Travis Crum

Travis Crum is an Associate Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. Professor Crum’s scholarship explores the relationship between voting rights, race, and federalism. His current projects examine the Fifteenth Amendment as an independent constitutional provision and the role of racially polarized voting in redistricting.

Professor Crum’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Notre Dame Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Professor Crum’s article, The Unabridged Fifteenth Amendment, won the 2025 AALS Distinguished Scholarship Award in Election Law. His scholarship has been cited by federal courts, including in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Allen v. Milligan. His work on the Voting Rights Act’s bail-in provision was described by the Wall Street Journal as the “blueprint” for the “Obama administration’s new legal strategy to preserve decades of minority-voting rights” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder striking down the VRA’s coverage formula. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and MSNBC. He is a frequent contributor to the Election Law Blog. Professor Crum’s proposal for an effects-test bail-in provision was incorporated in the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives.

Professor Crum served as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice (Ret.) John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge David Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and Judge Myron Thompson on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. While in practice, he was a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States and an associate at Mayer Brown LLP. Immediately prior to joining the faculty, he was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Crum received his JD from Yale Law School, his master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and his undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University. He was a first-generation college student.