About

James E. Pfander is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. His teaching and research focus on the role of judicial systems in constitutional democracies. His recent work includes a monograph titled 'Cases Without Controversies: Uncontested Adjudication in Article III Courts,' which explores the history of litigation in U.S. courts and challenges current interpretations of the 'cases and controversies' requirement under Article III. Pfander has contributed to the understanding of federal adjudication, government accountability, and constitutional torts through his scholarship, including collaborations on influential legal texts and articles. He has also served as a reporter and consultant for the Federal-State Jurisdiction Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States and has held leadership roles in the American Law Institute and the Association of American Law Schools. His international teaching experience includes lecturing in countries such as the Czech Republic, Israel, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, and the United Kingdom.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Engineering
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Watching the Sky Not Fall: A Study of State Qualified Immunity Reforms

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Marbury, Original Jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court’s Supervisory Powers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Empiricism and Constitutional Torts

  Annual Review of Law and Social Science · 2025-07-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Supreme Court has deliberately framed the law of constitutional torts as a balance between assuring redress for victims, deterring misconduct, and maintaining effective government services. Yet as the Supreme Court has shaped the contours of litigation against state and local actors (under 42 USC § 1983) and federal actors (under the Bivens doctrine), it has studiously ignored a growing body of empirical scholarship examining the ways law interacts with the behavior of police officers and other government actors. This review documents the Supreme Court's reliance on what could be charitably described as judicial intuition and its indifference to empirical evidence about such central questions as the volume and success of constitutional tort claims, the efficacy of qualified immunity, and the way the rules of tort liability shape the conduct of government officials.

  PublisherDOI

• Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in the "Plan of the Convention"

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Non-Party Protective Relief in the Early Republic: Judicial Power to Annul Letters Patent

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Remedies in the First Hundred Days of Trump II: A Gently Adversarial Collaboration

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Pulp Fiction? A Reappraisal of <i>Ex parte Young</i>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Looking for Art in the Law Review Article

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Simmering Debate Over Supplemental Jurisdiction

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Standing, Litigable Interests, and Article III's Case-or-Controversy Requirement

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Joanna C. Schwartz

  University of California, Los Angeles

  5 shared

• Daniel D. Birk

  Chicago Kent College of Law

  5 shared

• Alexander A. Reinert

  5 shared

• David Baltmanis

  Northwestern University

  4 shared

• Nassim Nazemi

  4 shared

• Abner J. Mikva

  3 shared

• Jessica Dwinell

  3 shared

• Elena Joffroy

  2 shared

Labs

• James E. Pfander LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Law

  University of Chicago

  1990

• Other, Law

  University of Chicago

  1987

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1984

Awards & honors

• Chair of both the federal courts and civil procedure section…