About
Sahar Abi-Hassan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of political science at The University of Tulsa. Her research spans judicial politics, legal advocacy and political methodology, where she has extensively examined the individual qualities of interest groups and the nature of interactions between them, and its influence on the behavior of the courts in the United States. In a recent paper published in Political Analysis, Abi-Hassan and her co-authors leverage the power of network analysis with extensive knowledge of judicial politics to produce the first ideology score for all amicus-filing organizations in Supreme Court litigation.
Abi-Hassan is currently involved in an NSF funded collaborative project that maps all the writ of certiorari petitions filed with the Supreme Court to understand how the supply of legal questions shapes the court’s agenda-setting process. With a better understanding of the supply of legal questions, Abi-Hassan hopes to build a more comprehensive picture of how the Supreme Court populates its plenary docket. Her broader interests include the behavior of U.S. political institutions, political analysis and quantitative political methodology.
Education
- Ph.D., Boston University
- M.A., Virginia Tech
Research interests and areas of expertise
- Judicial politics
- Law and court
- American politics
- Interest groups
- Network analysis