Latest News

Elections and Judicial Performance

• Constitution Law Prof Blog discusses the 7th Circuit case upholding Illinois’s campaign finance disclosure law which we blogged about this week.

• Bloomberg reported that a Montana law making it a crime for political parties to endorse candidates in state judicial races was blocked by the 9th Circuit as an unconstitutional ban on free speech.

How Appealing has a round-up of links on the case.

Criminal Justice

• The Justice Policy Institute has declared September to be “Bail Month” and is running series of articles on the bail system to educate the public on how the system works and where it fails and to advocate for bail reform. If you’re in DC, there is a free panel discussion next week.

• The Crime Report

Other Links

• The Brennan Center’s 2012 Student Voting Guide with information about eligibility and registration is now available.

• Monday was Constitution Day! Here are some blogs reflecting on the day: the ACLU on what American actually know about the Constitution, the National Womens Law Center on Title IX, the Smithsonian Institution’s American History Museum on teaching the Constitution in public schools, and the Hill’s Congress blog.

• Last week, the Brookings Institution released a paper by Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame  which shows improvement in poverty gaps and deep poverty in the U.S.  The paper looks at how consumption measures better identify who is impoverished than do income measures and concludes that government programs have been effective in combating poverty and decreasing the number of impoverished Americans. It finds that tax policies (particularly those favorable to families, like the earned income tax credit), SNAP (food stamps) and Social Security have most benefited the poor.

The report is getting a some  play on the internet this week: Freakonomics, Slate, Global Economics Watch Blog. Here is the Shriver Brief take on the census data and poverty.