Research

My research interests are in American public law, criminal justice, and teaching and learning in the political science classroom, with a special focus on American judicial politics, particularly specialized courts and the United States Supreme Court. My current research focuses on how race, ideology, and gender identity affect public opinion of federal and state courts; the political development of American courts; judicial behavior in specialized and generalist courts; and media framing of criminal justice policy.  I also conduct research on teaching and learning, particularly how simulations can be effective active learning tools in the political science classroom.

Work in Progress

Offender Race and Support for Rehabilitation and Problem-Solving Courts

This series of papers is about the role of offender race in informing Americans’ attitudes about problem-solving courts. Problem-solving courts offer an alternative pathway through the criminal justice system for specific types of offenders, such as individuals who suffer from substance abuse problems. Rather than incarcerating defendants, problem-solving courts divert offenders to an individualized community treatment plan supervised by a judge in collaboration with community treatment providers. Previous studies have asked respondents about their support for rehabilitation or punishment for offenders with different types of specific needs. I add to this literature by looking at whether public support for rehabilitation for a specific needs offender is affected by the offenders’ race and examining whether offender race impacts support for the problem-solving court itself.  

A sizable literature has investigated outcomes for problem-solving court participants and found promising positive benefits, especially related to lowering recidivism. However, research also finds racial disparities in the operation of these courts. The limited existing research suggests that Americans are generally supportive of problem-solving or specialty courts for all kinds of specific needs offenders, however, research has not examined how public opinion of these courts and for rehabilitation versus punishment differs based on the race of the individual being considered for inclusion in one of these programs. If the public supports problem-solving courts regardless of the offender’s race, this can be a powerful signal to public officials and criminal justice reformers about the operation of these courts, particularly in addressing the existing racial disparities in their decisional outcomes and performance.

Building the Court of Claims Database (with Michael Dichio and Logan Strother)

We propose to build a database of every case the United States Court of Claims (USCC) has ever decided—more than 50,000 cases. The USCC is a little-studied but crucially important federal court. Its primary duty is to resolve money and contract claims made against the national government. These data will enable the research team to shed new light on the practical effects of judicial independence on judges’ decision-making. The USCC has alternated between Article I and Article III status several times over the course of its history. Using a regression discontinuity design, we will assess the causal effects of independence on two outcomes of interest: the likelihood that a claimant wins their suit against the government, and the proportion of awards to claims given in USCC decisions. Doing this for each institutional change in the court’s history will allow us to shed new light on the effects of judicial independence on the behavior of federal judges. 

Victim Framing: Media Narratives and the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (with Holly L. Peterson and Sarah Koon-Magnin)

The Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004 (CVRA) was the culmination of a decades-long struggle by the victims’ rights movement to more prominently center victims in the U.S. criminal justice process. Going further than previous legislation, the CVRA expanded the right of victims to participate at different stages of the criminal justice process, extended rights and remedies to all victims of federal felonies and misdemeanors, and created a speedy process for victims to appeal violations of their rights. Using a Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) approach, we examine the principal frames and narratives employed in U.S. newspapers regarding victims before and after the passage of the CVRA in the U.S. Congress. Specifically, we consider whether media narratives surrounding victimization after the CVRA’s passage focus to a greater extent on victim power and the secondary and indirect effects of the victimization. By applying this NPF approach to a landmark piece of criminal justice legislation, we contribute to the understanding of how actors in the criminal justice system are portrayed and make use of a previously under-utilized tool for studying criminal justice. 

Published Work

Book

  • The U.S. Criminal Justice System: A Reference Handbook. 2024. (with Sarah Koon-Magnin). Bloomsbury Academic.
    • Named to the 2025 Outstanding References Sources List by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA)

