Christopher Brett Jaeger

Professor Chris Jaeger joined the Baylor Law faculty in the Summer of 2021, following two years of service as an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at NYU School of Law.    

Professor Jaeger’s interdisciplinary research examines ways in which legal rules, standards, and processes reflect intuitive beliefs (and misbeliefs) about the human mind. He is currently studying law’s frequently used “reasonableness” standard, applying experimental techniques from psychology to investigate how we decide what is "reasonable."
  
Professor Jaeger’s scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, the Florida Law Review, and the Alabama Law Review, and in peer-reviewed journals such as Cognitive Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, and Memory & Cognition.  In 2025, he received Baylor University’s prestigious Outstanding Faculty Scholarship Award among all university tenure-track faculty, and his article The Hand Formula’s Unequal Inputs was co-winner of the 2025 AALS Scholarly Papers Competition for best work by a faculty member in their first five years of law teaching.  Professor Jaeger also serves on the editorial board of Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, an interdisciplinary law and psychology journal published through the American Psychological Association.  

Professor Jaeger graduated Order of the Coif from Vanderbilt Law School, where he participated in the Vanderbilt Legal Academy Scholars Program, served as an Articles Editor for the Vanderbilt Law Review, and published two student notes on topics bridging law and psychology.  After law school, Professor Jaeger clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for Judge Duane Benton. He then returned to Nashville, where he enjoyed a varied law practice at Stites & Harbison, PLLC, until his academic interests drew him back to Vanderbilt for his Ph.D. in psychology.

Professor Jaeger and his wife, Jessica, are the proud parents of two children, an aspiring artist and an aspiring superhero. Professor Jaeger continues to play soccer, tennis, pickleball, and other sports (though not as well as he used to), and he also enjoys coaching his kids, board games, and fantasy football.


 

Courses Taught

Contracts I, Contract II, Alternative Dispute Resolution, LARC 3: Persuasive Communication