Prof. Anne Joseph O'Connell

Anne Joseph O’Connell, a lawyer and political scientist who teaches and writes on the federal bureaucracy, is the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford University. Outside of Stanford Law School, she is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, an appointed public member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and a contributor to the Center on Regulation and Markets at the Brookings Institution. O’Connell has written on a number of topics, including agency and judicial nominations, political appointees, bureaucratic organization (and reorganization), political changes in agency rulemaking, quasi-agencies, and congressional oversight of agencies. She is currently heading up a project for ACUS on acting officials and delegated authority as well as writing a book, Stand-Ins, on temporary leaders in government, business, and religion. O'Connell earned her law degree from Yale Law School and her Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Before entering law school teaching, she clerked for Judge Stephen Williams and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and worked as a trial attorney in DOJ’s Federal Programs Branch. She spent 14 years teaching at Berkeley Law prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2018.