Emily S. Taylor Poppe is Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, where she also directs the Initiative for Inclusive Civil Justice. She holds a joint appointment (by courtesy) in the Department of Sociology and is an Affiliate of the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession.

Professor Taylor Poppe’s research draws on her training in both law and sociology, and is broadly focused on the ways in which social inequality structures individuals’ engagement with law. Her work on access to justice investigates the origins of civil legal problems and their paths toward resolution, as well as the role of legal actors and institutions in shaping these processes. In a second stream of scholarship, she investigates trusts and estates law through an access to justice lens.

Professor Taylor Poppe is also active in law reform efforts. She is the Reporter for the Uniform Law Commission project on the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, which offers an accessible means of transferring property to minors, even in the absence of more sophisticated estate planning. In addition, she is an Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute project on Principles of the Law: High-Volume Civil Adjudication, which aims to identify best practices for debt collection, foreclosure, government child support enforcement, and eviction cases, which are characterized by high levels of default and significant resource and information asymmetries between plaintiffs and defendants.

Professor Taylor Poppe is deeply engaged in the scholarly community. She is on the editorial advisory board of Law & Society Review and recently completed a term on the editorial board of Law & Social Inquiry. She is an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trusts and Estates Counsel (ACTEC), has held leadership roles in the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Law Section and AALS Section on Trusts and Estates, and chairs the Steering Committee for the International Access to Justice Forum.

She has been an active member of the Law & Society Association since graduate school, when she twice participated in the LSA Graduate Student Workshop. She has also served on the Stan Wheeler Mentorship Award Committee and most recently co-chaired the New Legal Realism CRN for several years with Professor Riaz Tejani. She has consistently organized and participated in sessions at the LSA annual meeting.

Professor Taylor Poppe received her PhD in Sociology from Cornell University, her JD from Northwestern (Pritzker) School of Law, and AB degrees in Public Policy and Spanish from Duke University.