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Arizona and Abortion: The Calendar Is Lying When It Reads the Present Times
Arizona and Abortion: The Calendar Is Lying When It Reads the Present Times
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The Cruelty of Punishment Without Purpose
The Cruelty of Punishment Without Purpose
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Recent Headlines Confirm the Inadequacy of the Supreme Court’s Reasoning in Trump v. Anderson
Recent Headlines Confirm the Inadequacy of the Supreme Court’s Reasoning in Trump v. Anderson
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Jessica Bregant
Jessica Bregant

Jessica Bregant is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center and Associated Faculty in the Department of Psychology. She was most recently the Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and previously served as the Law, Behavior, and Social Science Fellow at the University of Illinois College of Law. She also clerked for the Hon. Rita B. Garman of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Professor Bregant earned her J.D. at the University of Illinois College of Law in 2009 and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2018. Her scholarship explores the myriad ways in which lay people experience law, drawing on experimental methods from psychology and economics. Among other topics, she has written about the expressive functions of punishment, children's beliefs and expectations about rule-breaking, lay perceptions of settlement, and the intuitive origins of private ownership. She currently teaches in the areas of Property Law, Criminal Procedure, and Alternative Dispute Resolution; previous courses have also included Negotiations, Psychology for Law Practice, and Valuation & Compensation.

Columns by Jessica Bregant
Permalink to “We Acknowledge the Court’s Rulings” and Other Terrible Apologies“We Acknowledge the Court’s Rulings” and Other Terrible Apologies
“We Acknowledge the Court’s Rulings” and Other Terrible Apologies
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In this second in a series of columns on the litigation ending in settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, Illinois Law professor Jennifer K. Robbennolt, University of Houston Law professor Jessica Bregant, and Illinois Law professor Verity Winship comment on the non-apology Fox made at the end of the case. The authors argue that the Fox/Dominion settlement is a stark example of the multiple audiences for an apology and how the incentives and desires of private parties and public audiences may diverge.

Permalink to What’s So Special About the Fox/Dominion Settlement? Less Than You’d ThinkWhat’s So Special About the Fox/Dominion Settlement? Less Than You’d Think
What’s So Special About the Fox/Dominion Settlement? Less Than You’d Think
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Illinois Law professor Jennifer K. Robbennolt, University of Houston Law professor Jessica Bregant, and Illinois Law professor Verity Winship describe the findings of their study of people’s perceptions of legal settlements generally, and what that means about the Fox/Dominion settlement. The authors point out that the lawsuit ended exactly as most lawsuits do—in settlement—and argue that for all the case’s weighty implications, the public reactions to the settlement are exactly what we would expect.