I am Professor of Law, Political Science, and Public Policy at USC Gould School of Law.  I teach Administrative Law, Money in Politics, and Analytical Methods for Lawyers.  I have also taught at University of Chicago School of Law. 

My research centers around our efforts to improve public governance via information provision. The public can extract information from all branches of government, though we usually think of transparency as affecting the executive branch most severely.  My current projects center on the transparency of campaign financing for elected officials in the legislature. 

My oldest research agenda concerns campaign finance disclosure, which is highly polarizing among political elites. However, many of the arguments we hear about it aren't based in empirical facts. I'm doing my part to inform the debate.  In that research agenda, I'm asking the following questions right now. What are the benefits of knowing who funds our political candidates?  Does knowledge about who funds our candidates help us make more "informed" votes?  What are the racial implications of deregulating campaign finance transparency?

A second line of inquiry involves measuring good governance, which is a thorny problem. My latest effort involves creating a measure, called the Resisting Industry Pressure ("RIP") Index. It is a key explanatory variable for a coauthored book project analyzing governors' pandemic responses and the way those responses affected essential workers' views of government and the basis for a measure in a spinoff paper, as well.

My research appears or is forthcoming in many peer reviewed journals, including American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Political Behavior, Election Law Journal, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Political Research Quarterly, Public Choice, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, and others. I have also published in several law reviews, including New York University Law Review, Emory Law Review, and Southern California Law Review. My research has been featured in Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times.

I also serve the public. I am currently a Commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission and a youth basketball coach.

I hold a Ph.D. from the Travers Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, a J.D. from Harvard and a M.A.L.D. from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.  Before starting my teaching career, I clerked for Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr., on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

This website explains more about my research and teaching.