Trevor G. Gardner
Professor of Law
Trevor Gardner is a Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Law. His primary research focus is the relationship between federalism and municipal police administration. Professor Gardner’s scholarship has appeared or will appear in The Columbia Law Review, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and Criminal Law and Philosophy. He currently serves on the editorial board of the American Sociological Review.
In the years following George Floyd’s murder and related racial justice protests, Professor Gardner pivoted to publish a series of papers exploring conceptions of racial equity in the field of criminal law. Article titles in this vein include “By Any Means: A Philosophical Frame for Rulemaking Reform in Criminal Law,” “The Conflict Among African American Penal Interests: Rethinking Racial Equity in Criminal Procedure,” “Police Diversity Theory,” and “On the Racial Disparities in Criminal Law.” Gardner is presently developing a book-length manuscript that centers political economy in the historical development of criminal law and administration in the U.S.
Professor Gardner’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the University of Michigan Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, the UC Berkeley Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and the Washington University Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity.
Gardner graduated from Harvard Law School in 2003 after serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal. He went on to work as a staff attorney in the Trial Division of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, litigating juvenile and adult cases from presentment through disposition. After leaving criminal practice, Gardner obtained his Ph.D. in sociology with an emphasis in social theory. He then joined New York University School of Law as a Faculty Fellow, and later the University of Washington (Seattle) as an Associate Professor of Law. Professor Gardner has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
- Education
- M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2013
- J.D., Harvard Law School, 2003
- B.A., University of Michigan, 1999
- Courses
- Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure—Investigations
- Crime Policy Seminar
- Areas of Expertise
- Police
- Criminal Administration
- Immigrant Sanctuaries
- Racial Profiling
- Criminological Theory
- Sociology of Punishment
- Publications
Law Review Articles & Essays
- Auditing Criminal Justice Minimalism, Wash U. J.L. & Pol’y (forthcoming 2025) (symposium contribution).
- The Racist Policing Paradox, Am. Hist. Rev. (reviewing Matthew Guariglia, Police and the Empire City: Race & the Origins of Modern Policing in New York (2024)) (forthcoming 2025).
- Police Diversity Theory, 114 J. Crim. L. & Criminology_(forthcoming 2024).
- The Reach of Legal Cynicism: A Comment on Tommie Shelby’s “The Idea of Abolition,” Crim. Law Philos. (forthcoming 2024).
- The Conflict Among African American Penal Interests: Rethinking Racial Equity in Criminal Procedure, 171 U. Pa. Rev. 1699 (2023) (profiled in Jotwell: https://crim.jotwell.com/racial-equity-reform-and-abolition-in-the-american-criminal-legal-system/).
- Regulating Police Chokeholds (with Esam Al-Shareffi), 112 The J. Crim. L. & Criminology Online (2022).
- By Any Means: A Philosophical Frame for Rulemaking Reform in Criminal Law, 130 Yale L.J. Forum (2021).
- Law and Order as the Foundational Paradox of the Trump Presidency, 73 Stan. L. Rev. Online 141 (2021).
- Police Violence and the African American Procedural Habitus, 100 B. U. L. Rev. 849 (2020).
- Immigrant Sanctuary as the “Old Normal”: A Brief History of Police Federalism, 19 Colum. L. Rev. 1 (2019).
- Right at Home: Modeling Sub-Federal Resistance as Criminal Justice Reform, 46 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 527 (2019) (profiled in Jotwell: https://crim.jotwell.com/local-resistance-and-criminal-law-reform/).
- The Promise and Peril of the Anti-Commandeering Rule in the Homeland Security Era: Immigrant Sanctuary as an Illustrative Case, 34 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 313 (special issue on “The New Civil War”) (2015).
- The Political Delinquent: Crime, Deviance, and Resistance in Black America, 20 Harv. BlackLetter L.J. 141 (2004).
Other Writing
- What Would MLK Do?: A Civil Rights Model of “Good Citizenship” in Criminal Procedure, Jotwell (September 9, 2020) (https://crim.jotwell.com/?s=Bennett+capers).
- Crime Policy and Federalism in Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia (2018) (co-authored with Lisa L. Miller).
- Racial Profiling as Collective Definition, 2 Social Inclusion 52 (2014) (peer-reviewed).
- The CAP Effect: Racial Profiling in the ICE Criminal Alien Program, The Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, Berkeley Law Center (2009) (with Aarti Kohli).
Works in Progress
- Rethinking Police Diversity
- Normative Criminal Federalism
- Crime and Human Capital (Book Manuscript)
- Download CV