Welcome!
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida (Gainesville, FL). I received my Ph.D. from the University of Georgia (2023) with focuses in American Politics (Major) & Formal Theory (Minor). My research works to merge conventional studies of judicial politics with emerging computational methods. To date, my research has been published, mentioned, or featured in The Journal of Law and Courts, Political Science Research and Methods , Political Research Quarterly , The Justice System Journal, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, Newsweek, ABCNews, The Washington Times, The Daily Kos, SCOTUSBlog, and EmpiricalSCOTUS, among others.
My research focuses principally on analyses of the American federal court system using high performance computing environments. In particular, I am interested in how scholars can employ contemporary and emerging technologies in computing resources (e.g., high performance computing, large language models, natural language processing, and other sectors of machine learning) towards traditional elements of judicial politics research. This has most recently pushed me towards a comprehensive research agenda centering on the application of high-performance computing systems to study the latent and explicit properties of language employed within the American legal community.
In addition, my research focuses extensively on federal courts, with particular interest in the United States Supreme Court. To date, I have published or have works in progress concerning opinion authorship as a measure of judicial ideology, the motivations and effects of rhetorical behaviors during Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, the prevalence of Supreme Court news on social media platforms, among other scholarship concerning judicial behavior and computational social science. For more information on my published and pending research, please see my Research Page or my Curriculum Vitae.
Apart from published research, I recently completed Version 2.0.1 of scotustext, a Comprehensive R Package for Retrieving, Cleaning, and Parsing Documents from the United States Supreme Court. For more information, please visit the please visit the Package Site. I also participate in compiling an annual review of the United States Supreme Court with EmpiricalSCOTUS.
Prior to my appointment at Florida, I held a postdoctoral appointmnet with the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship and Engagement at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). When I am not researching, you can find me watching the back-to-back national champion Georgia Bulldogs or engaging in a perpetual spiral of self-loathing while watching the New York Mets waste another $350 million payroll and prove that being able to hit a baseball is apparently not a pre-requisite to play in the major leagues. My wife, a fellow Georgia alumnus and Atlanta Braves fan (albeit only because she knows it gets under my skin), appears to enjoy it when I'm doing either.
Let's Go Mets