Jeannine Bell is a Curt and Linda Rodin Professor of Law and Social Justice at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She moved to Loyola in 2022, from the IU Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana where she was a Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law.
Bell earned her A.B. from Harvard College, and received her M.A., J.D., and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Bell’s research focuses on the interdisciplinary analyses of bias-motivated or hate crime, housing integration, and policing. She uses various research methods and data sources to expose how bias operates in different legal environments and identify working solutions.
Bell is a Life Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and an elected member of the American Law Institute. From 2016 to 2018, she was a coeditor of Law & Society Review. She also served as Treasurer of the Law & Society Association from 2011 to 2013. Bell was previously a Visiting Scholar at the ABF from 2005 to 2006.
Her first book, Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime (New York University Press, 2002), is an ethnographic study of how hate crime law works in practice, from the perspective of a police hate crime unit enforcing the law. Bell’s most recent book, Hate Thy Neighbor: Move-In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing (New York University Press, 2013), was the first study into the role of violence, intimidation, and fear in maintaining housing segregation. Bell began research on Hate Thy Neighbor while a Visiting Scholar at the ABF.
A frequent commentator on the news and public affairs, Professor Bell writes widely on policing and hate crime issues. Her articles have appeared in journals around the country including Harvard Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review, Boston University Law Review, and Law & Society Review. She is currently working on a book on policing, based on more than 80 interviews she did with her graduate students and one of her faculty colleagues in Bloomington.