Jacob Eisler is The Baldy Center Mid-Career Fellow for the fall semester of 2024. During his time at The Baldy Center, he will pursue a set of projects at the intersection of legal doctrine and moral philosophy, examining the relationship between state institutions and the conditions of popular democratic autonomy. These projects include ‘Towards Populist Primacy’, describing the alternative theory that the Roberts Court has promulgated regarding the legitimate role of the judiciary in shaping democracy; ‘Anti-Corruption Abolition’, identifying the Supreme Court’s unique willingness to undermine the substance of criminal anti-corruption law, demonstrated in the 2024 term by Fischer v. United States and Snyder v. United States; and ‘The Closing of the Open Society’, an early stage book project drawing a connection between contemporary political crisis and loss of socio-economic mobility in Western society. He looks forward to the community and deep interdisciplinary expertise of the Baldy Center to develop these projects.

Eisler joined Florida State University College of Law in 2023 as the James Edmund and Margaret Elizabeth Hennessey Corry Professor. Professor Eisler researches in the areas of constitutional law, election law, criminal law (focused on anti-corruption law), legal theory, and law and technology. He applies moral and political theory to questions of judicial reasoning and institutional design, with a focus on the relationship between legal doctrine, democratic self-rule, and the conditions necessary for political liberty.

Eisler is the author of "The Law of Freedom: The Supreme Court and Democracy" (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and his scholarship is published or forthcoming leading law reviews and peer reviewed journals, including the Emory Law Journal, the UC Davis Law Review, the Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Election Law Journal. He is regularly interviewed or quoted in leading media outlets nationally and internationally on matters related to the law and politics.

At Florida State, Professor Eisler teaches Constitutional Law I (Structure), Constitutional Law II (Rights), and Criminal Law. He has past experience teaching subjects including tort law, jurisprudence, and EU law. Prior to joining Florida State, Professor Eisler taught at Jesus College, University of Cambridge as the Yates Glazebrook Fellow and college lecturer in Law, and the University of Southampton as an associate professor (Reader) in Public Law. Before entering the legal academy, he clerked on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch in New York City, and practiced as an international capital markets attorney in London with Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith Freehills. He received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his Ph.D. from the Harvard University Department of Government, his MPhil in political thought and intellectual history from the University of Cambridge, and his B.A. in political science and English from Williams College. Professor Eisler is New York bar qualified.