Richard Pildes

Here's an excerpt from Sam's essay “In the interim, our politics have coarsened and the discourse is not one of weak institutions but of bad people.

In 2020, I published an article with Mike Norton in the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal titled How Outside Money Makes Governing More Difficult.

Steve Skowronek, one of the top historians on American institutional and political development, has published a new book, The Adaptability Paradox: Political Inclusion and Constitutional Resilience. I've written an essay for a symposium on the book. Here are some excerpts from that essay.

With democracies across the world buffeted by increasing extremism and division, an NYU Law Forum on March 25 focused on the root causes and potential solutions to the woes facing democracy. The event featured as panelists Professor Bob Bauer; Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law; and

In an essay titled in our “What's Next” series at the NYU Democracy Project, Stephen Richer outlines the benefits that he sees cellphone voting could have. Here's an excerpt:

I did this podcast for Blue City Blues, which is devoted to long-form discussions of the governance challenges with which Blue Cities have been struggling. Here is their summary of the podcast; free access is available: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0lP62b3c1gn8EUxufWpo2M

At Brookings, these authors have a piece suggesting more uncertain than in most initial reports about the full partisan consequences of Louisiana v. Callais. The piece offers details about specific Southern VRA districts that might be unwound and the range of potential partisan consequences. Here's a brief excerpt:

The LA legislature does not need and did not need the Court's order yesterday to engage in re-redistricting.

We seldom hear about issues of judicial independence and rule of law in less Western countries. But at the NYU Democracy Project today, we feature an essay from retired Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, who previously served on the Supreme Court of Pakistan. He explains his resignation from that court in the wake of the government's attacks on judicial independence:

Both before and after Callais, a number of commentators have suggested Congress should enact some form of proportional representation to ensure continued black representation in the South. This important new NYT piece by Nate Cohn demonstrates that such a radical shift in American electoral structures is not necessary to achieve that goal.