Scholarly Publications
Scholarly Publications
Incarceration and the Law: Cases And Materials (with David Shapiro), and associated website
11th Ed. (2026) and teaching manual
10th Ed. (2020) and teaching manual, plus supplements (2021, 2022, 2024)
Challenging Federal Government Impunity: The Case of Disability Law, 105 B.U. L. REV. 1949 (2025). Link.
ExpertLongBench: Benchmarking Language Models on Expert-Level Long-Form Generation Tasks with Structured Checklists (with Jie Ruan and others) (under review 2025). Link.
Keynote: Promoting Disability Equality Behind Bars, 25 NEV. L. J. 537 (2025). Link.
Effective Communication with Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Blind, and Low Vision Incarcerated People, Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse White Paper Series: Learning from Civil Rights Lawsuits (June 2022) (with Tessa Bialek), at https://clearinghouse.net/policy/1/1; 26 J. GENDER, RACE & JUST. 133 (2023) (link).
Ending the Discriminatory Pretrial Incarceration of People with Disabilities: Liability under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, 17 HARV. L. & POL’Y REV. 231 (2022) (with Elizabeth Jordan & Roxanna Moussavian). Link
Pandemic Rules: Covid-19 and the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s Exhaustion Requirement, 72 CASE WESTERN L. REV. 533 (2022) (2021 PLRA symposium) (with Betsy Ginsburg). Link.
Multi-LexSum: Real-world Summaries of Civil Rights Lawsuits at Multiple Granularities, arXiv:2206.10883v3 (NeurIPS 2022 Datasets and Benchmarks) (June 2022) (June 2022) (with Zejiang Shen, Kyle Lo, Lauren Yu, Nathan Dahlberg, & Doug Downey). Link.
Prisoners with Disabilities: Law and Policy, in PUBLIC HEALTH BEHIND BARS (Springer, Robert B. Greifinger, ed., 2022). Link
Prison and Jail Civil Rights/Conditions Cases: Longitudinal Statistics 1970-2021 (Apr. 2022) (Working Paper). Link
Slamming the Courthouse Door: 25 years of evidence for repealing the Prison Litigation Reform Act (Prison Policy Initiative, Apr. 26, 2021) (with Andrea Fenster)
Link to report (via PPI)
Link to all tables & data notes (PDF, via SSRN)
Link to appendix: tables (html), data (excel and stata), replication code (stata), data notes (pdf)
Narrowing the Remedial Gap: Damages for Disability Discrimination in Outsourced Federal Programs, 88 U. Chi. L. Rev. Online (March 5, 2021)
Link to Online Law Review
Link to SSRN PDF
In Memoriam: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 882 (2021)
Link (via Harv. L. Rev.)
"Mapping the Iceberg: The Impact of Data Sources on the Study of District Courts," 17 J. Emp. Legal Stud. 466 (2020) (with Christina Boyd and Pauline Kim)
"Incrementalist vs. Maximalist Reform: Solitary Confinement Case Studies," 115 Northwestern U .L. Rev. 273 (2020).
Incarceration and the Law: Cases and Materials (West Publishing 2020) (with David Shapiro and Sheila Bedi).
Associated website | Chapter 1
"The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse: Origins and Goals," KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies (2018)
Link
"The Constitutional Law of Incarceration, Reconfigured," 103 Cornell L. Rev. 357 (2018)
Link
"Prisoners with Disabilities: Individualization and Integration," in Academy for Justice, A Report on Scholarship and Criminal Justice Reform (Erik Luna ed., October 2017)
Link
"Trends in Prisoner Litigation, as the PLRA Aproaches 20," Correctional Law Reporter (February / March 2017)
PDF
"Anti-Incarcerative Remedies for Illegal Conditions of Confinement," 6 University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review 1 (2016)
Link
"How the ADA Regulates and Restricts Solitary Confinement for People with Mental Disabilities," ACS Issue Brief (May 19, 2016)
Link | Blog post
"The Just-Barely-Sustainable California Prisoners’ Rights Ecosystem," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 64:1 (March 2016)
Link (paywalled) | Link (late draft, free)
Entire Symposium Issue, on California's Criminal Justice Realignment: Link
Webinar: Video (slides and audio) | Slides
"No Reason To Blame Liberals (Or, The Unbearable Lightness of Perversity Arguments)," The New Rambler Review (June 15, 2015) (reviewing Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America).
PDF | Link
"Against Solitary Confinement: Jonah's Redemption and Our Need for Mercy," 16 Rutgers J. L. & Religion 345 (2015) (People of the Book Symposium)
Link
"Stealth Advocacy Can (Sometimes) Change the World," 113 Mich. L. Rev. 897 (2015) (reviewing Alison L. Gash, Below the Radar: How Silence Can Save Civil Rights).
