreme Court. The author of more than 75 books and articles, she also writes extensively on federal courts and federal court procedures. Her most recent book, Judgment Calls, coauthored with Daniel Farber, explores the proper role of the judiciary. Professor Sherry is considered one of the top scholars in the field of constitutional law and the Supreme Court.
Constitutional law, constitutional theory, foreign relations law, administrative law, regulation, political theory, institutional design, international lawGanesh Sitaraman, Professor of Law , addresses issues in constitutional, administrative and foreign relations law. He was on leave from Vanderbilt‘s faculty from 2011 to 2013, serving as Elizabeth Warren‘s policy director during her campaign for the Senate, and then as her senior counsel in the Senate. Professor Sitaraman also served as an adviser to Warren when she was chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP). Professor Sitaraman is the author, most recently, of The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution (Knopf, 2017), which argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America's constitutional system.
Corporate Law, Corporate Governance, Regulation of Financial MarketsMargaret Blair, Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise Emerita, is an economist and leading scholar in corporate law and finance. A former senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, she is an expert on corporate governance. She had a prior career as a journalist, serving as bureau chief for Business Week magazine in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Corporate and Securities Law, Executive Compensation, Stock Option PlansRandall Thomas, John S. Beasley II Professor of Law and Business; Professor of Management, has earned a reputation of being one of the most productive and thoughtful corporate and securities law scholars in the nation. His recent work addresses issues such as hedge fund shareholder activism, executive compensation, corporate voting, corporate litigation, shareholder voting, and mergers and acquisitions.
Criminal Law & Procedure, Death Penalty, Insanity Defense, Police Investigation, Surveillance, Juvenile JusticeChristopher Slobogin, Milton R. Underwood Chair in Law, has authored more than 100 articles, books and chapters on topics relating to criminal procedure, mental health law and evidence. Professor Slobogin is one of the five most cited criminal law and procedure law professors in the country, according to the Leiter Report. Psychological Evaluations for the Courts (3rd edition, 2007), which he co-authored with another lawyer and two psychologists, is considered the standard-bearer in forensic mental health.
Criminal Law, Juvenile Justice, Wrongful Convictions, Judicial BehaviorTerry Maroney, Professor of Law, specializes in criminal law, juvenile justice and the role of emotion in law, drawing heavily on interdisciplinary scholarship. Her current work examines the impact of emotion on judicial decision making following earlier research exploring judges’ “emotional common sense.” Professor Maroney has also examined the use of adolescent brain science in juvenile cases, a subject of great interest in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s citation to such evidence in cases involving the juvenile death penalty and life without parole.
Employment Discrimination Law, Employment Law, Gender and Health, Disability, WeightJennifer Bennett Shinall, Professor of Law, focuses her research on employment law, labor economics, and legal and economic history. Her research examines the effects of obesity on the labor market and how the legal system can address these effects. Other current research focuses on the employment effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008. Professor Shinall was the first graduate of the Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics at Vanderbilt University.
Equality law, constitutional law, employment discrimination, law and sexuality, feminist legal theoryJessica Clarke, Professor of Law, focuses her research on American equality law. She studies constitutional and statutory guarantees of non-discrimination based on traits such as race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and disability. Her work has been selected for the Harvard-Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum and has received the Dukeminier Award for the best legal scholarship on sexual orientation and gender identity. After graduating from Yale Law School, Professor Clarke clerked for Judges Shira Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and Rosemary Pooler of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She also worked as an associate in the New York office of Covington & Burling, and spent two years teaching at Columbia Law School as an associate-in-law.
Evidence, Expert Evidence, Use of Statistics in LawEd Cheng, Hess Chair in Law, focuses on scientific and expert evidence, and the interaction between law and statistics. Professor Cheng is a coauthor of Modern Scientific Evidence, a five-volume treatise that is updated annually, and he is the host of Excited Utterance , a podcast focusing on scholarship in evidence and proof. His articles, in which he explores evidence law from an empirical and statistical perspective, have been published in the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review and Stanford Law Review, among other prestigious law journals.
