In a NYT article today, John Schwartz accurately quotes me as expressing skepticism about whether various political reforms are likely to fundamentally transform the hyerpolarized politics of our era. I want to elaborate briefly on those comments, since John… Continue reading

Politico is running a piece called “99 Ways to Fix American Elections,” with brief suggestions from 99 commentators. One of the most original and intriguing comes from Elaine Kamarck, of the Brookings Institution: In our constitutional system, presidents don’t govern… Continue reading

That’s the title of an op-ed today in the NY Times, by David Shribram of McGill University, with the subtitle: “The campaign for prime minister just started. And it’s almost over.” The piece points out many ways in which Canadian… Continue reading

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump House Republicans should allow Chairs of Committees to remain for longer than 6 years. It forces great people, and real leaders, to leave after serving. The Dems have unlimited terms. While that has its own problems,… Continue reading

That’s what I called the assertions from Dr. Robert Epstein in his July testimony to a Senate committee. Epstein’s non-peer reviewed report and testimony have gotten much more attention in the last couple of days after President Trump tweeted about… Continue reading

Russians and campaign finance law. Manipulation of democracy through social media. The transformative role of small donors in campaigns. Partisan gerrymandering. Read, and teach, all about it through the 2019 Supplement to The Law of Democracy, now available here: https://3668083.app.netsuite.com/core/media/media.nl?id=3508202&c=3668083&h=6b593bcd626e97f26edb&_xt=.pdf

The Supreme Court has long recognized that laws regulating candidate access to the ballot implicate the First Amendment and associational rights of voters. After all, if a candidate cannot get on the ballot, voters cannot vote for that candidate. As… Continue reading

We are beginning to get little windows into the internal governmental process involved in the reversal-of-course on the Census issue. As expected, the DOJ lawyers concluded that the issue was over, because there was not enough time left to generate… Continue reading

Fred Gray, now 88 years old, is one of the major lawyers of the civil-rights movement, though my sense is he is less well-known nationally than he ought to be, perhaps because he has spent his life in Alabama. Randy… Continue reading

Michael Ramsey, one of the leading scholars/defenders of originalism, has a post on Rucho at The Originalism Blog that offers a distinct assessment of the decision. Critics of Rucho will like the first half of his analysis, but not the… Continue reading

Yesterday at the Balkinization blog, I put up this perspective on the Court’s Census decision. Here is a bit of that analysis: Today’s decision in the Census case is a powerful example of what I call an “institutionally realist” approach… Continue reading

From this Washington Post piece by Amber Phillips: That’s what redistricting advocates in North Carolina plan to do next. “North Carolina can’t force redistricting reform on its legislature, but it can take it to the state courts, and we will… Continue reading

That’s the title on Larry Bartel’s op-ed in today’s NYT about reforming the presidential primary process. It’s noteworthy that there’s been an outpouring of commentary and academic work in the past few years urging re-consideration of the nominations process we… Continue reading

Justice Alito has always had a particularly keen interest in redistricting, which I assume traces to his father’s involvement with the redistricting process during his work with the New Jersey legislature.  Thus, I am not surprised he wrote the dissent… Continue reading