Civil Litigation, Anti-Discrimination law, Education Law, Psychology and Law, Conflict and Dispute Resolution, Appropriate Dispute Resolution, Oregon Child Advocacy Project

Dr. Erik Girvan is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law and Faculty Director of the law school’s Conflict and Dispute Resolution Program. Erik teaches courses in civil litigation, the psychology and law of discrimination, and the psychology of conflict. Erik earned his J.D. at Harvard Law School and Ph.D. (Social and Political Psychology) at the University of Minnesota. As a practicing attorney, Erik litigated over 100 complex commercial cases in various federal and state jurisdictions across the country. Erik’s research investigates intergroup conflict, including how group-based stereotypes, attitudes, and other biases might impact decisions in the legal system and related contexts, such as school discipline. In collaboration with a diverse variety of legal and other professionals, Erik also develops and tests practical ways to reduce or eliminate the impacts of biases and make conflicts, where they occur, more constructive.

Associations Between Community-Level Racial Biases, Office Discipline Referrals, and Out-of-School Suspensions. School Psychology Review, 1-15 (2021) (with Kent McIntosh and Maria Santiago-Rosario).

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: How Federal Anti-Discrimination Law Fails to Protect Equal Educational Opportunity. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Education Law (2021) 

Towards a Problem-Solving Appraoch to Addressing Racial Dispariteis in School Discipline Under Anti-Discrimination Law. 50 Univ. of Memphis Law Review 995-1090 (2020) (symposium issue on Closing the Gap: Solutions to Educational Inequality).

Tail, tusk, and trunk: What different metrics reveal about racial disproportionality in school discipline. 54(1) Educational Psychologist 40-59 (2019) (with Kent McIntosh and Keith Smolkowski). 

The Law and Social Psychology of Racial Disparities in School Discipline. 4 Advances in Psycholology and Law 235-76 (2019).

Wise Restraints?: Learning Legal Rules, Not Standards, Reduces the Effects of Stereotypes in Legal Decision-Making. 22 Psychology, Public Policy, & Law 31 (2016).

Phone: (541) 346-8934
Email: girvan@uoregon.edu
Websites:​ Google Scholar, ​SSRN Author Page