Research
Research
Publications
Civilian Harm and Military Legitimacy in War: Evidence from the Battle for Mosul in Iraq (with Benjamin C. Krick and Mara R. Revkin), 79 International Organization 2 (2025): 332-357.
The legitimacy of armed forces in the eyes of civilians is increasingly recognized as crucial not only for battlefield effectiveness but also for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. However, the micro-determinants of “military legitimacy” are poorly understood. We argue that perceptions of military legitimacy are shaped by two key dimensions of warfare: just cause and just conduct. Leveraging naturally occurring variation during one of the most deadly urban battles in recent history—the multi-national campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq—we evaluate our theory with a mixed-methods design combining original survey data, satellite imagery, and interviews. Civilians living in neighborhoods where armed forces were less careful to protect civilians view those forces as less legitimate than civilians elsewhere. Surprisingly, these results persist after conditioning for personal experiences with harm, suggesting that perceptions are influenced not only by victimization—consistent with previous studies—but also by beliefs about the morality of armed forces’ conduct and the cause for which they are fighting.
The Judicial Administrative Power (with Joseph Schottenfeld), 93 George Washington Law Review 349 (2025): 349-409.
The article clarifies the relationship between judicial administration—the host of non-adjudicatory activities the federal judiciary performs—and Article III adjudication. Today, federal judges and other judicial actors exercise a wide range of administrative powers, ranging from studying, testing, and promulgating rules of court practice and procedure to overseeing federal pretrial detention services or choosing federal public defenders. We show how, over the past century, the federal judiciary has accrued administrative responsibilities largely in the interests of promoting the practical fairness, efficiency, or efficacy of federal adjudication. We then organize the array of judicial administrative activities. When judges and judicial staff engage in judicial administration, they are ordinarily performing one of three actions: they are rulemaking; they are managing; and they are communicating. Based on our descriptive account, we argue that the judicial administrative power carries significant and under-accounted consequences that go far beyond the practical problems of adjudication that gave rise to it. Freed from the formal constraints Article III adjudication, judicial administration upends core notions of what makes the judiciary the judiciary and of how the judiciary ought to relate to its coordinate branches. We therefore conclude with a set of proposed reforms that would redress some of these challenges by treating the judicial administrative power as administrative first and judicial second—not the other way around.
Working Papers
Can Social Sanctions Improve Bureaucratic Performance? Evidence from U.S. Courts (working paper)
I study a judicial reform—the “six-month list”—which requires U.S. courts to publish the names of judges with overdue matters. Using a regression-discontinuity design and related methods, I exploit quasi-random variation in exposure to the list. Matters most exposed are resolved roughly 14% faster than those least exposed, with larger effects among young, non-white, and female judges. I find suggestive evidence of quality trade-offs: less-exposed matters are more likely to be affirmed on appeal. A bunching analysis estimates that the list reduces total motion-processing time by about 4%, highlighting the power of reputational incentives in shaping bureaucratic behavior.
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Bonuses, Buy-outs, and Worker Sorting in the Public Sector: Evidence from the U.S. Military (with Christina Patterson and William Skimmyhorn) (working paper)
Retention is a high priority for public sector organizations, where internal labor markets remain common. Yet for reasons of law, policy, and organizational culture, public sector organizations tend to be especially constrained in the tools they can use to hire, fire, and otherwise manage personnel. A prime example is the U.S. military, which also happens to be one of the world’s largest employers. With few other options at their disposal, military personnel managers frequently use cash bonuses to incentivize retention or buy-out offers to incentivize exit. These same policies are widely used throughout the public sector, and while both policies are known to be effective at achieving quantitative staffing goals, little is known about how such policies affect worker sorting into and out of public service. We leverage administrative data and quasi-random exposure to both lump-sum bonuses and early retirement buy-outs in the U.S. Army to estimate their effects on the quality of retained workers. We find that low-ability soldiers are relatively more responsive to both lump-sum bonuses and early retirement offers, and both effects are large enough to alter the organization’s average ability profile. We provide suggestive evidence differences in financial liquidity, time preferences, and individual taste for service may help explain the observed patterns of selection.