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

  • Williams, Ryan J. (2025). “Order in the Court: Teaching U.S. Criminal Trials and Procedure Through a Mock Trial.” Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 1–23.
    • Mock trials are a common active learning tool employed in the college classroom. Despite their popularity, few mock trials have been assessed for their efficacy in promoting student interest in the simulated concepts and improving student learning. This paper describes an original mock trial simulation developed for an introductory U.S. criminal justice course and designed to reinforce lecture and discussion about the U.S. criminal trial process. This paper presents an original, instructor-designed mock trial and assesses the mock trial’s effectiveness at multiple points in time (pre-simulation, post-simulation, and end of semester). Results indicate the mock trial improved both students’ interest in U.S. criminal law and procedure and students’ self-perceptions of their knowledge about the topic, and these effects persisted to the end of the semester. Student learning assessed through knowledge check questions also significantly improved following the simulation, although this effect did not last to the end of the semester.
  • Williams, Ryan J., & Christiani, Leah. (2024). “Are You Talking to Me? How Ideological and Gender Characteristics Moderate the Effect of Legitimizing Rhetoric on SCOTUS Legitimacy.” Law and Social Inquiry, 49(4):1939-1963.
    • Possessing neither purse nor sword, the unelected U.S. Supreme Court relies on sustained public confidence in its institutional credibility to give force to its decisions. Previous research shows that Supreme Court justices are increasingly making public appearances to engage in a course of institutional maintenance to preserve its legitimacy. Amid a potential legitimacy crisis, justices seek to shore up the Court’s public support in these public appearances by emphasizing the apolitical nature of the Court and its decision-making. The question for a growing body of literature is whether these attempts at institutional maintenance do, in fact, lead to higher support for the Court. Using a survey experiment where we manipulate the identity of the justice giving legitimizing rhetoric, we find that respondents’ ideological preferences and female respondents’ level of gender identity do impact the effectiveness of such rhetoric.
  • Dichio, Michael, Strother, Logan, & Williams, Ryan J. (2022). “To Render Prompt Justice”: The Origins and Construction of the U.S. Court of Claims. Studies in American Political Development, 36(2): 120-137. 
    • This article examines the institutional development of the U.S. Court of Claims (USCC), in order to shed new light on the nature of constitutional and institutional change in the early Republic. From the founding period through the mid-nineteenth century, members of Congress believed that empowering other institutions to award claimants monies from the Treasury would violate two core doctrines: separation of powers and sovereign immunity. However, as claims against the government ballooned over the first half of the nineteenth century, Congress fundamentally changed its interpretation of the Constitution’s requirements in order to create the USCC and thus to alleviate its workload. This story of institutional development is an example of constitutional construction and creative syncretism in that the institutional development of the USCC came from continuous interactions among political actors, working iteratively to refashion institutions capable of solving practical problems of governance. This close study of the court’s creation shows something important about American constitutional development: Certain fundamental ideas of the early Republic, including sovereign immunity and separation of powers, were altered or jettisoned not out of some grand rethinking of the nature of the American state, but out of the need to solve a mundane problem.
  • Britt, Lucy, & Williams, Ryan J. (2022). “Institutions and Arguments: Simulating the US Policy-Making Process“. PS: Political Science & Politics, 55(1), 176-181.
    • In US government courses, simulations have been shown to increase students’ engagement and knowledge retention. We present an original simulation that focuses on both the interactions between political institutions that contribute to policy making and the normative ideas underlying politics. By exploring a civil rights or liberties policy area, students learn about the importance of both political institutions and foundational political ideas such as liberty and equality. Students role-play members of Congress, lobbyists for a pro- or anti-natural gas pipeline group, and Supreme Court justices. Although the goal of simulations in many US government courses is to teach students about the ways that institutions shape policy, this is the first (to our knowledge) that also integrates normative reflection on the ideas behind political arguments. Assessment indicates that the simulation was effective in increasing students’ knowledge of and/or interest in American political institutions and eminent domain
  • Williams, Ryan J. and Jacob F.H. Smith. 2018. “Keeping Up Appearances: Non-Policy Court Responses to Public Opinion.” Justice System Journal 39(1):54-74.
    • Research on public opinion and the U.S. Supreme Court has focused on policy actions that Supreme Court justices take in response to public approval of the Court. In this paper, Jacob Smith and I ask whether Supreme Court justices engage in non-policy responses to public opinion. Examining the justices’ attendance at the annual State of the Union address, we use Stimson’s Wcalc6 program to build a time series measure of public confidence in the Court and find that justices are more likely to attend the State of the Union when public confidence in the Court is low.
    • Research findings covered in Andrew Hamm, “Why justices attend the State of the Union: Two political scientists focus on positivity bias,” SCOTUSblog Dec. 8, 2017, http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/12/justices-attend-state-union-two-political-scientists-focus- positivity-bias
  • Williams, Ryan J., and Anthony J. Chergosky. 2018. “Teaching Judicial Politics Through a Supreme Court Simulation.” Journal of Political Science Education 15(1): 17-36.
    • This paper describes various iterations of a Supreme Court simulation that we developed for undergraduate political science classes. We address when simulations should be used to introduce a topic to students, and when simulations should be used to develop students’ understanding of a topic after introducing it. In the simulations, we played the role of attorneys delivering oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and the students played the role of Supreme Court justices. The students questioned attorneys, deliberated in groups, voted on the merits of the case, and explained their decisions. We varied when the simulation was conducted, and find that the simulation most effectively accomplished the intended learning outcomes when the simulation was conducted after a lesson on decision-making in the Supreme Court, rather than before the lesson. In addition, our results demonstrate that the simulation increased students’ interest in the Supreme Court and their desire to learn more about the institution.
  • Unah, Isaac and Ryan J. Williams. 2017. “What is so Special about Specialized Courts in the United States?” In Handbook of Judicial Behavior. Robert M. Howard & Kirk Randazzo, Eds. Routledge Inc.
    • Judicial and legal scholars have largely focused their research efforts on more familiar generalist subject matter courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal district courts, and the circuit courts of appeals. In this chapter, Isaac Unah and I survey the landscape of legal and political science scholarship on specialized courts in the United States judiciary. We note the common themes and aspects of this scholarship and suggest future directions for research in this burgeoning field.
  • Unah, Isaac and Ryan J. Williams. “The Legacy of the Obama Presidency in the United States Supreme Court.” 2019. In Looking Back on President Barack Obama’s Legacy: Hope and Change. Wilbur C. Rich, Ed. Palgrave Macmillan.
    • This chapter examines the successes and failures of the Obama Administration in the U.S. Supreme Court. In particular, we examine the impact of Obama’s appointments of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, his track record in seeing lower federal judges confirmed, and how his policies and positions fared before the nation’s highest court