Federal and State Judicial Selection, Judicial Elections, Impact of Politics on Supreme and Appellate Courts, Law School Reform, Legal EducationTracey George , Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Charles B. Cox III and Lucy D. Cox Family Chair in Law and Liberty, Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science brings a social science perspective to a range of topics including federal courts, legal education, and contract law. She has published numerous studies of Article III courts and judges in which she examines how institutional design influences actions and outcomes. She is a recognized expert on the study of legal education, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Legal Education and the LSAC Grants Subcommittee.
Federalism, Constitutional Law, Drug Law and Policy, Severability, Cannabis Law, Sanctuary CitiesRobert Mikos, Professor of Law, is one of the nation's leading experts on federalism and its application to contemporary disputes concerning drug, immigration, and gambling policy, among other topics. Professor Mikos has written extensively on federalism and criminal law issues, including the groundbreaking textbook, Marijuana Law, Policy, and Authority. He has advised local, state, federal, and foreign judges and policymakers on marijuana law and policy. Professor Mikos graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. After graduation, he served as a judicial clerk for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Financial Regulation, Corporate Bankruptcy, Securities Regulation, Derivatives, Trading and Markets, including High Frequency and Algorithmic TradingYesha Yadav, Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity and Community, Professor of Law, researches in the area of financial and securities regulation, notably with respect to the evolving response of regulatory policy to innovations in financial engineering, market microstructure and globalization. Before joining Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2011, Professor Yadav worked as legal counsel with the World Bank in its finance, private-sector development and infrastructure unit, where she specialized in financial regulation and insolvency and creditor-debtor rights.
First Amendment, Privacy & Surveillance, Civil Liberties, Law & TechnologyG.S. Hans, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, practices and researches in areas relating to free speech, civil liberties, and the effects of new technologies on law and policy. His work examines how individuals understand complex areas of law, particularly as they related to speech, privacy, and technology. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a dual degree in Law and Information Policy, he worked as an attorney at the Center for Democracy & Technology, where he focused on privacy, free speech, and surveillance issues at the state, federal, and international levels.
Global Warming, Climate Change, Environmental and Energy LawMichael Vandenbergh, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law, is a leading environmental law scholar whose research explores innovative ways to avoid the gridlock that has dominated national and international environmental law and policy over the last several decades. His research has tackled the gridlock problem by examining the roles of private environmental governance and behavioral science-based approaches to environmental law and policy. His award-winning private environmental governance work has used interdisciplinary teams to explore the growing importance of the private sector in environmental protection, and his recent book, Beyond Politics: The Private Governance Response to Climate Change, applies this approach to the climate problem by showing how private initiatives aimed at reducing carbon emissions can achieve a billion tons per year of carbon reductions even absent government action. Vandenbergh also co-founded Vanderbilt’s interdisciplinary Climate Change Research Network, which conducts research on energy and environmental behavior with engineers, behavioral scientists, and natural scientists.
Health Policy Law, Medical Ethics, Medical Malpractice, Health Care Regulation and Antitrust, Supreme Court Decisions, Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Voting RightsJames Blumstein, University Professor of Constitutional Law and Health Law & Policy, Professor of Management, ranks among the nation’s most prominent scholars of health law, law and medicine, and voting rights. Professor Blumstein has served as the principal investigator on numerous grants concerning managed care, hospital management and medical malpractice. He co-authored a major study on TennCare, one of the first statewide experiments in universally enrolling Medicaid patients in managed care. He has been elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and is co-editor of a leading casebook on health law and policy.
Immigration, refugee law, human rights, civil rights, gender and the lawKarla McKanders, Clinical Professor of Law, founded Vanderbilt's first Immigration Practice Clinic, in which students represent indigent immigrants in humanitarian cases. Her scholarship focuses on immigration federalism and international systems for processing refugees. Professor McKanders directs the Immigration Clinic and teaches Refugee and Immigration Law. Her work has taken her throughout the U.S. and abroad teaching and researching the efficacy of legal institutions charged with processing migrants and refugees.
