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My name is Abigail Hassett, and I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Transylvania University. I received my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 2025.

My research broadly examines the role of ambition in legal careers, particularly as this complicated trait influences an individual’s nomination and confirmation to the federal courts. I both define and quantify the role ambition takes in this process. Decades of judicial research assumes that ambition exists, but fails to break down how this phenomenon spurs on a lawyer to seek the federal bench, or how this characteristic affects behavior. By furthering our understanding of why and how people seek to become judges, we are better able to understand judicial behavior as a whole. A list of my published research and advanced working papers can be found on my Research page.