MSU faculty members whose research engages with law and legal institutions are eligible to become Law College Faculty Affiliates.
Faculty Affiliates participate in the intellectual life of the Law College through symposia, speakers, and other public events at the College; presenting research at the College; submitting papers to the Law College’s series on the SSRN-Legal Scholarship Network and other institutional repositories; and promoting events in their home departments that may be of interest to Law College faculty and students.
MSU faculty may apply to be a Law College Faculty Affiliate by submitting a current CV and Affiliate Application (PDF) to the Associate Dean for Research at researchdean@law.msu.edu . Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
The current Law College Faculty Affiliates are:
Mark Axelrod
Associate Professor, James Madison College; Associate Professor, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife
axelrod3@msu.edu
Dr. Axelrod’s research focuses on institutional change in international environmental law, comparative environmental governance, local implementation of international environmental principles, and the policy impacts of scientific uncertainty.
Ryan C. Black
Professor, College of Social Science, Department of Political Science
rcblack@msu.edu
Dr. Black’s research focuses on U.S. Supreme Court decision-making.
Laura Y. Cabrera
Assistant Professor of Neuroethics, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, Department of Translational Neuroscience, College of Human Medicine
cabrer22@msu.edu
Dr. Cabrera’s research interests include the ethical, social, legal, and policy implications of neurotechnology, in particular when used without a clear medical purpose. Her current research analyzes attitudes toward pharmacological and brain stimulation enhancing interventions, their normative and health policy implications, and the ethical and regulatory challenges in the use of psychiatric interventions.
Joshua Cowen
Professor, College of Education, Department of Educational Administration
jcowen@msu.edu
Dr. Cowen’s research focuses on teacher quality, student and teacher mobility, and evaluations of state and local education programs. He is the Founder and Co-Director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC), a center dedicated to providing rigorous evidence that improves education policy in Michigan and beyond.
Steven B. Dow
Ph.D., University of Michigan; J.D., The Ohio State University College of Law
stevedow@msu.edu
Dr. Dow’s research focuses on Fourth Amendment limitations on doorway arrests and other aspects of doorway confrontations between police and dwelling occupants; pre-trial detention; the overlap between criminal law and civil law, especially in regulation of the financial services and automotive industries; and the integration of social science into the traditional law school curriculum.
Melinda Gann Hall
Ph.D., University of New Orleans
hallme@msu.edu
Dr. Hall’s research utilizes empirical methods of analysis to investigate the operations of state supreme courts, particularly judicial decision-making and judicial elections. The decision-making studies assess how the justices’ choices are shaped by law, their preferences, institutional design, and the external environment. The judicial elections projects challenge conventional wisdom about these races, including perceptions about the harsh consequences of attack advertising.
Timothy J. Gates
Associate Professor, College of Engineering; Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies
gatestim@egr.msu.edu
Dr. Gates’s research focuses on innovative traffic control devices, motorist behavior, speed limits, road safety, statistical methods, traffic operations, pedestrians and bicyclists, and transportation economics.
Matt Grossmann
Director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research; Professor, College of Social Science, Department of Political Science
grossm63@msu.edu
Dr. Grossmann’s research focuses on American public policymaking, especially the roles of interest groups, political parties, and public opinion. His current work investigates the role of income inequality in policy responsiveness.
Angela Hall
Associate Professor, College of Social Science, School of Human Resources & Labor Relations
athall@msu.edu
Dr. Hall’s research focuses on employee legal claiming; relationships between accountability and job performance, satisfaction, and tension; and leader reputation, leadership, and training and development.
Ronald E. Hall
Professor, College of Social Science, School of Social Work
hallr@msu.edu
Dr. Hall’s research focuses on mental health (individual/group psychotherapy), cutaneo-chroma, intra-racial racism, Bleaching Syndrome, colorism litigation, and black male Cool Pose concept.
Stacy Hickox
Associate Professor, College of Social Science, School of Human Resources & Labor Relations; Associate Director for Undergraduate Programs
hickoxs@msu.edu
Dr. Hickox’s research focuses on barriers to employment for people with disabilities or a criminal record and the effectiveness of arbitration in addressing harassment and bullying.
Thomas J. Holt
Director and Professor, College of Social Science, School of Criminal Justice
holtt@msu.edu
Dr. Holt’s research focuses on the law to regulate cyberspace and cybercrime in a domestic and transnational context. Specifically, he examines the experiences of digital forensic examiners in court presentation and its relationship to defendant outcomes including plea bargains. He also considers the challenge of applying and enforcing laws related to cybercrime in a global context, such as malicious software creation and use.
