UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Christopher Zorn, liberal arts research professor of political science and sociology at Penn State, will launch the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s spring 2017 speaker series at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 17, in 112 Chambers Building. The title of Zorn's presentation is “The Federal Courts Under Trump.” The lecture, which is also the keynote address for the annual spring conference hosted by the Center for American Political Responsiveness — one of two research centers associated with the McCourtney Institute — is free and open to the public.

Zorn is also an affiliate professor of law at Penn State and serves as associate director of the Big Data Social Science Integrative Graduate and Research Trainee Program. He previously served on the faculty at the University of South Carolina and Emory University, and was a visiting scientist and program director for the Law and Social Science Program at the National Science Foundation. Beyond Penn State, Zorn is vice director for analytics at the Arbitrator Intelligence Project and serves on the executive boards of the International Methods Colloquium and the Empirical Legal Studies weblog.

Zorn has received funding from the National Science Foundation and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles on judicial politics and statistics for the social and behavioral sciences. He received his bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and political science from Truman State University and his doctorate in political science from Ohio State University.

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, based in the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts, promotes rigorous scholarship and practical innovations to advance the democratic process in the United States and abroad. To learn more about the McCourtney Institute and its spring 2017 speaker series, visit http://democracyinstitute.la.psu.edu or email the institute at DemocracyInst@psu.edu.