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Sepehr Shahshahani

Treiman Professor of Law

Contact

sepehrs@wustl.edu

(314) 935-6495

Office

Anheuser-Busch Hall – 535

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Featured Scholarship

Sepehr Shahshahani

About Sepehr Shahshahani

Sepehr Shahshahani’s research focuses on technology and innovation policy, intellectual property, procedure, and courts. He is interested in the role of procedure and legal institutions in shaping economic and political outcomes, especially in promoting competition and innovation. His work often integrates mathematical and statistical techniques with legal analysis. Trained as both a lawyer and a political scientist, he seeks to be faithful to the values of both disciplines by being rigorous about social scientific methodology and sensitive to legal nuance.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Politics, Princeton University, 2019, (M.A. in Politics, 2016)
  • LLM, New York University School of Law, 2014
  • J.D. magna cum laude, Boston University School of Law, 2008
  • B.A. in Political Science, with honors, University of Chicago, 2004

Areas of Expertise

  • Civil Procedure
  • Intellectual Property (Copyright, Patents, Trademark)
  • Judicial Behavior
  • Law and Economics
  • Law and Politics

Scholarship

  • Judges, Lawyers, and Legal Innovation (with Deborah Beim), JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS,&ORGANIZATION (forthcoming)

  • When Hard Cases Make Bad Law: A Theory of How Case Facts Affect Judge-Made Law, 110 CORNELL LAW REVIEW 963 (2025)
    • Selected for presentation at the Harvard/Yale/Stanford Junior Faculty Forum 2022
  • Against the Abstract-Ideas Exclusion, 40 BERKELEY TECHNOLOGY LAW JOURNAL 447 (2025)
  • The Missing Element in Trademark Infringement (with Maggie Wittlin), 110 IOWA LAW REVIEW 1247 (2025)
  • Testing Political Antitrust (with Nolan McCarty), 98 N.Y.U. LAW REVIEW 1169 (2023)
    • Nominated, Antitrust Writing Awards, best academic article in General Antitrust, 2024
    • Featured on Marginal Revolution (Apr. 22, 2023)
  • Measuring Follow-On Innovation (with Janet Freilich), 52 RESEARCH POLICY 104854 (2023)
    • Reviewed by Laura Pedraza-Fariña, How Do Patents Influence Cumulative Innovation?, JOTWELL (Jan. 24, 2023)
  • Hard Cases Make Bad Law? A Theoretical Investigation, 51 JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES 133 (2022)
  • Coordination and Innovation in Judiciaries: Correct Law vs. Consistent Law (with Charles Cameron and Mehdi Shadmehr), 17 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 61 (2022)
  • The Fact-Law Distinction: Strategic Factfinding and Lawmaking in a Judicial Hierarchy, 37 JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS, & ORGANIZATION 440 (2021)
    • Honorable Mention, Best Graduate Student Paper Award, American Political Science Association, Law and Courts Section, 2020
  • The Role of Courts in Technology Policy, 61 JOURNAL OF LAW & ECONOMICS 37 (2018)
  • Religion and Judging on the Federal Courts of Appeals (with Lawrence Liu), 14 JOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES 716 (2017)
  • The Nirvana Fallacy in Fair Use Reform, 16 MINNESOTA JOURNAL OF LAW, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 273 (2015)
  • The Design of Useful Article Exclusion: A Way Out of the Mess, 57 JOURNAL OF THE COPYRIGHT SOCIETY OF THE U.S.A. 859 (2010)
    • First Prize, Nathan Burkan Memorial Competition for papers on copyright law, Boston University, 2008
  • Note, Politics Under the Cover of Law: Can International Law Help Resolve the Iran Nuclear Crisis?, 25 BOSTON UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL 369 (2007)

WORKING PAPERS

  • Judges, Lawyers, and Legal Innovation (with Deborah Beim)
  • Fact-Law Confusion

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