Sania Kutnjak Ivkovich
Ph.D., University of Delaware; S.J.D., Harvard Law School
kutnjak@msu.edu
Degrees: Ph.D., University of Delaware; S.J.D., Harvard Law School; LL.M., Harvard Law School
Dr. Ivkovich’s research focuses on courts and policing, both internationally and comparatively. She studies how lay participants make decisions in legal cases. In the area of international law, she examines how victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity evaluate justice delivered by the transnational and domestic courts. She also explores issues of police integrity, accountability, and legitimacy.
Thomas Jeitschko
Ph.D., University of Virginia
jeitschko@msu.edu
Dr. Jeitschoko’s research focuses on industrial organization, antitrust and consumer protection, and law and economics with sub-specialties in auctions, procurement, intellectual property, financial markets, network industries, platforms and media, and litigation. He has expertise in financial markets, securities and derivatives; exchanges/telecommunications and internet content provision; in intellectual property; auctions; and pricing practices and price gouging.
John (Xuefeng) Jiang
Plante Moran Faculty Fellow, Professor of Accounting and Information Systems, and Professor of Finance (by courtesy)
jiangj@broad.msu.edu
John (Xuefeng) Jiang is the Plante Moran Faculty Fellow, Professor of Accounting and Information Systems, and Professor of Finance (by courtesy) in the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. His research focuses on public policy questions at the interface of accounting and finance, including regulation and legal training.
Mohammad Hassan Khalil
Professor of Religious Studies; Director of the Muslim Studies Program
khalilmsu@gmail.com
Dr. Khalil’s research focuses on Islamic thought, and encompasses a range of other topics, such as law, ethics, gender, and historiography.
Nazita Lajevardi
Assistant Professor, College of Social Science, Department of Political Science
nazita@msu.edu
Dr. Lajevardi’s research focuses on issues related to race and ethnic politics, political behavior, voting rights, and immigration.
Patricia Marin
Associate Professor, College of Education, Department of Educational Administration; Program Coordinator for the Student Affairs Administration Master’s Degree Program
pmarin@msu.edu
Her work in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE) at Michigan State University bridges issues of access, equity, diversity, and policy in higher education. Current research examines research used in policy and practice, with a focus on the law. Additional research foci include admissions policies and affirmative action, the changing nature of Hispanic Serving Institutions, Latino students in higher education, and diversity in college classrooms. Her largest current project examines how the various actors in the Fisher affirmative action case engaged with research when preparing their briefs. The research also analyzes how the connections between researchers and the organizations generating the briefs influence the acquisition of research as well as how it was interpreted and used.
Gerry McNamara
McConnell Professor of Management, Broad College of Business; Senior Editor, Journal of Management
mcnamara@broad.msu.edu
Professor McNamara is the McConnell Professor of Management in the Broad College of Business. His research focuses on major strategic decisions organizations and actions of organizations, including acquisitions, divestitures, competitive actions, corporate governance choices, and corporate communication. Such decisions often face regulatory scrutiny and the potential of legal challenges by governmental and stakeholder groups.
Sarah Reckhow
Associate Professor, College of Social Science, Department of Political Science; Director of the Graduate Program, Department of Political Science
reckhow@msu.edu
Her research and teaching interests include urban politics, education policy, nonprofits and philanthropy, and racial and ethnic politics. Her work on urban schools has focused on policy reforms in New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Detroit. She has studied different governance arrangements for urban districts, including state and mayoral control. Current projects include the recent award of a research grant to study the use of research evidence in the development of teacher quality policy debates.
Eric Scorsone
Director of the MSU Extension Center for Local Government Finance and Policy; Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics
scorsone@msu.edu
His research focuses on law and public finance with a particular focus on municipal government. He works at the intersection of how law shapes municipal financial decisions and how law responds to municipal financial decisions.
John T. Yun
Ed.D., Harvard University
jyun@msu.edu
His areas of expertise include diverse learners and educational equity, educational policy, and evaluation. His research focuses on issues of equity in education, specifically patterns of school segregation; the effect of poverty and opportunity on educational outcomes; the educative/counter-educative impacts of high-stakes testing and the power of evaluation and the law to impact policy and practice.
April Zeoli
Associate Professor, College of Social Science, School of Criminal Justice; Undergraduate Coordinator, College of Social Science, School of Criminal Justice
zeoli@msu.edu
Her research focuses on the impact and implementation of statutes governing the criminal justice system’s response to domestic violence. She conducts interdisciplinary research, with a goal of bringing together the fields of public health and criminology and criminal justice. Current projects focus on firearm use in domestic violence and the potential impact of legal firearm restriction for perpetrators of domestic violence on intimate partner homicide.