Kevin Cope

  • Associate Professor of Law
  • Associate Professor of Law and Public Policy, Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy
  • Affiliated Faculty, Department of Politics

Kevin Cope is a legal scholar and political scientist whose research investigates legal and political decision-making using empirical, comparative, and formal theoretical methods. Substantively, he is most interested in immigration, international political economy, human and civil rights, and judicial ideology. Cope is the past co-president of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies and a co-editor of the inaugural Oxford University Handbook on Comparative Immigration Law.

Cope’s work is published or forthcoming in journals such as the Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Michigan Law Review and American Journal of International Law.

His short articles have appeared in The Atlantic, FiveThirtyEight, The Washington Post Monkey Cage and Slate. Cope has been interviewed about his research on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and on local radio and television stations.

Before joining the Law School faculty in 2019, Cope served as a judicial clerk to judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and two federal trial courts. He also practiced government enforcement litigation law in Washington, D.C., with Skadden, Arps. In law school, he served as an editor of the Northwestern University Law Review. Cope earned a J.D. from Northwestern University in 2004 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan in 2020.

 

Education

  • Ph.D.
    University of Michigan
    2020
  • LL.M.
    Georgetown University Law Center
    2012
  • J.D.
    Northwestern University School of Law
    2004
  • B.A.
    Ohio State University
    2000

Forthcoming

Oxford Handbook of Comparative Immigration Law (edited with Stella Burch Elias & Jill Goldenziel), in Stella Burch Elias & Jill Goldenziel, eds., , Oxford University Press (1 ed. 2023).
Unpacking the Rule of Law: An Experimental Approach (with Mila Versteeg), Emory Law Journal (2023).

Works in Progress

An Expert-Sourced Measure of Judicial Ideology (with Charles Crabtree) (2021).
Estimating State Interest From Treaty Negotiations (with Kevin McAlister & James D. Morrow).
Immigration Law as Foreign Relations (with David Leblang), Oxford University Press.
The Rhetoric of Immigration Enforcement (with Loren Collingwood & Charles Crabtree).

Book Chapters

National Legislatures: The Foundations of Comparative International Law (with Hooman Movassagh), in Comparative International Law, Oxford University Press, 271–291 (2018).
Treaty Law and National Legislative Politics, in Research Handbook on the Politics of International Law, Edward Elgar, 116–148 (2017).
Constitutions (with Mila Versteeg), in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier, 710–715 (2 ed. 2015).
Reconceptualizing Recognition Uniformity, in Foreign Court Judgments and the U.S. Legal System , Brill Nijhoff, 166–178 (2014).
South Sudan’s Dualistic Constitution, in The Social & Political Foundations of Constitutions , Cambridge University Press, 295–321 (2013).

Articles & Reviews

Methods for Comparative Migration Law: Insights From the Social Sciences, 7 International Journal of Migration and Border Studies 166–181 (2023).
Vaccine Passports as a Constitutional Right (with Ilya Somin & Alexander Stremitzer), 54 Arizona State Law Journal 505–572 (2022).
Migrant-Family Separation and the Diverging Normative Force of Higher-Order Laws (with Charles Crabtree), 51 Journal of Legal Studies 403–426 (2022).
Can Rights Discourse Diminish Support for Displaced Persons? (with Shiri Krebs), 20 Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 279–292 (2022).
The Global Evolution of Foreign Relations Law (with Pierre-Hugues Verdier & Mila Versteeg), American Journal of International Law 1–67 (2021).
The Limits of Information Revelation in Multilateral Negotiations: A Theory of Treatymaking (with James Morrow), Journal of Theoretical Politics 1–31 (2021).
Knowing the Law (with Charles Crabtree), The University of Chicago Law Review Online (2021).
A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey  (with Charles Crabtree), 17 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 752–788 (2020).
Patterns of Disagreement in Indicators of State Repression (with Charles Crabtree & Christopher J. Fariss), 8 Political Science Research & Methods 178–187 (2020).
Empirical Studies of Human Rights Law (with Cosette D. Creamer & Mila Versteeg), 15 Annual Review of Law & Social Science 155–182 (2019).
Beyond Physical Integrity (with Charles Crabtree & Yonatan Lupu), 81 Law & Contemporary Problems 185–195 (2018).
Disaggregating the Human Rights Treaty Regime (with Cosette D. Creamer), 56 Virginia Journal of International Law 459–480 (2016).
Review of The Interpretation of International Law by Domestic Courts (with Mila Versteeg) (reviewing Helmut Philipp Aust & Georg Nolte, The Interpretation of International Law by Domestic Courts: Uniformity, Diversity Convergence) 111 American Journal of International Law 538–544 (2016).
Congress’s International Legal Discourse, 113 Michigan Law Review 1115–1174 (2015).
Lost in Translation: The Accidental Origins of Bond v. United States, 112 Michigan Law Review First Impressions 133–141 (2013).
The Intermestic Constitution: Lessons from the World's Newest Nation, 53 Virginia Journal of International Law 667–724 (2013).

