Research

Below is an overview of my research projects, including published articles in both peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, as well as works currently in development.

Publications

"Regulatory Productivity in Federal Administration: An Empirical Analysis of the Deep State" (with Nicholas G. Napolio), Rutgers University Law Review (forthcoming), available on SSRN.

"Serving Two Masters? Public Ethics and the Regulation of Financial Conflicts of Interest in the Administrative State," Albany Law Review (forthcoming), available on SSRN.

"The Politicized Enforcement of Laws Criminalizing Executive Branch Conflicts of Interest," Presidential Studies Quarterly 52(1): 224-245 (2022).

"The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2020 Presidential Election" (with Boris Heersink and Nicholas G. Napolio), American Politics Research (forthcoming).

"The Walking Dead: How the Criminal Regulation of Sodomy Survived Lawrence v. Texas," Missouri Law Review 86(3): 857-902 (2021).

"Mobilization and Countermobilization: The Effect of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2016 Presidential Election" (with Boris Heersink and Brenton Peterson), Journal of Politics 83(4): 1878-1883 (2021).

"The Personal Finances of United States Supreme Court Justices and Decision-Making in Economic Litigation" (with Thora Giallouri and Elli Menounou), Journal of Legal Studies 50(2): 379-405 (2021).

"Institutional Foundations of the American Revolution: Legislative Politics in Colonial North America" (with Nicholas G. Napolio), Journal of Historical Political Economy 1(2): 235-257 (2021).

"The Private Interests of Public Officials: Financial Regulation in the U.S. Congress" (with Christian R. Grose), Legislative Studies Quarterly 46(1): 49-84 (2020).

"Economic Interests Cause Elected Officials to Liberalize Their Racial Attitudes" (with Christian R. Grose), Political Research Quarterly 73(3): 511-525 (2020).

- Recognized as the Best Article Published in PRQ during 2020.

"No Vacancy or Open for Business? Making Accommodations for Digital Platform Short-Term Rentals in Major American Municipalities" (with Braedon Sims), University of Hawai'i Law Review 43(1): 123-165 (2020), available on SSRN.

"The Mask of Neutrality: Judicial Partisan Calculation and Legislative Redistricting," Law & Policy 41(3): 336-359 (2019).

"Packing the Courts: Ideological Proximity and Expansions to the Federal Judiciary from 1937 to 2012" (with Elli Menounou, Adam Feldman, and Thora Giallouri), Journal of Law & Courts 7(1): 81-106 (2019).

"Their Boot in Our Face No Longer? Administrative Sectionalism and Resistance to Federal Authority in the U.S. South" (with Nicholas G. Napolio), State Politics & Policy Quarterly 19(1): 101-122 (2019).

"All Their Eggs in One Basket? Ideological Congruence in Congress and the Bicameral Origins of Concentrated Delegation to the Bureaucracy", Laws 7(2): 1-15 (2018).

"Letting Down the Ladder or Shutting the Door: Female Prime Ministers, Party Leaders, and Cabinet Members" (with Diana Z. O'Brien, Matthew Mendez, and Jihyun Shin), Politics & Gender 11(4): 689-717 (2015).

Public scholarship

"Trump is going back to holding rallies. He might be helping Biden" (with Boris Heersink). The Washington Post - Monkey Cage, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-is-going-back-holding-rallies-he-might-be-helping-biden/.

"Of Pretexts and Preferences: The Revealed Conservatism of Clarence Thomas." A House Divided, available at https://ahousedividedapd.com/2020/01/23/of-pretexts-and-preferences-the-revealed-conservatism-of-clarence-thomas/.

