Research Links
Here are some of the organizations I've done stuff for:
    The American Judicature Society  An organization dedicated to promoting merit selection of judges
        and improving America's jury system.  You can also find a summary of my book on jury summons
        response and my article on age and the jury here.
    The American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Program:  I was an APSA
        Fellow during 1999 and 2000 before joining the Swarthmore faculty.
    The University of Chicago Department of Political Science:  It doesn't look much like it did when I got
        my Ph.D. there in 1999, but you can still get the scoop on the faculty and courses there.
    American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies:  I've been involved in their campaign ethics
        programs.
    Jury Summit 2001:  The first-even national conference on the American jury.  I was on the faculty
        and wrote the final report on the conference, to be published this fall.

Some of my Recent Papers
I'm never quite sure what the protocol is for putting stuff that's under review up on the web.  As it turns out, most of what I consider my favorite recent things I've written are either under review at the moment or soon to be, so the papers listed below are either things that were put up on the web following publication or things that I don't have plans to publish.  And finally, instead of putting chapters of my book manuscript up, I've put up the prospectus.  Perhaps one day it'll be in print!

Anyway, here are . . .

    The Book Prospectus:

Expressive Politics:  How Congressional Challengers Confront the Incumbency Advantage
 

Improving Citizen Response to Jury Summonses
(the executive summary of my book about who skips out on jury service, why they do it, and what courts can do about it)

Generations, Age Groups, and Jury Service
(boiled down version of a journal article by a similar name; this is all about how people's attitudes towards jury service vary by age.  Requires Acrobat Viewer.)

A Citizen's Guide to Jury Deliberations
(I was a member of the team that put this little thing together.  Learn all about what to expect while a deliberating juror)

    And a Few Conference Papers That I Like, but Probably Won't Do Anything Further With:
 

"Partisan Politics and Judicial Independence."  Presented at the Brennan Center Conference on  Judicial Independence Research, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Philadelphia, PA.  March 2001.
A short and sweet paper about why judicial elections matter a lot when redistricting litigation is taking place.

“Survey Nonresponse by Candidates: A Choice of Ambiguity?”  Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 2000.
This paper's not one of my better ones, overall, but for some reason a few people have asked me for it.  It's all about mining everything you can get out of a data set -- in this case, the one that I used more productively in my dissertation/book manuscript.

“The Median Voter:  Fact or Fiction?  The History of a Theoretical Concept.”  Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Seattle, WA, March 1999.
Big think theorizing about what elections really mean.

“Losing Strategies:  A Rational Actor Approach to ‘Extremist’ Presidential Campaigns.”  Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 1996.
This was actually my qualifying paper years ago, in grad school.  One day I will return to this and make it a little better.  It's basically the same argument as the dissertation/book manuscript, applied to presidential candidates McGovern, Goldwater, and Mondale.

Of course, if you have any thoughts on any of these, drop me a line and let me know.