CONFERENCES & EVENTS

American Political Institutions: Fragile or Resilient?

February 13, 2025
7:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

Lisa L. Miller, Beau Breslin, and Henry L. Chambers, Jr. discussed the challenges and opportunities in maintaining democratic institutions. They examined the current political landscape in the United States, including foundational principles such as the system of separated powers, checks and balances, and federalism. This event was organized by the Network for Responsible Public Policy.

Video

SPEAKERS

LISA L. MILLER, a professor in the political science department at Rutgers University, has research interests in crime and punishment, racial inequality, democratic accountability, constitutions, and social policy. She has written three books: The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics (OUP, 2016), The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty and the Politics of Crime Control (OUP, 2008) and The Politics of Community Crime Prevention (Dartmouth, 2001). Her work has appeared in Law and Society Review, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Race and Ethnic Politics, Policy Studies Journal, and Annual Review of Law and Social Science, among others. Professor Miller has served as a Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, and as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University.  Her current book project is titled, The Myth of Checks and Balances and the American Democratic Deficit.

BEAU BRESLIN is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Professor of Political Science at Skidmore College. Skidmore’s Dean of the Faculty from 2011 to 2018, Breslin has called the College in Saratoga Springs, NY his professional home for 25 years. He is the author of numerous articles on topics ranging from constitutional theory to the death penalty to restorative justice. He has also published three books: The Communitarian Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), From Words to Worlds: Exploring Constitutional Functionality (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought, 2009), and his latest, A Constitution for the Living: Imagining How Five Generations of Americans Would Rewrite the Nation’s Fundamental Law (Stanford University Press, 2021).  He holds a B.A. in political science from Hobart College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in constitutional thought from the University of Pennsylvania.

HENRY L. CHAMBERS, JR., is Professor of Law and Austin E. Owen Research Scholar at the University of Richmond.  He teaches and writes in the areas of voting rights, employment discrimination, constitutional law, criminal law, and law and religion.  His upcoming essay, “Douglass, Lincoln, and Douglas before Dred Scott: A Few Thoughts on Freedom, Equality, and Affirmative Action,” considers how past visions of equality and inequality continue to arise in today’s affirmative action discussions.  Chambers served as Special Assistant Attorney General for redistricting matters for the Commonwealth of Virginia during the post-2010 Census redistricting cycle. Recent appointments include serving as the vice-chair of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission, as a member of the Virginia Governor’s Commission to Examine Racial and Economic Inequity in the Law, and as an advisor to the Virginia Model Jury Instruction Committee. Chambers has lectured on constitutional law in various venues, including through the We The People program, which provides civic education instruction to school teachers and the public; at James Madison’s Montpelier; and at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville. He is the editor of the pocket pamphlet, American Legacy: The United States Constitution and Other Essential Documents of American Democracy, 2nd Edition (Center for Civic Education 2023).

EVENT CO-SPONSORS

Network for Responsible Public Policy
The Academy of Political Science
The Puffin Foundation