Date: April 20, 2026 (Monday)
Time: 12pm-1pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Daniel Klerman (Edward G. Lewis Chair in Law and History, University of Southern California Gould School of Law)
Judges appointed by President Trump are more likely to vote in favor of the government in cases challenging the second Trump administration’s immigration policies. While Trump’s Supreme Court nominees behave like other Republican nominees on the Court, Trump’s lower court nominees are twice as likely to vote in favor of the government as nominees of other Republican presidents; in contrast, other Republican nominees to the lower courts are statistically indistinguishable from Democratic nominees. The difference between Trump nominees and other judges is driven almost entirely by judges 55 years old or younger, who may be influenced by the prospect of promotion to the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court.
Daniel Klerman is the Edward G. Lewis Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern California Law School. His scholarship focuses on empirical and economic analysis of procedure, comparative law, and legal history. He has been Co-President of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, served on the Board of Directors of the American Law & Economics Association, and is a member of the American Law Institute. Dan received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale and received a J.D. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner and Justice John Paul Stevens, and has taught at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and Caltech. Recent work has focused on empirical analysis of litigation and comparative law, with publications including “Inferences from Litigated Cases” (JLS) and “Legal Origin or Colonial History?” (JLA).
Chair: Ryan Whalen, Associate Professor & Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=106075.
For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at / 3917 4727.