Ari’s research interests center on the intersection of criminal law, health law, and constitutional law. Her current project uses mixed empirical methods — analyzing administrative data, interviews, and ethnographic observations — to examine the national scope and consequences of the criminal prosecution of incarcerated people with mental illness for their behavior inside prison. This project received support from the American Bar Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, and the Kellogg Dispute Resolution Research Center. Ari’s previous scholarship has been published in a broad range of journals including Law and Society Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Northwestern University Law Review, Lancet, and Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Prior to joining Stanford Law, Ari clerked for Judge William A. Fletcher on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Goodwin Liu on the Supreme Court of California. She also worked as an associate attorney at Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, where she represented two classes of incarcerated people in federal court.

Ari graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law with a JD/PhD in Sociology. She received the John Paul Stevens Prize for highest GPA of graduating law students. While a law student, she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Northwestern University Law Review and worked in the Children and Family Justice Center clinic. Ari received her BA with High Honors in Sociology and High Honors in Neuroscience and Behavior from Wesleyan University.