Judicial System
Judicial
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The study of judicial systems span a variety of topics. There is a great focus and effort in understanding how laws from the international to local level affect individuals lives. Additionally, interactions with the criminal legal system are of great interest. These topics range from parole, youth prevention, jury selection, prison population treatment, and much more.
Associated Researchers
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Helen Gaebler
Ms. Gaebler is the Senior Research Attorney at the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law. Her current work focuses primarily on criminal legal system reform, with particular interests in parole and reentry. In addition to teaching a project-based Topics in Reentry course, she directs the law school’s Pro Bono Parole Project, which recruits law students to represent parole eligible women incarcerated in central Texas. Ms. Gaebler also serves as director of Community Engagement for the University's interdisciplinary Initiative for Law, Societies, and Justice. Ms. Gaebler is active in the Texas reentry community, including as a member of the Austin/Travis County Reentry Roundtable and the Texas Supreme Court Children's Commission Parent Resource Work Group, and provides research support to reentry-focused organizations across Texas.
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Michele Deitch
Michele Deitch holds a joint appointment as a distinguished senior lecturer at the LBJ School and the Law School, and she directs LBJ's Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL), a policy resource center focused on the safe and humane treatment of people in custody. She is an attorney who has worked for over 35 years on criminal justice and juvenile justice policy issues with state and local government officials, corrections administrators, judges and advocates. She specializes in independent oversight of correctional institutions, prison and jail conditions, managing youth in custody, and youth in the adult criminal justice system. Deitch co-chairs the American Bar Association's Subcommittee on Correctional Oversight, and helped draft the ABA's Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners.
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Alycia Welch
Alycia Welch's research focuses on the safe and humane treatment of people in custody, with a particular focus on women and individuals living with behavioral health challenges. She has nearly 20 years of experience managing multipartner projects reforming the justice and behavioral health systems. She directed a transitional housing program for women exiting prison or jail, developed an alternative to incarceration program for young adults, oversaw a multistate federally funded initiative providing training and technical assistance on behavioral health and criminal justice issues, and designed multiple studies assessing the impact of community-based programs on those who are justice-involved. She co-leads the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab (PJIL), and helps to oversee PJIL's strategy, operations and research portfolio.
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Becky Pettit
Becky Pettit is the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a sociologist, trained in demographic methods, with interests in social inequality broadly defined. She is the author of two books and numerous articles which have appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Problems, Social Forces and other journals. Her newest book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress (Russell Sage Foundation 2012) investigates how decades of growth in America's prisons and jails obscures basic accounts of racial inequality. Her previous book, co-authored with Jennifer Hook of the University of Southern California, Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries (Russell Sage Foundation 2009) was selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics in 2010.
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James Patton
James R. Patton is currently an independent consultant and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught students with special needs at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels in both public and private settings. He was formerly on the faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His primary areas of professional activity are transition assessment and planning, differentiating instruction for students with special needs in inclusive settings, study skills instruction, needs of college students with learning-related challenges, and issues associated with individual with disabilities who encounter the criminal justice system. He currently works with other professionals internationally and serves as an intellectual disabilities forensics specialist in death penalty cases throughout the country.
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Mary Rose
Mary Rose received an A.B. in Psychology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Duke University. She is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches courses on social science and law as well as social psychology and research methods. She is also an Affiliated Scholar at the American Bar Foundation and an Academic Fellow with the National Civil Justice Institute. Her research examines lay participation in the legal system and perceptions of justice, and she has written on a variety of topics including the effects of jury selection practices on jury representativeness and citizens’ views of justice, jury trial innovations, civil damage awards, and public views of court practices. She is also an investigator on the landmark study of decision making among 50 deliberating juries from Pima County, Arizona.
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Michael J Churgin
Michael J. Churgin is the Raybourne Thompson Centennial Professor in Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University and received a JD from Yale Law School where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. Following law school, he was a supervising attorney and teaching fellow at Yale for to years, specializing in the mental health and prison legal services clinics. A specialist in criminal procedure (including juvenile justice), immigration, and mental health law, Professor Churgin has written numerous articles in these fields.
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William “Bill” Spelman
Turning theory into practice has been the cornerstone of Bill Spelman's career. While on the City Council, Spelman championed downtown development, neighborhood-based service delivery, performance measurement, and civilian oversight of police operations. Spelman teaches courses in applied mathematics and statistics, urban policy and management, and criminal justice, and continues his research on police operations, prison policy, and community crime prevention. His books include: Criminal Incapacitation; Problem-Solving: Problem-oriented Policing in Newport News; and Repeat Offender Programs for Law Enforcement. Spelman also directs the Texas Institute for Public Problem Solving, which trains police officers and community residents in the practice of community policing.
