Trevor G. Gardner

Trevor Gardner is Vice Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Law. His scholarship considers how American governments—federal, state, and local—compete for authority over police administration. A related book manuscript (in progress) examines the evolution of the relationship between the federal government and municipal police from the nation’s founding to the present. Taken together, this work traces how the push and pull among American governments over the criminal law and its enforcement shapes the public meaning of crime, policing, and safety.

Gardner’s article “Immigrant Sanctuary as the ‘Old Normal’: A Brief History of Police Federalism” introduced the concept of police federalism, and related scholarship theorizes enforcement abstinence by state and local governments as a vehicle for criminal justice reform. His scholarship has appeared in Columbia Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Criminal Law and Philosophy, and Yale Law Journal Forum.

Gardner graduated from Harvard Law School after serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal. He later worked as a staff attorney in the Trial Division of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, where he litigated juvenile and adult cases from presentment through disposition. After leaving criminal practice, Gardner earned his Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley, with an emphasis in social theory. He began his career in the legal academy as a Faculty Fellow at New York University School of Law before joining the University of Washington School of Law faculty as an Assistant Professor. He has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School.