News

P*LAW Faculty Affiliate Kim Lane Scheppele delivers the Inaugural Sanford Levinson Lecture in Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas
March 14, 2025

P*LAW Faculty Affiliate Kim Lane Scheppele delivers the Inaugural Sanford Levinson Lecture in Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas on March 21, 2025, at 4pm. Details and registration are available in the link.

Congratulations to the 2025 Liman Fellows
March 4, 2025

Henry Hsiao '26 is a Politics major from Princeton, NJ, pursuing minors in German and Music. His academic research focuses on the legal structuring/operation of American government institutions—such as legislatures, the administrative state, or courts—at both the federal and subnational level. On…

Prof. Martin Flaherty co-authoring a new international human rights casebook for entitled, "Human Rights in Critical Times"
Feb. 25, 2025

Prof. Martin Flaherty co-authoring a new international human rights casebook for entitled, "Human Rights in Critical Times" with Margaret Satterthwaite of NYU Law School and current UN Special Rapporteur on Judges and Lawyers, and Anjli Parrin of the University of Chicago Law School.

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein in USA Today, "Barred from running for a third term, Trump keeps talking about it"
Feb. 21, 2025

The 22nd Amendment to the Constitution states “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Princeton University constitutional law scholar Deborah Pearlstein said the 22nd Amendment bars Trump from running again "full stop." If he did try to, she believes state authorities would reject efforts to get his…

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein on The Back Room podcast with Andy Ostroy
Feb. 7, 2025

Deborah Pearlstein and Andy Ostroy discuss her latest New York Times opinion piece, The Law Is Not Fully Trump's Yet, and whether the judicial system can and will serve as an effective check on Donald Trump's most destructive, democracy-endangering actions.

Professor Rebecca Ingber's new Just Security Article, "What Just Happened: At Guantanamo’s Migrant Operation Center"
Feb. 6, 2025

President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on Jan. 29 that directed “the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security … to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval…

Professor Deborah Pearlstein joins Morning Joe to discuss her column for the NYT outlining some of Trump’s actions implemented in his first few days in office and why she says Trump is hardly the first president to claim broad executive power
Feb. 4, 2025

Professor Deborah Pearlstein joins Morning Joe to discuss her column for the NYT outlining some of Trump’s actions implemented in his first few days in office and why she says Trump is hardly the first president to claim broad executive power, but the difference is not just the enormity of his claims, it's that the administration mostly…

P*LAW UG Cicero Fellow Diya Kraybill Named a Schwarzman Scholar
Feb. 4, 2025

Princeton Class of 2025 member Diya Kraybill, Issa Mudashiru and James Zhang have been named Schwarzman Scholars and will attend a one-year, fully funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The Princeton winners are among 150 Schwarzman Scholars representing 38 countries and 105 universities,…

P*LAW Affiliated Faculty Kim Scheppele speaks to Dahlia Lithwick on removing democracy’s guardrails
Feb. 1, 2025

Please listen to@kimlanelaw.bsky.socialexplain that while the eank insanity of the past 12 days is new to America, it's familiar in Hungary (and Poland and Turkey) down to every particular. When lawyers are more dangerous than tanks in the street...

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein's New York Times Essay, "The Law Is Not Fully Trump’s Yet"
Jan. 30, 2025

Through the sometimes blinding storm of executive orders and memorandums in the opening days of President Trump’s new administration, one pattern is already becoming clear: This is not a crew particularly interested in law.

P*LAW Director Deborah Pearlstein on her forthcoming new book, Losing the Law
Jan. 27, 2025

Congratulations to P*LAW Director Deborah Pearlstein, whose forthcoming book, Losing the Law, is now under contract with Princeton University Press. The book takes on the growing phenomenon of American legal polarization – how it developed over the past 40 years, the movement forces driving it, and its increasing role in…

Slate Interviews Prof. Deborah Pearlstein on Effect of Trump's Executive Orders
Jan. 21, 2025

Can Trump Actually Do All That?

Sorting through how much of that was legal—and how little was legally binding.  On the day he was inaugurated, Donald Trump set about signing executive orders on birthright citizenship, the TikTok ban, and withdrawing from various international bodies, treaties and accords. Has he…

Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, has published Ned Foley's Essay "Should We Be Saying President Haley?"
Jan. 18, 2025

It’s very likely that the former South Carolina governor was more popular than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. But our system won’t recognize it.

Prof. Udi Ofer's Policy Advocacy Clinic Students Release Anaylsis of Federal Crack-Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparities, Draw Bipartisan Praise
Jan. 17, 2025

Last month, Princeton Policy Advocacy Clinic students issued a report analyzing who is most impacted by the crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparities. Today, President Biden commuted the sentences of thousands of people sentenced under this 18-to-1 sentencing disparity.

In Defense of Partisanship Book Launch featuring Julian Zelizer
Jan. 16, 2025

IN DEFENSE OF PARTISANSHIP imagines what partisanship might look like if we put into place important reforms. Through a sweeping history of Congress since the Founding, Zelizer offers a way forward.  Some are simple—repeal the filibuster, restore the campaign-finance rules undone by the Citizens United decision—while others are…

P*LAW Affiliated Faculty Kim Scheppele’s Op-Ed in the New York Times “Are We Sleepwalking into Autocracy?”
Jan. 15, 2025

Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?

What we can learn from countries that have pushed back on threats to democracy.

P*LAW Fellow Ned Foley's new article "Is PR the Panacea?"
Jan. 14, 2025

Proportional representation isn't reform that would work for Senate and presidential elections, both of which need reforming as much as House of Representatives elections.

[This essay was originally posted on the Election Law Blog

Undergrad Liman Fellowship Applications are Due January 10th
Dec. 20, 2024

Undergraduate applications for the Liman Fellowship are due January 10, 2025.  

The Arthur J. Liman Public Interest Program honors a lawyer who personified the ideal of commitment to the public interest. Throughout his long and distinguished career, he demonstrated how dedicated lawyers in both public and private…

Zaid Al-Ali 's article in The National "Syria needs an interim constitution quickly to ensure it institutions are not lost"
Dec. 16, 2024

Syria needs an interim constitution quickly to ensure its institutions are not lost

Zaid al-Ali is a visiting fellow at Princeton University and the author of ‘Arab Constitutionalism’

Syria has been thrust into unprecedented territory. 

Asst. Professor Peter Henderson's New Story on AI terms of Use Restrictions w/ Mark Lemley
Dec. 9, 2024

There's been a recent stir about terms of use restrictions on AI outputs & models. We dig into the legal analysis, questioning their enforceability.