Bert Kritzer aka Herbert M. Kritzer kritzer@umn.edu 612-626-4035

Thanks for dropping in to visit my UW-Madison home page. Let me introduce myself.

I am Professor of Political Science and Law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was an active faculty member at UW-Madison for 30 years (1977-2007), having previously taught at Indiana University and Rice University. I have a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1974) and a B.A. in Sociology from Haverford College (1969). After retiring from the University of Wisconsin in 2007, I joined the faculty of William Mitchell College of Law where I taught from 2007 to 2009. In July 2009 I was appointed to the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School.

My teaching areas at Wisconsin were Judicial Politics and Process and Research Methods (both qualitative and quantitative); I also occasionally taught the introductory course in American National Government and an interdisciplinary course on the legal profession. My research and writing is primarily in judicial process (both U.S. and comparative), with some occasional writing on research methods.

Wisconsin Course Syllabi

Legal Studies/Sociology 415/Political Science 401, The Legal Profession
Political Science 217, Law, Politics, and Society
Political Science 401/963/Legal Studies 400, Seminar: The Politics of Legal Policy
Political Science 417, The American Judicial System
Political Science 551: Introduction to Statistical Inference for Political Resarch
Political Science 552: Quantitative Analysis of Political Data II
Political Science 816, Qualitative Research Methods
Political Science 863, The Judicial Process

Research and Writing

Recent and forthcoming publications (for items indicated with an ** please contact me for an electronic reprint):

• “The (Nearly) Forgotten Early Empirical Legal Research ,” in Peter Cane and Herbert M. Kritzer (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010) [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1426312].
  
• “Examining the Real Demand for Legal Services,” Fordham Urban Law Journal (2009), forthcoming [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1289828].
  
• “Fee Regimes and the Cost of Civil Justice,” Civil Justice Quarterly 28 (2009), 344-366.
  
• “’Research Is a Messy Business’”: An Archeology of the Craft of Socio-legal Research,” pp. 264-85 in Simon Halliday and Patrick Schmidt (eds.), Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1288063].
  
• “The Arts of Persuasion in Science and Law: Conflicting Norms in the Courtroom,” Law and Contemporary Problems 72 (2009), 41-63 [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1024520].
  
• ** “To Lawyer, or Not to Lawyer: Is That the Question?” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5 (2008), 875-906 [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1004773].
  
• ** “Daubert in the Law Office: Routinizing Procedural Change,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 5 (2008), 109-142 [prepublication version available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=933668].
  
• **" Toward a Theorization of Craft," Social and Legal Studies 16 (2007), 321-340 (SSRN Abstract 906340).
  
• **(with Paul Brace, Melinda Gann Hall, and Brent Boyea) "The Business of State Supreme Courts, Revisited" Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4 (2007), 427-439 (prepublication version available at SSRN Abstract 952795).
  
• "'Law Is the Mere Continuation of Politics by Different Means': American Judicial Selection in the 21st Century," DePaul Law Review 56 (March 2007), 423-467 (SSRN Abstract 949946).
  
• (with Darryn C. Beckstrom) "Daubert in the States Diffusion of a New Approach to Expert Evidence in Court,," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2007) forthcoming (SSRN Abstract 912780)
  
• **"Defending Torts: What Should We Know?" Journal of Tort Law 1(3) (2006), Article 3 (SSRN Abstract 975321).
• "The Commodification of Insurance Defense Practice," Vanderbilt Law Review 59 (2006), 2053-2094 (SSRN Abstract 906338).
  
• Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contingency Fee Legal Practice in the United States (Stanford University Press, 2004).
  
• "Seven Dogged Myths Concerning Contingency Fees," Washington University Law Quarterly 80 (2002), pp. 739-794.
• "Advocacy and Rhetoric vs. Scholarship and Evidence in the Debate over Contingency Fees: A Reply to Professor Brickman," Washington University Law Quarterly 82 (2004), pp. 477-507.
• "Lawyer Fees and Lawyer Behavior in Litigation: What Does the Empirical Literature Really Say?" Texas Law Review 80 (June 2002), pp. 1943-1983.
  
