Law & Jurisprudence

U.S. Supreme court confirmations are a good time to reflect on some basic precepts of our "separation of powers" system of government. Like previous nominees, Sonia Sotomayor faced the Senate judiciary committee's firing squad, as partisan tensions played out over lifetime appointment to a court that has no retirement age. At 54 years of age, Sotomayor, whose nomination the full Senate votes on today, easily could serve for three decades.

Sponsored by the New America Foundation and FairVote.

On June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated voting rights ruling in the NAMUDNO case (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder). Many long-time experts are sifting through the decision to understand the broad implications for the future of voting rights protections and minority representation in the United States.

This event has been postponed until further notice.  We apologize for any inconvenience. 

Please join the New America Foundation for a conversation with Gordon Silverstein on his book Law's Allure: How Law Shapes, Constrains, Saves, and Kills Politics.

Now you can add same-sex marriage to the long list of things that Californians have turned into an incoherent mess.

With Tuesday’s California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8’s gay-marriage ban--and the marriages of those couples who tied the knot last year while gay marriage was legal--California finds itself in a very strange place, matrimonially speaking.

I love to shoot guns as much as the next red-blooded American -- hunting rifles at home in Vermont with friends, Glocks in Pittsburgh with cousins; I understand the excitement and the rush and the eventual calm that shooting enthusiasts so enjoy. But at no point in my life have I ever felt compelled to carry or own a gun.

Since Barack Obama has taken office, gun sales across America have surged. Firearm purchases under a Democratic president appear absolutely recession… more

In the same week that the media reported on a burgeoning tent city in California's capital, Sacramento joined Los Angeles and other cities in making it a crime to scavenge in recycling bins placed in front of homes. A staff report for the Sacramento City Council argued that such scavenging "can result in identity theft, injuries to the scavengers, waste being strewn about the surrounding areas, containers being left open to emit foul odors [and] attract animals and pests, and… more

Perhaps the most glaring problem facing conservative legal activists in the ‘60s and ‘70s was, as Steven Teles of the University of Maryland School of ...

This article is forthcoming in Studies in American Political Development, April 2009

In November 2005, hotel employees in the city of Emeryville, California got some good news. Local voters had passed a “living wage” law requiring hotels to pay workers a minimum of nine dollars per hour plus extra for certain duties. In an expensive town--Emeryville occupies a narrow peninsula in the San Francisco Bay, making it attractive to tourists--this was welcome news. As the months went by, however, employees at one hotel, the Woodfin Suites, found that they were still being paid less than the law required. In… more