Melinda Gann Hall

Melinda Gann Hall is Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. She also serves as Director of the Program in Law and Judicial Politics.

Professor Hall joined the MSU faculty in 1996. Previously, she was Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. She also served on the faculties at the University of North Texas, Colorado State University, and Southern University in New Orleans. She received her Ph.D. from the University of New Orleans in 1983.

Professor Hall has received numerous awards for research, teaching, and service. She received both the American Judicature Society Award (best paper award) and the McGraw-Hill Award (best article award) from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association for her research on judicial elections. She also received the campus-wide Top Five Professors Award from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and was rated as one of the top professors at Colorado State University by the Associated Students of Colorado State University. Recently Professor Hall was recognized for outstanding service to the Southwestern Political Science Association. She is serving, or has served, on numerous editorial boards, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly, and on a wide variety of committees and executive councils of professional associations. Currently, she is President-Elect of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association.

Professor Hall is a specialist in judicial politics, with interests in judicial behavior in American appellate courts, the politics of designing and reforming courts in the American states, judicial campaigns and elections, and American constitutional law. Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, and a variety of other scholarly journals, law reviews, and edited volumes. She also serves as co-principal investigator of the State Supreme Court Data Project, a fifty-state multi-user infrastructure project sponsored by the National Science Foundation from 1996 through 2003 and now supported by the MSU Program for Law and Judicial Politics. Professor Hall teaches graduate courses in judicial politics and undergraduate courses in judicial process, constitutional law, moot court and legal research in federal law, and comparative legal systems.