• Mark J. Richards and Herbert M. Kritzer, "Jurisprudential Regimes in Supreme Court Decision Making," American Political Science Review 96 (June 2002), pp. 305-320.
• Herbert M. Kritzer and Mark J. Richards, "The Influence of Law in the Supreme Court's Search-and-Seizure Jurisprudence," American Politics Research 33 (January 2005), pp. 33-55.
• Herbert M. Kritzer and Mark J. Richards, "Jurisprudential Regimes and Supreme Court Decision Making: The Lemon Regime and Establishment Clause Cases," Law & Society Review 37 (2003), pp. 827-840.
• **Mark J. Richards, and Joseph L. Smith, and Herbert M. Kritzer, "Does Chevron Matter?" Law & Policy 28 (October 2006), 444-469 (SSRN Abstract 906329 draft], SSRN Abstract 928998 [published] ).
• "Anticipating the New Institutionalism: The Pioneering Work of Martin Shapiro," pp. 387-415 in Nancy Maveety (ed.), Judicial Pioneers (University of Michigan Press, 2002).
  
• Legal Systems of the World (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2002). This is a four volume encyclopedia which provides basic information about legal and court systems around the world along with information on transnational judicial bodies, jurisprudential ideas, key elements of court systems, and central concepts about law and courts. Legal Systems of the World is available the publisher or through on-line book dealers such as Amazon.com.
• "Disappearing Trials? A Comparative Perspective," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 1 (2004), pp. 735-754.
  
• Herbert M. Kritzer and Susan S. Silbey (eds.), In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).
• "The Government Gorilla: Why Does Government Come out Ahead?" pp.342-370 in Herbert M. Kritzer and Susan S. Silbey (eds.), In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).
  
• "The American Public's Assessment of the Rehnquist Court," Judicature (November/December 2005) [SSRN Abstract 906341]
  
• "The Future Role of ‘Law Workers': Rethinking the Forms of Legal Practice and the Scope of Legal Education," Arizona Law Review 44 (2002), pp. 917-938.
  
• "American Adversarialism [A Review Essay focusing on Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan], " Law & Society Review 38 (2004), pp. 349-383.
• "The Impact of Law: A View from North of the Border [A Review Essay focusing on Consequences: The Impact of Law and its Complexity, by W.A. Bogart],"Judicature 88 (September-October 2004), pp. 38-41.
  
• "Access to Justice for the Middle Class," pp. 257-268 in W.A. Bogart, Frederick Zemans, and Julia Bass (eds)., Access to Justice for the New Century: The Way Forward (Toronto: Law Society of Upper Canada, 2005).
  
• "'Loser Pays' Doesn't," Legal Affairs (November/December 2005), pp. 24-25.

Unpublished conference and working papers:

• "Empirical Legal Studies Before 1940: A Bibliographic Essay," available at SSRN, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1427905.
• "Early Empirical Research on Civil Justice," available at SSRN, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1428519 (this paper is extracted from the longer bibliographic essay).
• "What Are Contingency Fees Really Like?" paper prepared for presentation at the Institute for Law and Economic Policy Conference on Litigation in a Free Society, March 15-16, 2002, Hollywood, Florida.

Research and writing projects underway or completed include:

• Defense Lawyers in the Civil Justice System
• Daubert in the Law Office
• Bringing the Law Back In: Finding a Role for Law in Supreme Court Decision-Making
• Contingency Fee Legal Practice
• The Status and Future of the Legal Profession and Other Law Workers
• Comparing Lawyers and Nonlawyers as Advocates
• Public Evaluation of State Courts
• Law, Politics, and Judicial Process in Outside the United States
• Other Litigation-Related Research
• Legal Implications of Smoking
• Other Law-Related Research
• Non-Law Substantive Research
• Interpretation in Quantitative and Qualitative Research
• Other Methodology Writing

Other Activities

• "I'll Be Suing You": Silly lawsuits compiled from Coronet magazine, 1959-1961.
• "Surviving Statistical Spitting Matches" A Professional Development Seminar presentation for Senior Staff of the National Conference of State Legislatures, Madison, Wisconsin, October 10, 1996.
• "What Do They Know and When Do They Know It? Using Public Opinion to Evaluate Institutional Performance" prepared for staff of the World Bank, Washington, DC, July 15, 1999.

Bert Kritzer, 612-626-4035, kritzer@umn.edu