Jack Knight

About

Professor Jack Knight is a renowned political scientist and legal theorist with a focus on modern social and political theory, law and legal theory, and political economy. He holds a joint appointment at Duke University, serving as the Frederic Cleaveland Distinguished Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke Law School and as a Professor of Political Science in Duke's Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. His teaching includes courses on social scientific approaches to law and courts, as well as the political economy of social institutions. His research concentrates on the rules and norms that organize human activities within nations. He has studied the motivations and decisions of judges, the effects of norms such as extensive prior judicial experience for Supreme Court service, and how courts make decisions and judges choose their opinions. Knight has authored several influential books, including 'Institutions and Social Conflict,' 'Explaining Social Institutions,' and 'The Choices Justices Make,' the latter of which won the American Political Science Association's C. Herman Prichett Award. He has also co-edited 'Courts, Judges and Politics' and published numerous articles on democratic theory, the rule of law, judicial decision-making, and institutional change. Prior to his current roles, Knight was the Sidney W.. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as department chair and was a fellow at the Center for Political…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Law
• Aesthetics
• Psychology
• Epistemology
• Gender studies
• Law and economics
• Economics

Selected publications

• How social identity and social diversity affect judging

  Leiden Journal of International Law · 2022 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Judges like to claim that they are impartial decision-makers fully capable of suppressing their personal proclivities, as the rule of law requires. But a century’s worth of studies undermines that view. Going under the name ‘judicial behaviour’, this vast literature shows that many extraneous (non-legal) factors affect the choices judges make. This article focuses on one strand of that literature – the effect of personal characteristics on judging, with emphasis on social identity and s…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Institutional Bargaining for Democratic Theorists (or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Haggling)

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2020 · 12 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Contemporary political science takes bargaining to be the central mechanism of democratic decision making, though political theorists typically doubt that processes that permit the exercise of unequal power and the use of threats can yield legitimate outcomes. In this review, we trace the development of theories of institutional bargaining from the standpoint of pluralism and positive political theory before turning to the treatment of bargaining in the influential work of John Rawls and Jürgen…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pragmatism in IR: The Prospects for Substantive Theorizing

  International Studies Review · 2021-05-13 · 8 citations

  article

  Abstract The contributors to this forum all draw significantly from pragmatist philosophy and social theory for making sense of international politics. Collectively, we affirm the value of pragmatist work beyond metatheory and methodology, both politically and epistemically—that is, as both a moral project and an explanatory one. Indeed, we are especially united on the notion that pragmatism “bridges” the divide between these things, and several contributors focus their discussion on how. Howeve…

  PublisherDOI

• The Economic Analysis of Judicial Behavior

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017-07-06 · 8 citations

  bookSenior author

  In the analysis of judicial behavior, “economics” has multiple meanings. Some studies emphasize the economic consequences of judicial decisions while others employ the concepts and tools of economic analysis to explain those decisions. Here we focus on studies proceeding from the assumption of rationality (regardless of their methodological approach). Even with this limited focus, the range of substantive topics is impressive. There are many ways to splice and dice them but six stand out: (1) th…

  PublisherDOI

• Efficacious judging on apex courts

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2018-09-28 · 7 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  After establishing that judges are sensitive to the consequences and enforceability of their decisions, this chapter outlines four methods judges use to help ensure that their decisions are efficacious (i.e. respected by external actors): anticipating the reaction of relevant (current) external actors, anticipating the reactions of incoming external actors, developing avoidance procedures and limiting doctrines, and cultivating public opinion. The chapter draws on evidence from Germany, the Unit…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lee Epstein

  Washington University in St. Louis

  63 shared

• Andrew D. Martin

  Washington University in St. Louis

  27 shared

• Olga Shvetsova

  14 shared

• James Johnson

  12 shared

• Melissa Schwartzberg

  11 shared

• James Turner Johnson

  9 shared

• C. Mantzavinos

  5 shared

• Daniel Wei

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• American Political Science Association's C. Herman Prichett…
• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016)

Similar researchers at Duke University

• Herbert P. Kitschelth-63
• D. Sunshine Hillygush-28
• Peter D. Feaverh-28