This is Democracy – Episode 272: Supreme Court Reforms

This is Democracy

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Sanford Levinson to discuss the current state of the Supreme Court, recent efforts by Joe Biden to propose reforms, and how effective these proposals would be in practice.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "The Judges."

Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. Levinson is the author of approximately 450 articles, book reviews, or commentaries in professional and popular journals--and a regular contributor to the popular blog Balkinization. He has also written seven books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award, 2d edition 2011); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998, 2d ed. 2018); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006); Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012); An Argument Open to All: Reading the Federalist in the 21st Century (2015); Democracy and Dysfunction (with Jack Balkin) (2018); and, with Cynthia Levinson, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today (2017, 2d ed. 2019, graphic novel ed. 2020). Edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (6th ed. 2015, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought (2016); Reading Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988, with Steven Mallioux); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies (1998, with William Eskridge); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (2005, with Batholomew Sparrow); Torture: A Collection (2004, revised paperback edition, 2006); The Oxford Handbook on the United States Constitution (with Mark Tushnet and Mark Graber, 2015); and Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? (with Mark Tushnet and Mark Graber, 2018). He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2010.