Lee Epstein is the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on law and legal institutions, especially the behavior of judges.

Professor Epstein is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. In addition to her position at WashU, she holds Distinguished Visiting Professorships at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Southern California, where she previously served as University Professor of Law & Political Science and as Hilliard Distinguished Professor of Law. She also is Principal Investigator of the U.S. Supreme Court Database and co-founding editor of the Journal of Law & Empirical Analysis.

The recipient of 12 grants from the National Science Foundation, Professor Epstein has authored or edited 20 books and more than 160 articles and book chapters, many in collaboration with other scholars. She recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Judicial Behaviour (with Gunnar Grendstad, Urška Šadl, & Keren Weinshall) and is working on a new book, Free Speech: A Campus Toolkit. Her empirical research is frequently cited in the New York Times, among other media outlets.

Awards include the Pritchett Award for Best Book on Law and Courts and the Lasting Contribution Award for The Choices Justices Make (with Jack Knight) and for the article “Untangling the Causal Effect of Sex on Judging” (with Christina Boyd & Andrew D. Martin). She also received the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Teaching and Mentoring Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association for the Constitutional Law for a Changing America series (here, here, and here).

Professor Epstein teaches courses on constitutional law, judicial behavior, free speech, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She was named Outstanding First-Year Course Professor at Northwestern University School of Law. At Washington University, she received the Undergraduate Political Science Association’s Professor of the Year Award, the Student Union’s Faculty of the Year Award, the Alumni Board of Governors Distinguished Faculty Award, and the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award.

keywords: judicial behavior, Supreme Court, Supreme Court Database, empirical legal studies, empirical legal research, strategic analysis, Lee Spole, Syosset, Scatico, Go Green, Emory