Basics

I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Washington University. I study comparative politics with a focus on the European Union. I also specialize in political methodology, and I find that the advanced industrial democracies are an especially rich source of data. My dissertation deals with the European Court of Justice, developing measures and models of outcomes and member state preferences. (See below)

In the Spring of 2009 I was in Paris with the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL). Besides eating beaucoup de croissants, I conducted some useful fieldwork there as well as at the ECJ in Luxembourg.

Dissertation Abstract

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has fostered the development of a common European legal order, and in doing so, has asserted itself and its supremacy more, and more successfully, than any other international court. It has maintained features of international courts such as its composition of one judge per member state, while employing other tools of national high courts such as en banc decisions and organization into chambers, that together hide internal dissent and shield the ECJ from direct monitoring or curbing by the member states. The same shield has frustrated efforts to quantify the court’s responsiveness to member states, with limited evidence that the ECJ yields to some member-state interest some of the time, but nonetheless has advanced integration beyond national governments’ wishes. This equivocation arises at least in part from a failure to include relevant information about the court’s composition and organization.

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