All posts by Richard Pildes

2021 Supplement to The Law of Democracy Now Available

August 2, 2021, 6:22 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

The 2021 Supplement is now available at this link at Foundation Press. A few things happened regarding the law of democracy over the past year, all of which are covered in the 2021 Supplement — including major new sections on… Continue reading

Competitive Districts Part II: Colorado’s Independent Redistricting Commission

July 26, 2021, 11:00 amredistricting, UncategorizedRichard Pildes

Now that I’ve described in Part I how DRA enables assessing a map’s competitiveness, along with other dimensions, I’ll lay out how DRA makes it possible to compare different maps. To do that, I’ll compare the preliminary map for the… Continue reading

Designing Competitive Redistricting Maps: Part I

July 26, 2021, 6:07 amredistricting, UncategorizedRichard Pildes

Colorado’s congressional districts are being drawn by an independent redistricting commission created in 2018 by “Amendment Y,” a legislatively referred constitutional amendment that voters approved. That amendment also specifies the criteria the commission is to use. After specifying that districts… Continue reading

As House Hearings Begin on the Risk of Electoral Subversion, Here’s One Major Issue to Address

July 25, 2021, 10:56 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

On Wednesday, the House will hold hearings to address the risk of electoral subversion. In light of that, I’m re-upping this NYT piece of mine, titled “There’s Still a Loaded Weapon Lying Around in Our Election System.” The piece identifies… Continue reading

How Voters Eventually Decided 4-Year Terms for Governors were Appropriate

July 22, 2021, 12:54 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Continuing the discussion of the two-year term for the House, Tyler Yeargain, Associate Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, sent me this graph he created. This shows, first, the strength of the original view that democracy… Continue reading

The Shift to Four-Year Terms for Governors

July 22, 2021, 8:53 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

In response to the NYT piece I published today on the two-year term for the House, Rob Richie pointed out to me that governors had originally been enacted to short terms for many decades. Indeed, after WWII more than 20… Continue reading

“America Has Too Frequent Elections”

July 22, 2021, 5:30 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

My new piece in the NYT highlights how institutional design choices, which we come to take for granted as the background features of American democracy, dramatically shape the kind of politics and governance we end up with: The ability of… Continue reading

530 On the Importance of Competitive Elections

July 19, 2021, 9:50 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

By Geoffrey Skelley: Incumbent politicians have moved further toward the political extremes in recent elections partly because they are worried about a primary challenge. But studies suggest that the primary electorate itself isn’t any more ideologically extreme than the… Continue reading

Drawing Maps that Comply with the VRA

July 15, 2021, 1:19 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Dave’s Redistricting App (DRA), which is free, has become an extraordinarily powerful tool in this decade for individuals and groups seeking to draw their own redistricting maps. Thousands of DRA users have created more than half-a-million Congressional, state legislative,… Continue reading

“Hyperpartisan Campaign Finance”

July 13, 2021, 9:00 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

Michael Kang has published this article in the Emory Law Journal. Here’s the abstract: Hyperpartisanship dominates modern American politics and government, but today’s politics are strikingly different from the preceding period of American history, a Cold War Era when bipartisanship… Continue reading

“Political Fragmentation and the Decline of Effective Government”

July 9, 2021, 12:28 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

That’s the title of a new article of mine. Here’s the abstract and the link: What is the most fundamental challenge facing democracies today? One major concern is democratic backsliding, regression, or the rise of “illiberal democracies.” Another concern,… Continue reading

Disclosure Law in a Toxic Political Culture: The Impending Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta Decision

June 27, 2021, 9:56 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

That’s the way I would frame the big-picture perspective on this case. The major precedents on when state demands for disclosure of a group’s donors violate the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of association (outside the campaign-finance context) come from… Continue reading

“A war on truth is raging. Not everyone recognizes we’re in it.”

June 27, 2021, 4:30 amUncategorizedRichard Pildes

From Lee McIntyre and Jonathan Rauch in the Washington Post. This piece reflects the views developed in full in Rauch’s new book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth — #StopTheSteal is not merely Trump’s way of being a… Continue reading

At the Start of the Biden Administration, the Court Expands President Biden’s Powers

June 26, 2021, 1:04 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

At the start of the Biden administration, the Supreme Court in two divided decisions this week expanded the President’s power over the executive branch. The decisions largely divided along lines that Court pundits label conservative and liberal. On the side… Continue reading