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This past summer, Trevor Gardner joined the ������Ƶ faculty as an assistant professor of law. Gardner most recently hails from New York, where he served as a faculty fellow at New York University School of Law

After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Gardner earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and then worked as a trial attorney at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, litigating juvenile and adult criminal cases from presentment through disposition. Gardner left criminal practice to join academia, earning his master's and doctoral degrees in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Gardner writes in the area of criminal justice with a focus on policing, and his research addresses a variety of related topics including racial profiling, police-community relations and community control of police.

“In terms of police-community relations, I’m interested in the quality of interactions between police and various members of both the minority and poor communities,” says Gardner.

Drawing on his sociology background, Gardner explores the relationship between law and society in his work, and notes that his primary focus is on law in action rather than law on the books.

“A lot of my work tries to develop new perspectives on how the law is experienced by everyday people, how people in authority respond to the law and how they negotiate legal restrictions,” explains Gardner. “I’m interested in the sociology of law. I end up looking at how groups are interacting with the law, more so than conventional legal analysis.”

Gardner participated as a panelist in this February’s Presidential Power in 2017 event, and will join a panel of legal professionals to discuss policing and reform in May.