Megan’s research combines her methodological training in intellectual history and political theory with her years of practice experience in environmental, energy regulation, and labor law. She is interested in how the historical origins of doctrines or legal concepts that straddle categories offer insight into their present-day practical applications. Megan’s dissertation considered the relationship between the idea of the “criminal” and the “enemy” in early modern English legal and political treatises and treason trials. Her current projects consider what insights the history of utility regulators’ willingness to impose penalties for imprudent utility management might offer on the role of competition and price regulation in an era of rapidly changing resource economics and whether recent efforts at using public nuisance to address climate and other environmental harms reflect that law’s origins in criminal prosecution. Megan’s previous scholarship has been published in the Yale Law Journal, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, and the International Journal of Law in Context.

Prior to joining Stanford Law, Megan worked as a Staff Attorney with the Sierra Club, where she litigated federal and state cases on behalf of Beyond Coal Campaign, and as an associate at Altshuler Berzon, where she represented public sector labor unions, employees, and community organizations. Megan clerked for Justice Goodwin Liu of the Supreme Court of California and Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Megan graduated from Yale Law School and received her PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. While a law student, Megan represented clients as part of Yale’s Human Rights, Criminal Justice, and Mortgage Foreclosure clinics. She received a BS in Mathematics and BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago, where she was a Student Marshal, and attended the University of Cambridge on a fellowship from the Donnelley Foundation where she earned an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History.