Ian Millhiser is an American legal journalist and senior correspondent for Vox. He previously wrote for ThinkProgress as a columnist and worked as a senior constitutional policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. [1] Millhiser writes articles about the Supreme Court, and has criticized many of its decisions. [2]
Millhiser received his B.A. in philosophy from Kenyon College in 2000 and his J.D. magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and the senior note editor for the Duke Law Journal . He subsequently clerked for Judge Eric L. Clay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and served as a Teach For America corps member in the Mississippi Delta. He has also worked as an attorney at the National Senior Citizens Law Center’s Federal Rights Project and as assistant director for communications at the American Constitution Society. [3] [4]
Millhiser is the author of two books about the Supreme Court of the United States: Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted (2015) and The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America (2021). Reviews of The Agenda were published in the Guardian [5] and the Washington Post . [6]
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the then-dominant Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since then.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is one of the 13 United States courts of appeals. It has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts:
Elections in Georgia are held to fill various state and federal seats. Regular elections are held every even year. The positions being decided each year varies, as the terms of office varies. The State Senate, State House and U.S. House will typically be up for election, as all of those positions have two-year terms. Special elections are held to fill vacated offices. Georgia is one of seven states that require a run-off election if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in a primary election. Uniquely, Georgia requires a run-off election for state and congressional offices if no candidate wins a majority of the vote in a general election; only Louisiana has a similar requirement, but it operates under a different election system.
John Michael Luttig is an American lawyer and jurist who served as a U.S. circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Luttig resigned his judgeship in 2006 to become the general counsel of Boeing, a position he held until 2019.
In American law, the unitary executive theory is a Constitutional law theory according to which the President of the United States has sole authority over the executive branch. It is "an expansive interpretation of presidential power that aims to centralize greater control over the government in the White House". The theory often comes up in jurisprudential disagreements about the president's ability to remove employees within the executive branch; transparency and access to information; discretion over the implementation of new laws; and the ability to influence agencies' rule-making. There is disagreement about the doctrine's strength and scope, with more expansive versions of the theory becoming the focus of modern political debate. These expansive versions are controversial for both constitutional and practical reasons. Since the Reagan administration, the Supreme Court has embraced a stronger unitary executive, which has been championed primarily by its conservative justices, the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation.
Reed Charles O'Connor is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. He was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2007.
Joshua David Hawley is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Missouri, a seat he has held since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election.
Abbott v. Perez, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the redistricting of the state of Texas following the 2010 census.
The Freedom to Vote Act, introduced as H.R. 1, is a bill in the United States Congress intended to expand voting rights, change campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics, ban partisan gerrymandering, and create new ethics rules for federal officeholders.
Drew Barnett Tipton is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Candace Rae Jackson-Akiwumi is an American attorney who has served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since July 2021. She was previously a staff attorney at the federal defender program in the Northern District of Illinois from 2010 to 2020 and a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington, D.C., from 2020 to 2021.
The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States (PCSCOTUS), also known informally as the Supreme Court commission, was a Presidential Commission established by U.S. President Joe Biden to investigate the idea of reforming the Supreme Court. It was slated to provide a nonpartisan analysis of "the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform".
Ian Bassin is an American lawyer, writer, and activist who serves as executive director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel under President Obama.
Protect Democracy is a nonprofit organization based in the United States. A nonpartisan group, Protect Democracy seeks to check what it believes are authoritarian attacks on U.S. democracy.
Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1 (2023), is a United States Supreme Court case related to redistricting under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The appellees and respondents argued that Alabama's congressional districts discriminated against African-American voters. The Court ruled 5–4 that Alabama's districts likely violated the VRA, maintained an injunction that required Alabama to create an additional majority-minority district.
Democratic backsliding in the United States has been identified as a trend at the state and national levels in various indices and analyses. Democratic backsliding is "a process of regime change towards autocracy that makes the exercise of political power more arbitrary and repressive and that restricts the space for public contestation and political participation in the process of government selection".
Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1 (2023), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that rejected the independent state legislature theory (ISL), a theory that asserts state legislatures have sole authority to establish election laws for federal elections within their respective states without judicial review by state courts, without presentment to state governors, and without constraint by state constitutions. The case arose from the redistricting of North Carolina's districts by its legislature after the 2020 United States census, which the state courts found to be too artificial and partisan, and an extreme case of gerrymandering in favor of the Republican Party.
West Virginia v. B. P. J. is a federal court case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit regarding the issue of transgender people in sports. In 2021, the U.S. state of West Virginia passed a law barring transgender girls and women from participating on women's and girls' sports teams. Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 12-year-old transgender girl, challenged the law on Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX grounds.
Mi Familia Vota is a national nonpartisan Latino voting organization in the United States. While known for its voter turnout work, the organization expanded into issues advocacy as well. The organizations says it wants to have more of a two-way dialogue with voters and elected officials. The organization also conducts polling.