Biography

John J. Donohue III has been one of the leading empirical researchers in the legal academy over the past 25 years. Professor Donohue is an economist as well as a lawyer and is well known for using empirical analysis to determine the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas, including civil rights and antidiscrimination law, employment discrimination, crime and criminal justice, and school funding. Professor Donohue previously was a member of the law school faculty from 1995–2004.

Before rejoining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2010, Professor Donohue was the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He recently co-authored Employment Discrimination: Law and Theory with George Rutherglen. Earlier in his career, he was a law professor at Northwestern University as well as a research fellow with the American Bar Association. Additionally, he clerked with Chief Justice T. Emmet Clarie, of the U.S. District Court of Hartford, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, editor of the American Law and Economics Review, and the current president of the American Law and Economics Association.

Key Works

• Donohue, John J., III, and Justin Wolfers (2005), Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate, Stanford Law Review 58: 791-846.
• John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime, 39 Journal of Human Resources 29-49 (Winter 2004).
• Ayres, Ian and John J. Donohue, III (2003), Shooting Down the ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ Hypothesis, Stanford Law Review. 55: 1193-1312.
• John J. Donohue III and Peter Siegelman, Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Social Programs in the Battle Against Crime, 27 Journal of Legal Studies 1-43 (1998).
• John J. Donohue III and Peter Siegelman, The Selection of Employment Discrimination Disputes for Litigation: Using Business Cycle Effects to Test the Priest-Klein Hypothesis, 24 Journal of Legal Studies 427-462 (1995).
• John Donohue III and James Heckman, Continuous Versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks, 29 Journal of Economic Literature 1603 (1993).

In the News

• The Random Horror Of The Death Penalty
  The New York Times, January 07, 2012
• Rewarding C.E.O.'s Who Fail
  The New York Times, October 01, 2011
• Concealed Guns In NYC Backed By 243 In U.S. House
  Bloomberg News, September 11, 2011

Publications & Cases

Recent Publications View All

• John J. Donohue. Capital Punishment in Connecticut, 1973-2007: A Comprehensive Evaluation from 4686 Murders to One Execution (2011).
• John J. Donohue III, Benjamin Ewing, David Peloquin, Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy, in Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig, and Justin McCrary, eds,, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
• Abhay Aneja, John J. Donohue III, Alexandria Zhang, The Impact of Right-To-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy, 13 American Law and Economics Review 565 (2011).
• John J. Donohue III, Michael Ashley Stein, Christopher L. Griffin, Jr., and Sascha Becker, Assessing Post‐ADA Employment: Some Econometric Evidence and Policy Considerations, 8 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 477 (2011).
• Eli K. Best, John J. Donohue III, Jury Nullification in Modified Comparative Negligence Regimes, University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming; Also Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 1874466; Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 419.
• John J. Donohue III, Benjamin Ewing, David Peloquin, Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy, NBER Working Paper No. 16776. (2011).
• John J. Donohue III. Better Laws Might Have Helped in Tucson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 13, 2011, p. B-7.
• John J. Donohue III, It Takes Laws to Control the Bad Guys, Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News, New York Times, January 11, 2011.
• Abhay Aneja, John J. Donohue III, Alexandria Zhang, The Impact of Right-To-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy, 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper (2010).
• John J. Donohue, III and Justin Wolfers, Estimating the Impact of the Death Penalty on Murder, 11 American Law and Economics Review 249 (2009)