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Category: Law

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Kluge Center Welcomes New Director Kevin Butterfield

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

Kevin Butterfield, noted historian of American history and most recently executive director of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, has joined the Library of Congress as Director of the John W. Kluge Center. Butterfield succeeds Brent Yacobucci, who has returned to managing the energy and materials …

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What’s Behind the Idea of a Partisan Judiciary?

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

On September 30, the John W. Kluge Center, the Brookings Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute, convened the latest panel discussion in the Pillars of Democracy series, this one on the causes of changing attitudes towards the federal judiciary, as well as the ways that the third branch of government can win Americans’ trust back. …

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How Did The Courts Become So Politicized?

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

Perhaps no institution serves as a better example of changing attitudes towards US institutions than the judiciary, and specifically the Supreme Court. Increasingly, justices are viewed through a lens of partisanship or ideology, and they are seen as interested in achieving the policy goals of their side rather than as disinterested legal thinkers. In the …

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Our Common Purpose: The Complete Collection

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

In June 2020, the Kluge Center announced Danielle Allen as the winner of the Kluge Prize, launching the Our Common Purpose Campaign for Civic Strength at the Library of Congress. Allen hosted a series of exciting conversations at the Library to explore the nation’s civic life and ways that people from all political beliefs and …

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Why Reforming Electoral Institutions Might Be the Best Way to Change Policymaking

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

On April 15, the John W. Kluge Center held its second event in the Our Common Purpose Series with Kluge Prize winner Danielle Allen. How Political Institutions Shape Outcomes and How We Might Reform Them convened a panel of experts on the ways that electoral decision-making systems can encourage some outcomes over others. They also …

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Our Common Purpose: Second Event Looks at Reforming Electoral Institutions

Posted by: John Haskell

At any point in time we might look at our political institutions – Congress, the presidency, the courts, elections, etc. – and see them as static, impervious to change in the larger social or cultural environment. In fact, that perception is wrong. Our political institutions evolve just as the larger culture does. As the nation’s …

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Part 2 – Sarah Binder Weighs In: Institutional Hardball – in Congress and the White House – and the legislative road ahead

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is part two of  a guest post by Janna Deitz, Kluge Center Program Specialist in Outreach and Partnerships. Find the first post here. Sarah Binder is the most recent Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, and senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. …

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Exploring African Law and Ancient Egypt

Posted by: Travis Hensley

The following is a guest post by Alexandre Loktionov, PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a 2016 AHRC Fellow at The John W. Kluge Center. I am an Egyptologist happily working as a fellow at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. To some, I recognize that …