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Thea Posel
Thea Posel is a clinical assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and the Capital Punishment Clinic at the School of Law, and serves as the JD/MSSW dual degree advisor for the School of Law. She has worked with capital defense teams in both Colorado and Texas, from pre-trial litigation preparation and consulting to state and federal post-conviction cases. Thea’s areas of interest include jury selection, jury decision-making, and mitigation investigation and presentation, and she works primarily on Texas state court advocacy and consulting at the capital trial, appellate, and habeas stages.
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Hannah Walker
Dr. Hannah L. Walker is an associate professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the impact of the criminal justice system on American democracy with special attention to minority and immigrant communities. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation (2023-2024). Her book, Mobilized by Injustice (available through Oxford University Press), explores the impact of experiences with the criminal justice system on political engagement.
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Ariel Dulitzky
Ariel Dulitzky is Clinical Professor of Law, the Director of the Human Rights Clinic and the Director of the Latin America Initiative. A native of Argentina, Professor Dulitzky has dedicated his career to human rights—in both his scholarly research and his legal practice. His extensive expertise is derived from active involvement in the promotion and defense of rights, particularly in the Americas and in international human rights litigation. His publications focus on human rights, the inter-American human rights system, enforced disappearances, afro-descendants and indigenous collective rights, racial discrimination and the rule of law in Latin America. He has taught at the University of Buenos Aires and the Washington College of Law at American University.
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Brian Pérez-Daple
Brian Pérez-Daple received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a law degree from the University of Chicago, where he was an executive editor of the law review. After law school he clerked for Judge Roger Gregory on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, then worked for three years as an associate at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner, and Sauber, a litigation boutique in Washington, D.C. While at Robbins Russell, Brian focused on white-collar criminal, securities, and complex commercial litigation, drafting briefs for the United States Supreme Court and multiple federal courts of appeal. After leaving Robbins Russell, Brian joined the United States Attorney's Office in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for nine years on both civil and criminal enforcement matters.
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J. Mark Eddy
J. Mark Eddy is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education within the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin. As a prevention scientist, he develops and rigorously tests prevention and intervention programs intended to benefit children and families, and particularly those who are living in stressful circumstances. His recent work centers on the conduct of randomized controlled trials of multimodal interventions in partnership with school systems, the juvenile justice system, the adult corrections system, the child welfare system, and the military, as well as with nonprofits that work with these and related systems. His research has focused on communities in the U.S. and in Central America. Eddy is a licensed psychologist.
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Denise Gilman
Denise Gilman teaches and directs the Immigration Clinic after having joined the clinical faculty at the University of Texas Law School in the fall of 2007. Professor Gilman has written and practiced extensively in the international human rights and immigrants' rights fields. From 2000 to 2005, Professor Gilman was Director of the Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. At the Lawyers' Committee, Professor Gilman coordinated the representation of political asylum applicants by pro bono attorneys and engaged in advocacy on issues of significance to the newcomer community. She also investigated and litigated individual and impact cases involving law enforcement abuses against immigrants and discrimination against newcomers in housing and employment. From 1995-2000, Professor Gilman served as Human Rights Specialist at the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States and then Director of the Mexico Project at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First).
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Sherri Greenberg
Sherri R. Greenberg is a professor of practice and fellow of the Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and she is a professor of practice at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Additionally, she is the LBJ School Assistant Dean for State and Local Government Engagement. She is a primary researcher for, and is Chairperson elect of, Good Systems, The University of Texas Grand Challenge regarding ethical AI. Her teaching and research interests include: technology policy, state and local government, housing, homelessness, transportation, healthcare, public finance, and campaigns and elections.
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Lorna Hermosura
Dr. Lorna Hermosura is the Project Director of STEP UP Texas and is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin where she teaches “Restorative Practices” to future teachers. Lorna holds a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy, a master’s degree in counseling, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Prior to earning her PhD, Lorna administered federal grant-funded educational programs to support college access, college success, and dropout prevention among low-income and first-generation students. Lorna was highly influenced by her early work with foster children and youth, which informed her perspective that schools and those working with children and youth can serve as protective factors to offset difficult home lives. Lorna’s research interests are restorative practices, trauma-informed practices, and implementation. Her dissertation research was on the school-to-prison pipeline.
