Resident Faculty
Comparative and empirical study of public law, courts and legal texts
- Internationally recognized expert in the comparative study of constitutional law, constitutional politics and judicial politics, and a pioneer in the application of empirical social science methods to the study of legal texts
- Scholarship combines qualitative fieldwork on foreign judicial and constitutional systems, quantitative analysis of constitutions and treaties, and regional expertise on Asia
- Ph.D. in political science, Stanford University; his work on courts and constitutions has been featured in media around the world and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Romanian
Religious liberty, church and state, law of remedies, constitutional law
- Served as lead counsel in numerous cases in the courts, including six in the Supreme Court, most recently Holt v. Hobbs, Town of Greece v. Galloway and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and vice president of the American Law Institute
- Laycock is in the process of publishing a five-volume collection of writings on religious liberty. (Story)
Environmental law and climate change, administrative law
- Clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
- Founding executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law
- Co-authored "Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health." The book became the foundation for a new approach public interest organizations could take in arguing for policies to protect the environment. (Faculty Q&A on related scholarship)
