• Affiliated Research Professor
Joint Appointment
C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Education
M.A., M. Phil., Ph.D., Yale University
J.D., Harvard Law School
B.A., Hamilton College

John Donohue III

  • Affiliated Research Professor
ABF Researcher

John Donohue III (he/him) is an Affiliated Research Professor of the American Bar Foundation and the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

Donohue has been one of the leading empirical researchers in the legal academy over the past thirty years. Donohue is an economist and lawyer well known for using empirical analysis to determine the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas, including civil rights and antidiscrimination law, employment discrimination, criminal justice and the death penalty, and factors influencing crime, such as guns, incarceration, policing, and legalized abortion.

Before rejoining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2010 (where he had previously taught from 1995 to 2004), Donohue was the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He recently coauthored Employment Discrimination: Law and Theory with George Rutherglen. Earlier in his career, he was a law professor at Northwestern University and a Research Fellow with the American Bar Foundation. Additionally, he clerked with Chief Judge T. Emmet Clarie, of the U.S. District Court of Hartford, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the former Editor of the American Law and Economics Review and President of the American Law and Economics Association.

Research Focus

Criminal Law, drug policy, employment discrimination, law & economics, policing & gun policy, public policy & empirical studies, punishment & death penalty, race & the criminal justice system, torts