Local Law and the Everyday State
Most people experience government through local rules: where they can live, park, work, gather, build, repair, complain, be fined, or be left alone. I study local law as a representational infrastructure that shapes ordinary life.
Local Laws Observatory
The Local Laws Observatory makes local law systematically observable across the United States. The project builds national-scale data infrastructure for studying how local governments represent everyday life in legal categories, and how those representations vary in opacity, discretion, complexity, and force. (WP)
Legal Complexity and Democratic Legibility
Local governments often govern through rules that residents cannot easily find, understand, compare, or contest. This work studies when law becomes too fragmented or opaque to support democratic accountability, and how legal complexity shapes the practical experience of citizenship. (Ongoing)
Local Regulation, Conflict, and Agency
Local rules can coordinate public life, but they can also convert ordinary activity into compliance burdens, fines, disputes, and enforcement encounters. This line of work studies when local law expands agency and when it routes civic effort toward confusion, compliance, or conflict. (Ongoing)