About

Brian Soucek is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law. His teaching and research interests include constitutional law, federal courts, and education law. He is the author of the book Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence is Destroying the Court — and How We Can Fix It (Yale University Press, 2023). Soucek is also a frequent Supreme Court commentator and has written essays for prominent publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Politico, and USA Today. His recent scholarly articles have appeared in leading law reviews including the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Stanford Law Review, among others. His article, Rethinking Political Power in Judicial Review, won the Association of American Law Schools Scholarly Paper Competition. Soucek graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in political science in 2005, worked as a youth organizer and middle school teacher in St. Louis, Missouri, and earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2011. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law and economics
• Law
• Visual arts
• Economics
• Business
• Art

Selected publications

• Tax Law as Muse<br>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Misunderstanding <i>Meriwether</i>

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2023-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Meriwether v. Hartop is widely seen as one of the most important academic freedom and transgender rights cases of recent years. Whether praising it as a victory for free speech or condemning it as a threat to educational equality, commentators across the political spectrum have agreed on one thing: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit did something big when it held that professors at public universities have a First Amendment right to misgender their students in class. But contrary to popular belief, Meriwether held no such thing. In fact, the Sixth Circuit could not have held what nearly everyone believes it did, given the case’s procedural posture. Meriwether has been misunderstood, and this Article aims to put a halt to the false narrative that has emerged around Meriwether before its consequences continue to spread. Whereas previous work has explained why Meriwether’s holding is wrong, this Article delves into the complicated intersection of civil procedure and government employee speech claims to show why Meriwether’s holding is different, and far less important, than its foes and friends alike seem to think. In doing so, the Article also shows how a false legal narrative can develop, spreading from an opinion that encourages the mistake, to advocates and press who eagerly report it, to commentators, legislators, and courts each with reasons of their own for inflating the opinion’s importance, eroding gender identity protections along the way. This Article, finally, situates the widespread misunderstanding of Meriwether alongside other precedential mistakes and offers insight into how they might be counteracted before further distorting the law and threatening important equality rights.

  Publisher

• Censorship and Selective Support for the Arts

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract If works of art vary in their moral character or the moral effects they have on their audience, the government or private parties may want to take steps to restrict morally problematic art or promote art that ennobles. In the United States, direct governmental regulation of artistic expression is, for the most part, constitutionally prohibited—though obscenity, antidiscrimination, and historic preservation laws provide important exceptions. As or more important, though, in their effect on the arts are governmental choices about what and what not to subsidize, as well as private choices about what arts to promote or boycott, or to regulate by invoking protections such as copyright. Whether or not these examples should all be described as censorship, they all play a regulative role in what art gets made, seen, and preserved.

  PublisherDOI

• Censorship and Subsidy

  2022-04-18 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 15 Can a Gay Judge Judge a Gay Rights Case? Thoughts on Judicial Neutrality

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Law
  PublisherDOI

• 15 Can a Gay Judge Judge a Gay Rights Case? Thoughts on Judicial Neutrality

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Constitutional Irrelevance of Art

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Law

  Instead, the Supreme Court emphasizes individual mediums of expressioncategories like paintings and protest marches, books and billboards.Compared to the category "art," these mediums of expression are better defined, easier to administer, and more relevant to that which the law most likely and legitimately wants to regulate.Yet they have gotten far less attention from scholars and lower courts than they deserve.Understanding the constitutional irrelevance of art-and the constitutional importance of mediums-casts new light on some of the most prominent recent and looming artistic exemption claims at the Supreme Court: not just those made in same-sex wedding cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop and its kin but also those made in challenges to race discrimination in television and in criminal threat prosecutions brought against rappers.Asking whether a cake, a TV show, or a rap song is art uselessly distracts from the difficult issues actually at stake in those important cases and in First Amendment doctrine more broadly.

  Publisher

• Wedding Cakes

  2021-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Discriminatory Paycheck Protection

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Law and economics
  • Economics
  PublisherDOI

• Categorical Confusion in Asylum Law

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gabriel J. Chin

  4 shared

• Vicki Schultz

  2 shared

• Rhacel Salazar Parreñas

  1 shared

• Jeannette Money

  University of California, Davis

  1 shared

• Rose Cuison Villazor

  Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

  1 shared

• Rachel Zuckert

  Northwestern University

  1 shared

• Kevin R. Johnson

  Texas Tech University

  1 shared

• Stefano Bloch

  University of Arizona

  1 shared

Labs

• Aaron Tang LabPI

Awards & honors

• Law Clerk to Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme…
• Law Clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, U.S. Court of Ap…
• Associate Fellow, Stanford Law School Constitutional Law Cen…
• Associate at Goldstein & Russell, P.C., Washington, DC, 2011…