International Criminal Tribunals, War Crimes, Military LawMichael A. Newton, Professor of the Practice of Law, Professor of the Practice of Political Science, is a member of the American Society of International Law’s Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward the International Criminal Court (ICC). Professor Newton helped establish the Iraqi Special Tribunal and led the training in international criminal law for its judges, including holding sessions in Baghdad. He is an expert on accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues.
International Trade (WTO, NAFTA/USMCA), International Investment, International Environmental Issues (Climate Change)Tim Meyer, Professor of Law, is an expert in public international law, with specialties in international trade and investment law and international energy governance. His current research examines how international economic agreements relate and respond to concerns about economic opportunity and inequality, as well as the role of the constitutional separation of powers in U.S. international economic policymaking. His past research has examined the interaction of international and local rules on energy subsidies, the role of local governments in free trade agreements, and the creation of non-binding "soft law" obligations. Professor Meyer has testified before the U.S. Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and the Judiciary and has served both as counsel and as an expert in cases raising international law issues in U.S. courts.
Law and Neuroscience, Law and Behavioral BiologyOwen Jones, Glenn M. Weaver, M.D. and Mary Ellen Weaver Chair in Law, Brain, and Behavior, Professor of Biological Sciences, is a leading scholar on issues at the intersections of law with neuroscience and behavioral biology. Professor Jones' work, published in scientific as well as legal venues, uses brain-imaging (fMRI), evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics to learn more about how the brain's varied operations affect behaviors relevant to law. With four grants from the MacArthur Foundation, totaling over 7.6 million dollars, he designed, created and directs the national Research Network on Law and Neuroscience.
Legal History, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Indigent Defense, Public DefendersSara Mayeux, Associate Professor of Law; Associate Professor in History, writes on legal history, criminal law and procedure, and constitutional law, and has also written in both scholarly and popular media on prison law and policy, mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, and the war on drugs. Her current research examines the history of public defenders, indigent defense, and the constitutional right to counsel for criminal defendants in the United States, seeking to untangle the historical roots of the chronic crisis in funding for indigent defense. She is working on a book on this subject and published an article on the nationwide impact of the 1963 case Gideon v. Wainwright in the Columbia Law Review, “What Gideon Did.” She previously maintained the widely read “Prison Law Blog” from 2009 to 2012, which tracked prison and jail litigation and policy developments around the country.
Medical Ethics, Law and Genetics, Health Legal IssuesEllen Wright Clayton, Craig-Weaver Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Law, Professor of Health Policy. Dr. Clayton is an internationally respected leader in the field of law and genetics who holds appointments in both the law and medical schools at Vanderbilt, where she also co-founded the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society. She provides a unique perspective to medical ethics issues. Her primary research interest is in the ethical, legal and social implications of recent developments in genetics. She also specializes in medical ethics and legal issues affecting children and families. She has been an active participant in policy debates, working with the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine.
Payday Lending, Impact of Lottery Winnings on BankruptcyPaige Marta Skiba, Professor of Law; Professor of Economics, has conducted innovative research in the area of behavioral law and economics and commercial law, particularly on topics related to her economics dissertation, Behavior in High-Interest Credit Markets. Her current research focuses on the causes and consequences of borrowing on high-interest credit, such as payday loans, auto-title loans, and pawnshops, as well as the regulation of these industries. In her article, "The Ticket to Easy Street? The Financial Consequences of Winning the Lottery," Skiba and two coauthors found that winners of large cash prizes did not use winnings to address their indebtedness or increase equity, and thus delayed, rather than avoiding, bankruptcy.
TRIPS, Copyright and International Intellectual Property LawDaniel Gervais, Milton R. Underwood Chair in Law, Professor of French,focuses on international intellectual property law, having spent 10 years researching and addressing policy issues on behalf of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO), and Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). He is the author of The TRIPS Agreement: Drafting History and Analysis, a leading guide to the treaty that governs international intellectual property rights.
