Welcome!

My name is Morrgan Herlihy, and I am a dual-title PhD. Candidate in Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University. My primary research interests are in American political institutions, focusing largely on legislatures and courts. Broadly, I investigate how institutional reform, partisan dynamics, and legislative process affect elite decision-making and public attitudes toward judges. My dissertation focuses on the federal judicial confirmation process, analyzing how the nuclear option has transformed the lower court confirmation process into an assembly line for partisan gain. I use computational methods, including text analysis, natural language processsing, and machine learning, in combination with statistical modeling to advance this line of research.

My work has been funded by a National Science Foundation Law and Sciences Dissertation Grant and the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Research in Democracy Support Grant. My work has also been published in Political Research Quarterly and is forthcoming in Journal of Law and Courts. You can find my Department profile here and read more about me here.