Welcome to my website! I am an assistant professor of law at UCLA and a Ph.D. candidate in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University. My recent academic work is in or forthcoming at the Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Socio-Economic Review, and Perspectives on Politics; my writing for public audiences has appeared in the New York Times, American Prospect, and Washington Monthly.
I study how the design of domestic political institutions—like our comparatively unique arrangements of fiscal federalism, judicial review, and constitutional unamendability—has shaped democratic outcomes in the United States, with most case studies focusing on the state and local level. My dissertation research explores the consequences of corporate power for community governance, as mediated by jurisdictional fragmentation and programmatic devolution to under-resourced local governments. I am particularly interested in theories of local democracy and how law mediates the relationships between race, place, and economic opportunity. Recent projects have explored federal regulation in the interjurisdictional market for corporate investment; forms of governance (public and private) in historical company towns; the interaction between residential segregation and fiscal capacity within US metro areas; and the role of courts in the American political economy.
After graduating from Yale Law School in 2017, I was a Skadden Fellow at the National Consumer Law Center; my litigation and advocacy there challenged the unaffordable financial obligations imposed on poor families as a result of their contact with the criminal system, focusing on the commercial bail and prison phone industries. (Related to this work, I’ve also written about how local governments seek to shift the costs of our punishment bureaucracy onto vulnerable residents, including through monetary sanctions and regressive “user-fee” funding models—for example, here and here and here.) Before joining NCLC, I worked for five years in DC on domestic economic policy with a focus on income support programs and fiscal policy—including as an advisor at President Obama’s National Economic Council, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the office of Senator Cory Booker.
I am a Steven M. Polan fellow in constitutional law and history with the Brennan Center and an affiliated senior researcher at Yale Law School’s Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law. During the 2022-23 academic year, I was a fellow in law and public policy in residence at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs; between 2023-25, I was an academic fellow in law and political economy at Harvard Law School.
I grew up in South Carolina (kind of: our military family moved a lot) and graduated from Furman University in 2010. Outside of academia and policy work, I enjoy oil painting, castelvetrano olives, amateur karaoke, food-focused travel, fantasy basketball, my Chaco sandals, other people’s pets, running (slowly), and making playlists.
A short third-person version of this bio is available here.