Democracy at the Turning Point: Representation, Fairness and America's Third Century (In Partnership with the Robert H. Jackson Center)

The infrastructure of American democracy has been at risk over the last decade. The basic structures of elections have been under attack by disinformation, legal erosion, and authoritarianism. Under the guise of freedom of speech, there is a competition over whether American democracy will be for the many or for the few. Each day will include a 25-minute lecture, 25 minutes of discussion and 10 minutes focused on action and resources. This course will explore the tensions in the state of affairs for U.S. democracy from historical, legal, and critical perspectives.

Class Times

Atiba R. Ellis

Atiba R. Ellis is the Laura B. Chisolm Distinguished Research Scholar and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. A nationally recognized voting rights scholar, his primary research focuses on how racial and class-based oppression interact to continue to abridge and deny the right to vote to communities on the margins of American democracy. His work has analyzed voter identification laws for their socioeconomic effects, situated felon disenfranchisement laws as enforcing a political underclass, analyzed the theoretical scope of the Citizens United decision, and described the ideological drivers of vote suppression. His work is interdisciplinary in nature, spanning doctrinal legal analysis, critical political theory, race and the law, legal history, and innovative legal pedagogy.