News

How P•LAW Workshops Tackle Democracy’s Toughest Questions
June 2, 2025

Interested in learning more about PLAW workshops?

Click link below for full article.

Policy Advocacy Clinic Students Travel to Louisiana Capitol
May 29, 2025

On April 28th, students in the Policy Advocacy Clinic traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to present their research on Republican support for criminal justice reform in the South. The students spent the semester analyzing thousands of bills…

Congratulations to our students in the P*Law Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) Class of 2025!
May 26, 2025

Our PLUS graduates are heading off to exciting post-grad fellowships, new roles as human rights organizers, consultants, paralegals, legal analysts, and civil rights legal assistants—and some are diving into LSAT prep and law school applications along the way. We wish you all the best. Please stay in touch with all of us at P*Law!

P•LAW is thrilled to welcome our 2025-26 Crane Fellows in Law & Public Policy
May 23, 2025

Please help us welcome our new P•LAW Fellows, Professors Kate Shaw and Catherine Powell, for the 2025-26 academic year!

 

Kate Shaw is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.

Shaw is a constitutional law scholar who has also taught courses in administrative law and legislation…

Congratulations to P*LAW affiliated scholar Sarah Staszak on her well-deserved promotion to Senior Research Scholar
May 14, 2025

Sarah Staszak recently presented her new book, "Privatizing Justice: Arbitration and the Decline of Public Governance in the U.S.," to P*LAW's audience at the Frontiers of Law Seminar.  Congratulations Sarah!

Congratulations to P*LAW Affiliated Faculty Charles Cameron
May 8, 2025

Professor Charles Cameron has been awarded APSA’s Law and Court Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given for a “lifetime of significant scholarship, teaching and service to the Law and Courts field.”  

P*LAW Fellow Rebecca Ingber's new piece in Just Security, "In Congress, a Welcome, But Flawed, Step to Stop Trump’s Transfers to Torture"
May 8, 2025

Senate Democrats are demanding the Trump administration provide information on its transfers to torture in El Salvador, including actions it has taken in response to court orders. On May 1, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Alex Padilla (D-CA),…

Law and Ethics of Human Rights Journal publishes symposium, including Deborah Pearlstein’s article The Impact of Movement “Originalism” on American Legal Polarization
May 1, 2025

The Law and Ethics of Human Rights (LEHR) Journal publishes symposium on polarized constitutionalism, including Professor Deborah Pearlstein’s article The Impact of Movement “Originalism” on American Legal Polarization.

P•LAW's Prof. Ned Foley's new paper, "The Real Preference of Voters”: Madison’s Idea of a Top-Three Election and The Present Necessity of Reform"
April 29, 2025

Madisonian democracy, as James Madison himself propounded it and as it has subsequently become to be practiced in the United States, has been viewed as different from the democratic theory developed by the French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet and the many subsequent scholars of social choice working in Condorcet’s wake. A letter that Madison…

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein Quoted on Presidential Emergency Powers with CNN's Fareed Zakaria
April 28, 2025

Last Look: How America – and Trump – became addicted to emergency powers.  Fareed Zakaria explains how President Donald Trump’s frequent use of emergency powers has exposed a deep flaw in the US constitutional structure.

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein Appears on "On With Kara Swisher"
April 17, 2025

“Trump, Immigration & the Erosion of Due Process”

President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has led to a series of legal skirmishes with major constitutional implications. To unpack it all, Kara speaks to three experts: 

Caitlin Dickerson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer for The Atlantic who…

P*LAW Liman Fellows Attend 2025 Yale Law School Colloquium
April 11, 2025

P*Law's 2025 Liman Undergraduate Fellows traveled to Yale Law School last week with faculty advisor Prof. Lynda Dodd to attend the annual Arthur Liman Center Colloquium, which brings together scholars, students, lawyers, social scientists, current and former Liman Fellows, and other experts to address issues in criminal and civil law reform and…

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein writes in the Washington Post, "Can Trump run for a third term? The 22nd Amendment flatly prevents it."
March 31, 2025

President Donald Trump has suggested that “methods” exist by which he could attempt to serve a third term in the White House, an act that is barred by the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“I’m not joking,” Trump said, in a Sunday interview with NBC News, when asked to clarify speculative comments on the possibility.

Read the…

Professor Deborah Pearlstein New Paper, "The Impact of Movement "Originalism" on American Legal Polarization"
March 28, 2025

Originalism was championed by early leaders of the conservative legal movement for the purpose of advancing a substantive political agenda, including the rejection of various constitutional protections of civil and social equality. Yet unlike the equality-focused Civil Rights Movement from which conservative lawyers drew key lessons, the…

Prof. Deborah Pearlstein writes for the NYT, "They Are America’s Most Powerful Law Firms. Their Silence Is Deafening."
March 25, 2025

In his chaotic attempt to dismantle democratic governance, redefine citizenship and cast aside fundamental rights of speech and due process, President Trump has all but declared war on one of the most effective forces to stand in his way: America’s legal institutions.

Click on link below to access full article.

Prof. Deborah Pearstein appears on CNN about Trump DOJ facing off in court
March 21, 2025

CNN from Happening today: Judge Boasberg and Trump DOJ face off in court.

CNN Anchors are Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez. 

P*LAW Faculty Fellow Rebecca Ingber writes on the Alien Enemies Act Human Rights Issues
March 20, 2025

The Trump Administration’s Recent Removals to El Salvador Violate the Prohibition on Transfer to Torture

Several of our colleagues have already provided excellent analyses of the fast-evolving legal and factual questions presented by President Donald Trump’s pretextual and abusive invocation of the Alien Enemies…

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.

P*LAW Former Law Fellow has compiled an archive of legally significant Guatemalan court documents available on the Digital Princeton University Library
March 11, 2025

Princeton University Library (PUL) has published a new digital archive that documents the ground-breaking atrocity trials that occurred in Guatemala’s domestic courts after that country’s 36-year armed conflict (1960-1996). The court records in this archive were collected by Temple Law Professor