Research

Publications

• Blake, William D. and Carolyn Forestiere. Forthcoming. “Assessment and Intervention in Political Science Undergraduate Research Methods Courses to Increase Student Success.” In Teaching Political Methodology, ed. Jeffrey Bernstein. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Project Data.
• Blake, William D. and Ian G. Anson. Forthcoming. “Risk and Reform: Explaining Support for Constitutional Convention Referendums.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly.
• Lewis, Andrew R., William D. Blake, Stephen T. Mockabee, and Amanda Friesen. March 2020. “American Constitutional Faith and the Politics of Hermeneutics.” Politics & Religion 13(1): 57-88.
• Blake, William D. December 2019. “‘Don’t Confuse Me With the Facts’: The Use and Misuse of Social Science on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Maryland Law Review 79(1): 101-40.
• Blake, William D. 2019. “‘One Difficulty…of a Serious Nature’: The Overlooked Racial Dynamics of the Electoral College.” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 17(2): 315-43.
• Blake, William D. 2019. “‘Justice Under the Constitution, Not Over It’: Public Perceptions of FDR’s Court-Packing Plan.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 49(1): 204-18.
• Blake, William D. 2018. “Judicial Independence on Unelected State Supreme Courts.” Justice System Journal 39(1): 21-38.
• Levinson, Sanford and William Blake. 2016. “When Americans Think about Constitutional Reform: Some Data and Reflections.” Ohio State Law Journal 77(2): 211-36.
• Blake, William D. and Sanford V. Levinson. 2016. “The Limits of Veneration: Public Support for a New Constitutional Convention”.  Constitutional Studies 2(1): 1-22.
• Levinson, Sanford V. and William D. Blake. 2016. “When Americans Think about Constitutional Reform: Some Data and Reflections.”  Ohio State Law Journal 77(3): 211-36.
• Blake, William D., Hans J. Hacker and Shon R. Hopwood. 2015. “Seasonal Affective Disorder: Clerk Training and the Success of Supreme Court Certiorari Petitions.”  Law and Society Review 49(4): 973-97.
• Blake, William D. 2015. “Pine Tar and the Infield Fly Rule: An Umpire’s Perspective on the Hart-Dworkin Jurisprudential Debate.” In Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture: 2013-2014, ed. William J. Simons. Jefferson City, NC: McFarland.
• Blake, William D. and Amanda J. Friesen.  2013. “The Politics of Denying Communion to Catholic Elected Officials. The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 11(4): 671-84.
• Blake, William D. 2013. “Pyrrhic Victories: How the Secularization Doctrine Undermines the Sanctity of Religion.” Journal of Church and State 55(1): 1-22.
• Blake, William. 2012. “God Save This Honorable Court: Religion as a Source of Judicial Policy Preferences.” Political Research Quarterly 65(4): 814-26.
• Blake, William. 2012. “Umpires as Legal Realists.”  PS: Political Science and Politics 45(2): 271-76.
• Blake, William D. and Hans J. Hacker. 2010. “The Brooding Spirit of the Law: Supreme Court Justices Reading Dissents from the Bench.” Justice System Journal 31(1): 1-25. Project Data.
• Hacker, Hans J. and William D. Blake. 2005. “The Neutrality Principle: The Hidden Yet Powerful Legal Axiom at Work in Brown v. Board of Education.” Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy 8(1): 5-59.
• Blake, William. 2005. “Jurisprudence Transcending Time and Space: Affirmative Action and the Revolution of 1937.” Dartmouth Law Journal 2(2): 19-28.
• Blake, William. 2003. “The Filibuster, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers.” Parliamentary Journal 44(2): 43-53.

Working Papers

• Blake, William D. “A Positivist, Baseball-centric Critique of Originalism.” Under review.
• Blake, William D., Alexander Hudson, and Amanda Friesen. “Social Capital, Institutional Rules, and Constitutional Amendment Rates.” In progress.