Dru Stevenson, Professor of Law

Most people think of academic research as a quiet conversation between professors in dusty journals. But in the world of the law, a single article can sometimes become the silent engine driving a major court decision. You may know the headlines of a landmark case, but you rarely hear the rest of the story —the specific scholarship the judges leaned on to reach their conclusion. As a tenured professor at STCL Houston, my career has been defined by a deep dive into the intersections of history, administrative law, and firearm policy. Over the last two decades, I have found that true expertise isn't just about writing papers; it’s about providing the intellectual framework that courts use to navigate complex social issues. Whether it's the 9th Circuit's en banc look at felon-in-possession laws or the Washington Supreme Court's analysis of jury selection, these citations represent more than just a footnote. They are a sign of authority and a demonstration of the trust ...

Imagine you are in a high-stakes competition—perhaps a game of chess or a professional sports match. You’ve trained for years and you know the rules by heart. But as the match begins, you realize something unsettling: your opponent has a playbook you’ve never seen. In fact, they have a library of thousands of past matches that you aren't allowed to look at. They can cite these past moves to the referee to win the game, while you are left guessing in the dark. For decades, this wasn’t a metaphor; it was the reality for immigration lawyers in the United States. Every year, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) issues tens of thousands of decisions. Most of them are "unpublished," meaning they aren't printed in the official law books. But the government’s lawyers had them. They could search them, find the ones that helped their case, and use them against immigrants who had no way of seeing the "secret law" being used against them. In 2021, a group of legal ai...