Welcome! I am an associate professor at Fordham University School of Law, where I teach civil procedure and intellectual property. My research focuses on technology and innovation policy, intellectual property, antitrust, and courts. I am interested in the role of procedure, legal institutions, and courts in shaping economic, political, and social outcomes, especially in promoting competition and innovation. These interests I pursue using a mix of methods, often integrating mathematical and statistical techniques with legal analysis. Trained as both a lawyer and a political scientist, I seek to be faithful to the values of both disciplines by being rigorous about social scientific methodology and sensitive to legal nuance. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Cornell Law Review, the NYU Law Review, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, the Journal of Legal Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science.
I got my Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Princeton University, where I received a Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Fellowship for "the highest scholarly excellence in graduate work." At Princeton, I was an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP), the Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA), and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP).
I was born and raised in Iran. Before embarking on an academic career, I was a litigator in New York and a law clerk to federal judges.
"Against the Abstract-Ideas Exclusion in Patent Law." Berkeley Technology Law Journal (forthcoming 2025).
"The Missing Element in Trademark Infringement" (with Maggie Wittlin). Iowa Law Review (forthcoming 2025) (SSRN).
"When Hard Cases Make Bad Law: A Theory of How Case Facts Affect Judge-Made Law." Cornell Law Review (forthcoming 2024) (SSRN).
"Testing Political Antitrust" (with Nolan McCarty). NYU Law Review (2023) (SSRN).
"Measuring Follow-On Innovation" (with Janet Freilich). Research Policy (2023) (SSRN).
"Hard Cases Make Bad Law? A Theoretical Investigation." Journal of Legal Studies (2022) (SSRN).
"Coordination and Innovation in Judiciaries: Correct Law vs. Consistent Law" (with Charles Cameron and Mehdi Shadmehr). Quarterly Journal of Political Science (2022) (SSRN).
"The Fact-Law Distinction: Strategic Factfinding and Lawmaking in a Judicial Hierarchy." Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization (2021) (SSRN).
"The Role of Courts in Technology Policy." Journal of Law & Economics (2018) (SSRN).
"Religion and Judging on the Federal Courts of Appeals" (with Lawrence Liu). Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2017) (SSRN).
"The Nirvana Fallacy in Fair Use Reform." Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology (2015) (SSRN).
"The Design of Useful Article Exclusion: A Way Out of the Mess." Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. (2010) (SSRN).
Note, "Politics Under the Cover of Law: Can International Law Help Resolve the Iran Nuclear Crisis?" Boston University International Law Journal (2007) (PDF).
"Judges, Lawyers, and Legal Innovation" (with Deborah Beim)
"Fact-Law Confusion"
"Strategic Abstention, Missing Data, and Ideal Point Estimation" (with Asya Magazinnik) (poster)