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It’s commonly said that the law should be above political infighting. , who joins the ������ Law faculty this fall as a tenured professor of law, sees it differently: the law and politics are intertwined in ways that scholars of both law and political science have neglected.

“My elevator pitch when I talk about my work is ‘Law influences politics; politics influences law; they can be mutually reinforcing; there can be tensions; the relationship is complicated and important and worth understanding,’” says Gould, most recently the Class of 1965 Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Gould’s debut article, demystified the esoteric subject of parliamentary decision-making in procedural disputes—and won the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Paper Award in 2020 when it was published in the Yale Law Journal. Interviewing almost two dozen Capitol Hill insiders, Gould illuminated a hidden but robust common-law system. Parliamentary procedure has been a key factor in congressional battles for decades, most recently in the context of health care, spending, and tax legislation, Gould explains.

While Gould continues to write about Congress—most recently with articles about congressional spending and the Senate’s Byrd Rule—he has broadened his focus to include the politics of administrative law. He has written about the politics of deference to administrative agencies and the politics of agency cost-benefit analysis, in both cases examining how partisans seek to harness administrative law to serve their interests. Gould bolstered his administrative law experience as a special advisor in the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the Biden administration.

forthcoming in Law & Contemporary Problems, asks what it means to violate the rule of law in a public law context. “There can be a kind of rule of law creep,” Gould explains. “You’ll hear someone complaining about a rule of law violation when what they actually mean is that something is undemocratic or unjust or unwise.” The article seeks to tease out what it means to actually violate the rule of law, a question that is all too timely.

Gould, who holds a bachelor’s degree, a JD, and a PhD in political theory from Harvard University, sees institutions and legal rules as windows into legal theory. “Democracy as a set of rules and institutions requires really thinking about law,” he adds, “and things that can feel relatively small or cabined can actually implicate pretty fundamental concepts of representation, of the rule of law, of norms, of how we govern ourselves.”

Daniel Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law at Berkeley, collaborated with Gould on a recent article examining how political actors attempt to change law or policy through creative workarounds. “It was Jon who had the original insight that a similar concept was popping up in widely disparate areas of government,” says Farber. “He’s one of the few people in the law school world who has deep expertise on both administrative agencies and Congress.”

“He’s one of the few people in the law school world who has deep expertise on both administrative agencies and Congress,” says Daniel Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law at Berkeley.

Beginning in the 2026–27 academic year, Gould will teach the 1L course Legislation and the Regulatory State—which he first taught as a visiting professor in Spring 2024—and an upper-level administrative law course. Dozens of students in his 2024 course were so impressed with Gould’s teaching that they petitioned Dean ’00 in a letter to hire him permanently.

, David Boies Professor of Law, describes Gould as “both a first-rate lawyer and a first-rate political scientist, which has enabled him to show how constitutional and administrative law, government institutions, and partisan politics interact as part of a broader legal-political system. That’s Jon’s overarching project, which is incredibly ambitious, deeply interesting, and directly relevant to what’s going on in the real world.” —Atticus Gannaway