Op-Eds, Blogs, Shorter Works

Rethinking Responsibility for Refugees, JOTWELL (July 1, 2021).
The Constitution Requires the U.S. to Offer Vaccine Passports (with Alexander Stremitzer), Slate.com (May 4, 2021).
Red and Blue America Agree That Now Is the Time to Violate the Constitution (with Adam Chilton, Charles Crabtree & Mila Versteeg), The Atlantic (March 25, 2020).
It’s Hard to Find a Federal Judge More Conservative than Brett Kavanaugh (with Joshua Fischman), Washington Post (September 5, 2018).
For a Trump Nominee, Neil Gorsuch’s Record Is Surprisingly Moderate on Immigration (with Joshua Fischman), FiveThirtyEight (March 27, 2017).
In Sickness and in Health: The Constitution Should Give Americans the Right to Basic Health Care (with Mila Versteeg), Slate (June 12, 2012).

Current Courses

Business and Governmental Tort Liability
Law and Economics Colloquium
Seminar in Ethical Values (YR)
Torts

All Courses

Constitutional Law and Economics
Immigration Law
The Law of Treaties
Federal Judicial Process
Appellate Litigation Clinic

 

IN THE NEWS

08/03/2021
Will Vaccine Passports Become a New Reality in the U.S.? (Marketplace)
08/02/2021
EXPLAINER: Are Coronavirus Vaccine Mandates for Employees Legal? (U.S. News & World Report)
06/10/2021
Is It Legal For Businesses To Require Customers To Be Vaccinated? (Daily Caller)
05/04/2021
A Vaccine Passport Is the Most Constitutional Way Out of Lockdown (Slate)
04/28/2021
UVA Professor Weighs In on Legality of COVID-19 Vaccine Passports (NBC29)
04/23/2021
Will You Need a ‘Vaccine Passport’ in Virginia? (WTVR-TV)
10/14/2020
How Conservative Is Amy Coney Barrett? (FiveThirtyEight)
08/05/2020
U.S. Supreme Court Enjoys Highest Approval Rating in Decade (Bloomberg Law)
05/29/2020
How Long Can Americans Live in a State of Emergency? (The Christian Science Monitor)
04/24/2020
Connections: Exploring Civil Liberties During the Pandemic (WXXI Radio)
04/12/2020
Many Americans Willing To Trade Some Civil Liberties To Combat Coronavirus (NPR)
04/03/2020
Who Would Give Up Civil Liberties To Combat a Pandemic? (WINA Radio)
03/25/2020
The Coronavirus Is Pitting Americans Against the Constitution (The Atlantic)
05/01/2019
Virginia’s Immigration Court Backlog Among Largest in Nation (Capital News Service)
03/02/2019
Law Professor Is an Expert on Ideology of Judges (Sandusky Register)
09/05/2018
It’s Hard to Find a Federal Judge More Conservative Than Brett Kavanaugh. (The Washington Post)
08/01/2018
Voters Are Much More Likely To Support Immigrant-Family Separation If They Watch Fox News or Read Breitbart (LSE US Centre)
07/19/2018
‘It Doesn’t Feel Right’: How The Travel Ban Is Playing Out For One D.C.-Area Family (WAMU Radio)
07/17/2018
How Conservative Is Brett Kavanaugh? (FiveThirtyEight)
07/07/2018
Exactly How Conservative are the Judges on Trump’s Short List for the Supreme Court? Take a Look at This One Chart. (The Washington Post)
08/14/2017
What Went Wrong With The Police Response In Charlottesville (The Huffington Post)
03/27/2017
For A Trump Nominee, Neil Gorsuch's Record Is Surprisingly Moderate On Immigration (FiveThirtyEight)
06/12/2012
In Sickness and in Health: The Constitution Should Give Americans the Right to Basic Health Care (Co-Author) (Slate)

AT UVA LAW

Sokol Colloquium To Examine Comparative Immigration Law
Sizing Up the Supreme Court Term
Professor Explores Legality, Efficacy of Vaccine Passports
Americans Prepared to Sacrifice Constitutional Rights, New Research Shows
UVA Law To Host Empirical Legal Studies Conference
Political Scientist Kevin Cope Named Associate Professor of Law
Faculty Explore the Travel Ban Ruling
Law Library Creates Database of UN Human Rights Documents
International Conference to Bring Leading Human Rights Scholars to UVA Law

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