Jessica Schoenherr is an Assistant Professor in the department, which she joined shortly after receiving her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 2020. Her teaching focuses on American judicial institutions, including courses on constitutional law and judicial politics and process.

Professor Schoenherr’s research interests are in American political institutions and the U.S. federal court system, particularly the Supreme Court. She specifically address two different but related questions -- (1) Who shapes the law? and (2) Who shapes perceptions of the judiciary and its shaping of the law -- using archival data, experiments, surveys, text analysis, and original observational datasets. Some of her work is funded by a National Science Foundation grant, and different pieces have been published or accepted in various outlets, including the Journal of Politics and Journal of Law and Courts.