PDF
"Trends in Prisoner Litigation, as the PLRA Enters Adulthood," 5 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. 153 (2015).
PDF | Data Appendix
"Prisoners' Rights Lawyers' Strategies for Preserving the Role of the Courts," 69 U. Miami L. Rev. 519 (2015).
PDF | PDF via SSRN (draft)
"Intelligence Legalism and the National Security Agency's Civil Liberties Gap," 6 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 112 (2015).
PDF | PDF via SSRN
"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Structural Reform of the American Workplace," 91 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1519 (2014).
PDF | PDF via SSRN
Replication Code - Figures and Tables
Replication Code - Statements in Text
"Offices of Goodness: Influence Without Authority In Federal Agencies," 36 Cardozo L. Rev. 53 (2014).
PDF | PDF via SSRN | Source Appendix
"Prison Segregation: Symposium Introduction and Preliminary Data on Racial Disparities," 18 Mich. J. Race & L. 241 (2013).
PDF | Abstract and PDF (including data note) via SSRN
"Plata v. Brown and Realignment: Jails, Prisons, Courts, and Politics," 48 Harv. Civ. Rghts-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 165 (2013).
PDF | Abstract and PDF via SSRN | Appendix
"Women behind the Wheel: Gender and Transportation Law, 1960-1930," in Tracy A. Thomas & Tracey Jean Boisseau, eds., Feminist Legal History: Essays on Women and Law (2011).
PDF
"Regulating Segregation: The Contribution of the ABA Criminal Justice Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners," 47 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1421 (2010).
PDF
"Against Secret Regulation: Why and How We Should End the Practical Obscurity of Injunctions and Consent Decrees," 59 DePaul L. Rev. 515 (2010).
PDF
"How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making?” 29 Wash. U. J. Law & Pol'y 83 (2009) (with Pauline Kim, Christina Boyd, Andrew D. Martin).
PDF
“Preserving the Rule of Law in America’s Jails and Prisons: The Case for Amending the Prison Litigation Reform Act,” 11 Penn. J. Const. Law 139 (2008) (with Giovanna Shay).
PDF
"Operationalizing Deterrence: Claims Management (in Hospitals, a Large Retailer, and Jails and Prisons),” 2 Journal of Tort Law, issue 1, article 1 (2008).
Link | PDF
"Jail Strip-Search Cases: Patterns and Participants," 71 Law & Contemp. Problems 65 (2008) (Symposium: Galanter-Influenced Scholars)
Link | PDF | Appendix.pdf | Appendix.xls
"Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, and Disability," 60 Vand. L. Rev. 745 (2007), with Sam Bagenstos.
PDF | Abstract and PDF via SSRN
"Using Court Records for Research, Teaching, and Policymaking: The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse" 75 U.M.K.C. L. Rev. 153 (2006) (Symposium: NARA Federal Civil Court Records: New Territory for Empirical, Historical, and Legal Research), with Denise Lieberman
PDF | Appendix
"What We Know and What We Should Know about American Trial Trends," 2006 J. Disp. Res. 35
PDF | Abstract and PDF via SSRN
"Civil Rights Injunctions Over Time: A Case Study of Jail and Prison Court Orders," 81 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 550 (2006)
Summary | PDF | PDF via SSRN | Appendix
"Second Best Damage Action Deterrence," 55 DePaul L. Rev. 517 (2006) (Clifford Symposium)
Summary | PDF | Abstract and PDF via SSRN
Anne Morrison Piehl & Margo Schlanger, "Determinants of Civil Rights Filings in Federal District Court by Jail and Prison Inmates," 1 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 79 (2004).
Summary | PDF | Appendix
Theodore Eisenberg & Margo Schlanger, "The Reliability of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts Dasabase: An Initial Empirical Analysis," 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1455 (2003).
Summary | PDF
"Inmate Litigation," 116 Harv. L. Rev. 1555 (2003).
Summary | PDF | Appendix | Correspondence
"Gender Matters: Teaching a Reasonable Woman Standard in Personal Injury Law," 45 St. Louis Univ. L.J. 769 (2001).
PDF
"Beyond the Hero Judge: Institutional Reform Litigation as Litigation. (Review Essay) 97 Mich. L. Rev. 1994 (1999).
Summary | PDF
"Injured Women before Common Law Courts, 1860-1930," 21 Harvard Women's L.J. 79 (1998).
Summary | PDF