John J. Donohue III has been one of the leading empirical researchers in the legal academy over the past 30 years. Professor Donohue is an economist as well as a lawyer and is well known for using empirical analysis to determine the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas, including civil rights and antidiscrimination law, employment discrimination, criminal justice and the death penalty, and factors influencing crime, such as guns, incarceration, policing, and legalized abortion.

Before rejoining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2010 (where he had previously taught from 1995–2004), Professor Donohue was the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He recently co-authored Employment Discrimination: Law and Theory with George Rutherglen. Earlier in his career, he was a law professor at Northwestern University and a research fellow with the American Bar Foundation. Additionally, he clerked with Chief Judge T. Emmet Clarie, of the U.S. District Court of Hartford, Connecticut. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the former editor of the American Law and Economics Review and president of the American Law and Economics Association.