My substantive research primarily centers on the influence of judicial institutions on public policy. I approach this question in two ways: first, by understanding what courts do in their opinions, and second, by understanding why the decisions and accompanying opinions were designed as they were. In each case, I develop and employ a variety of tools for the computational analysis of text. As examples, in my recent research I utilize unsupervised topic models in order to understand agenda change and dissenting behavior on the U.S. Supreme Court, deploy machine learning tools to identify media coverage of court decisions as well as interactions between the Supreme Court and Congress, and develop sentiment analysis tools to understand the collegiality of courts.
