CSRPC Residential Fellow
danielepstein@uchicago.edu

Daniel Epstein is a PhD candidate in political science, focusing primarily in the subfield of political theory, and with research interests in democratic theory, legal theory, social movements, and critical carceral studies. His dissertation project—An Abolitionist Theory of Law—seeks to articulate a political theory of law that begins from the visions and actions prison and police abolitionists. Placing a host of abolitionist texts—scholarship, popular publications, movement-produced materials, and more—in conversation with a range of work in political and legal theory, this project has both an explanatory purpose—to better understand the normative and practical universe of contemporary abolitionism—and an emancipatory one—to highlight the contingency of taken-for-granted features of law and offer sketches for their salutary reimagination. Daniel holds a Bachelors in Social Studies from Harvard University and a Master of Legal Studies degree from the University of Chicago Law School. His research has been supported by the Pozen Center for Human Rights and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and his work has previously been published in the Journal of Law and Political Economy.