The fourth session of our 6-part open course/reading group “What To Do About The Courts,” cohosted with the People’s Parity Project, took place on April 16 at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT, be led by Professors Ganesh Sitaraman and Amy Kapczynski.
TOPIC: Several reforms have been proposed to restructure, reform, and/or disempower the courts, each with different stakes and addressing different problems with the Supreme Court as it is today. In this first of two sessions addressing specific proposals, we will examine fast-tracking Congressional review of Supreme Court decisions, expanding and restructuring the Supreme Court, term limits, and ethics requirements.
FACULTY: Ganesh Sitaraman is the New York Alumni Chancellor’s Chair in Law at Vanderbilt Law School, as well as the Director of the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy and Regulation. He teaches and writes about constitutional law, the regulatory state, economic policy, democracy and foreign affairs, and has written both academic and popular articles on reforming the Supreme Court. His most recent book is Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It.
Amy Kapczynski is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project, cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog, and Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership. Her research focuses on law and political economy, and theorizes the failures of legal logic and structure that condition contemporary inequality, precarity, and hollowed out democracy.
READINGS: The readings (+ one podcast!) for this session are as follows:
- Fast-Track Congressional Review: How to Rein In an All-Too-Powerful Supreme Court (The Atlantic)
- Restructuring the Court: How to Save the Supreme Court (Vox)
- Term Limits: US judge, scholars urge Supreme Court term limits in bipartisan push (Reuters)
- Court Expansion: To Save Democracy, We Must Expand the Court (Democracy Docket)
- Ethics Reform: Contempt of Court podcast (The Nation)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: