Guardrails of Democracy: Law and Reform. Rick Pildes

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

American democracy is being challenged by hyper-polarization, widespread distrust of competing parties, and extremists who seek to weaken democratic values and institutions. In a recent poll, only one-in-six Americans said our democratic system is working very well, while nearly two-in-three voters told a Pew Research Center survey that major reforms are needed. "I certainly feel we are more vulnerable than we have ever been in the modern era," says our podcast guest, constitutional law scholar, Rick Pildes, a professor at New York University’s School of Law, and author of the book, “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process.” In this episode, we discuss proposed changes aimed at strengthening democracy— from ranked-choice voting and reform of political primaries, to limiting gerrymandering, and campaign finance reform.

Transcript

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0:00.0	American democracy is under threat, weakened by hyper-polarization, widespread
0:07.0	distrust of the system, and challenged by extremists who act to weaken
0:12.3	democratic values and institutions. Two-thirds of Americans, pulled recently,
0:17.2	said major reforms are needed.
0:24.5	This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies.
0:28.5	And I'm Ashley Melntite. In this episode we discuss ways to strengthen the
0:33.3	democratic system with a leading constitutional law scholar, an expert on the
0:37.4	legal aspects of the political process. Rick Pildes is a professor at New York
0:42.2	University School of Law and author of the book The Law of Democracy, Legal
0:47.5	Structure of the Political Process. Before asking about reform, let's look at the
0:52.4	crisis we're all facing. The state of our democracy today isn't weaker
0:58.2	now than it was before the election in 2020.
1:03.3	You know, on the one hand, our election process was put under the greatest
1:08.0	stress that it's ever experienced since I believe the 1876 election, which was a
1:12.9	disputed presidential election. And the system in one sense survived all of those
1:18.0	stresses, election administrators, state secretaries of state, courts, all
1:24.6	performed in the way that we would like to see them perform in a professional
1:28.8	rule of law-oriented way, despite all of these stresses. But at the same time, we
1:35.4	became aware how much more easily it is to weaponize different points of
1:43.3	vulnerability in the election process in the service of, you know, partisan
1:47.0	self-interest. Since the election, we now have a situation in which a significant
1:51.8	part of the country believes the election was not fair and free. And that's
	...

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