Nicholas W. Waterbury

Nicholas W. Waterbury

About Me

I am the Assistant Research Director for the Center for State Policy and Leadership on the University of Illinois' Springfield campus and an Adjunct Instructor with the UIS College of Public Affairs and Education. I obtained my PhD in political science from Washington University in St. Louis in 2022. Previously I earned an A.M. from WUSTL and a B.A. in political science from Michigan State University. Outside of work, I enjoy spending time on the tennis court, walking my Labrador Mix, and traveling a long way to watch sporting events.

Judicial Behavior

The majority of my research combines psychological theory with the political study of judicial behavior and exposes the underlying inequalities that exist throughout the decision-making process. My work is among the first to show evidence of biased behavior using causal inference strategies applied to real-world courtroom data. I find evidence of decisions that are based not on legal or ideological motivations, but on the racial, socioeconomic, or geographic identities of the parties before the court.

American Politics

I also have an active research agenda on the selection of leaders in the US political system. This includes a series of projects on alternative electoral systems in state and local elections where I find that support for reforms is condidtional on factors like trust in government, elite endorsements, and political knowledge. In addition, I have a series of projects on the selection of state supreme court justices and show that partisan methods of selection lead to more ideologically extreme justices and less perceived legitimacy for the court. This work, in addition to other related projects, has been published in such outlets as Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Law and Courts, and American Politics Research.