George C. Edwards III— Political equality lies at the core of democratic theory. It is difficult to imagine a definition of democracy that does not include equality in voting as a central standard. Who would support an election rule in which we add up all the votes and declare the
Steven B. Smith— In Woody Allen’s film Hannah and her Sisters, a dyspeptic artist played by Max von Sydow remembers watching a boring television show about Auschwitz with “puzzled intellectuals,” all of whom were asking how could the Holocaust could have happened. That’s the wrong question, the artist says. “Given
Michael Walzer— National liberation is an ambitious and also, from the beginning, an ambiguous project. The nation has to be liberated not only from external oppressors—in a way, that’s the easy part—but also from the internal effects of external oppression. Albert Memmi, the Tunisian Jew who wrote perceptively about the
Caroline Winterer— In the dark years of World War II and the Cold War, Americans invented a national mythology that we hold dear to this day: the myth of the “American Enlightenment.” Like a bomb shelter made of ideas rather than concrete, the American Enlightenment (capital A, capital E) spun
Benjamin Ginsberg— Over the past year, America’s political waters have been roiled by a host of investigations and revelations aimed at influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Republicans fired the opening shots by launching a congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton’s role in the deaths of U.S. embassy officials
Benjamin Ginsberg— 1. Presidential succession is governed by the Twentieth and Twenty-Fifth Amendments of the Constitution and by the Presidential Succession Act. Neither the amendments nor the act covers the possibility that the general election winner might die or become incapacitated before the Electoral College votes or that the apparent
Thomas F. Schaller— The 2012 election results were tough medicine for Republicans to swallow. Many conservatives and Republicans believed that Barack Obama was a left-wing radical and a failed president. He headed into the campaign with a national unemployment rate above 7.5 percent, and no incumbent president had won reelection
James West Davidson— We expect too much of our presidents. Especially at this season, when we honor the two chiefs universally acknowledged as our finest. That Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays should fall within days of each other suggests the mysterious workings of divine providence. Or at least, if the Almighty
Anna Lachowska— In what some are calling “coingate”, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Bernie Sanders in Monday night’s Iowa caucus allegedly came down to a series of coin flips. When the votes tied in several precincts, a coin toss determined which candidate would win the delegates. Exactly how many coin flips
Richard L. Hasen— Solving one problem with money in politics can create another. Consider, for example, a law which limits to $100 the amount any donor can give a candidate. A state might enact this limit to prevent politicians from being corrupted by big donors. But candidates facing such low