"In the South, it’s not just state politicians who work against federal policies. It’s the bureaucrats too" (with Nicholas G. Napolio). London School of Economics US Centre American Politics & Policy Blog, available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/02/08/in-the-south-its-not-just-state-politicians-who-work-against-federal-policies-its-the-bureaucrats-too/

"Concentrating implementation: How ideological agreement between the House and Senate affects delegation to the bureaucracy." LegBranch.com Blog, available at http://www.legbranch.com/theblog/2018/6/5/concentrating-implementation-how-ideological-agreement-between-the-house-and-senate-affects-delegation-to-the-bureaucracy

"Partisanship Drives State Agencies' Response to Federal Regulation" (with Nicholas G. Napolio). The Regulatory Review, available at https://www.theregreview.org/2018/05/07/napolio-peterson-partisanship-state-agencies-resistance-federal-regulation/

"What persuades elected officials to remove Confederate symbols? Framing it as good for business" (with Christian R. Grose). The Washington Post - Monkey Cage, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/21/what-persuades-elected-officials-to-remove-confederate-symbols-framing-it-as-good-for-business/

Working papers

"Implementing Equality: The Sources of State (Non)Compliance with Judicial Revisions to Public Policy on Gay Rights"

Abstract: Since the civil rights movement accomplished many of its paramount successes via litigation, progressive advocacy communities have tended to regard courts as essential bulwarks against the legal enshrinement of oppression targeting politically vulnerable minorities. Advocates of LGBTQ equality are no different, identifying the judiciary as critical to eradicating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, witnessed notably in the movement's having championed a series of Supreme Court decisions expanding gay rights from the mid-1990s to the present. Standing alone, however, holdings by the Supreme Court revising the operative scope of civil rights for sexual minorities represent only a change in the formulation of public policy rather than effecting immediate changes in policy implementation. Judicially directed reformulations of public policy thus require cooperation by those responsible for policy implementation, and compliance rates with judicial directives may vary, especially on matters of public policy over which states retain considerable sovereignty. In this article, I analyze state responses to two prominent Supreme Court decisions on public policies that implicate the constitutional rights of sexual minorities: Lawrence v. Texas, decriminalizing private, consensual, nonprocreative intercourse, and Obergefell v. Hodges, holding state same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional. While adherence to Obergefell was swift and nearly universal, compliance outcomes for Lawrence have been uneven, as some states continue to enforce statutes that are materially equivalent to the "homosexual conduct" law at issue in Lawrence. I argue that compliance with Lawrence has lagged compared to Obergefell for three reasons: (1) linguistic imprecision in the Lawrence decision; (2) divergent views of the right(s) at issue in each case, including variation in the constituencies affected by each instance of litigation; and (3) the absence of a federal executive regime credibly committed to the case's outcome.

"Public Perceptions of Corporate Culture Warriors: How the Public Views Corporate Position-Taking on Abortion and Transgender Rights" (with Wayde Z. C. Marsh).

Abstract: Corporations regularly express their preferences on questions of public policy. This can occur through a range of means that includes costly actions like lobbying public officials to support one policy or another, contributing money to candidates for elected office whose preferences seem congruent with the firm’s, and engaging in litigation to challenge policies already enacted. One less costly way of expressing policy preferences for corporations is issuing statements of support for or opposition to a given law, policy, or government practice. In this article, we examine public perceptions of corporate position-taking to determine the partisan dimensions of how the mass public evaluates corporate expressions of policy preferences on divisive “Culture War” issues. Specifically, we use original survey experiments to examine how partisanship influences individuals’ preferences regarding corporate position-taking on abortion and transgender rights. We find that while corporate position-taking on abortion rights and transgender sports legislation shifts mass opinion on the role of corporations in politics, such expressions of corporate preferences do not change individual attitudes on the underlying policy questions themselves. In an age during which large firms play an increasingly influential role in the construction of public policy, this article sheds light on how corporate messages of support for certain policies related to polarizing social issues are consumed in the mass public.

"In the Wake of Destruction: The Political Legacy of Sherman's March to the Sea" (with Nicholas G. Napolio).

Abstract: The "March to the Sea'' led by Union General William T. Sherman in Georgia from 1864-1865 is famous primarily due to the massive economic costs the military campaign imposed on the region. While Sherman's march devastated the Confederacy's military and industrial capacities along its path from Atlanta to Savannah, we argue that there were additional effects of this campaign that were both longer-term in scope and political in nature. Using maps of Sherman's march across Georgia from contemporaneous military records, we find that Georgia counties through which Sherman's men marched voted for socially conservative candidates at higher rates from the end of Reconstruction to the passage of the Voting Rights Act compared with those counties that did not lie on Sherman's path. After the Voting Rights Act effectively re-enfranchised Black voters in the South, the effects disappear.