Russell R. Wheeler is President of the Governance Institute, a small, non-partisan think tank with an interest in interbranch relations and their policy implications, and a Visiting Fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program. From 1977 until 2005, he was with the Federal Judicial Center, the federal courts’ research and education agency, serving as deputy director since 1991. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in political science in 1970.

He is an adjunct professor at the Washington College of Law, American University, and serves on the Board of Advisors of the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, the Board of Directors of the Justice Studies Center of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, and the American Bar Association Incoming President’s Task Force on Federal Judicial Nominations. He has published articles in numerous academic journals on judicial selection and education, judges’ extrajudicial activities, judicial independence and accountability, and judicial governance.