My research focuses on freedom of expression, constitutional courts, democratic backsliding, and the use of legal strategies by movements for social change, on both the left and the right.

My current book project, Free Speech and Democratic Backsliding, examines the judicial response to recurring democracy-relevant free expression conflicts under conditions of democratic backsliding. The project has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and Fritt Ord.

In recent years, I have published a series of papers investigating democratic backsliding in the United States, with particular attention to the role of courts, including an early assessment of President Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. constitutional democracy, a historically informed analysis of Court packing in the U.S., an examination of the Supreme Court’s performance as democratic guardrail across its history, an account of free speech and academic freedom during the Trump era, and a broad engagement with the literature on democratic erosion, backsliding, and abuse.

A full list of publications is available in my curriculum vitae, and many of these papers are available for download at SSRN or Google Scholar. My 2004 book, The Most Activist Supreme Court in History, is available here and here. Some of the data in the book is updated through June 2013 here. My 2014 book, Judicial Politics in Polarized Times, is available here and here.