Michael C. Tolley is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University (Boston, MA USA). He earned his BA degree from Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA USA) and his MA and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD USA). Professor Tolley’s research interests are at the intersection of law and politics. He writes on courts in the United States and elsewhere. In recent years, he has written on courts in Europe, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. He is now working on a project that compares how regional human rights law is used by national courts in the European, African, and Inter-American human rights systems. Professor Tolley was past-president of the Research Committee on Comparative Judicial Studies, an affiliate of the International Political Science Association.