Welcome. I am incoming Assistant Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College AY 25-26 and currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Virginia. I have a PhD in political science from University of Chicago and a JD from Tulane University. My research focuses on polarization, political parties and ideology, public law, and race over the course of 20th Century American politics.

My research has been published in American Political Science Review, Law & Social InquiryStudies in American Political Development, American Political Thought (forthcoming) and an Oxford Handbook chapter, among other venues.

My book manuscript — Enemy Establishments: The Constitution, the Modern American State, and the Political Development of Polarization — will be submitted to Oxford University Press this spring. I have a second monograph in progress — Reacting to the Right: Money, Institution-Building on the Left, and the Origins of the American Constitution Society — that is co-authored with Paul Baumgardner.

I am currently working on a paper exploring on why party politics have historically ~not~ been a causal driver of American constitutional law and politics and a second solo book project on the political development of left-liberalism and the Democratic Party from 1980 to today.

For more information, click on my CV. The research tab contains PDFs of my published articles.

I can be reached at urj3cc@virginia.edu