This edition of the Hoover Institution Briefing on Revitalizing American Institutions features a conference on executive-judicial relations, as well as thoughts on how to strengthen civic culture, the burdensome rulemaking that shackles individuals and institutions, and whether changes to electoral rules actually impact election outcomes. It also features the latest episode of Free Speech Unmuted, which looks at recent Supreme Court rulings in two cases centering on the power of social media companies to censor.
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Executive-Judicial Relations Conference
On June 6–7, Visiting Fellow Sharece Thrower brought together leading experts for a conference at Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions (RAI) to discuss the mechanisms that define the US governing framework of separation of powers, specifically interactions between the executive and judicial branches. A key theme throughout the discussion was how factors including ideology, ambition, political salience, and the merits of individual cases can sway judicial decisions and executive or prosecutorial actions.
Presenters raised issues such as disputes between the executive and judicial branches on the release of politically sensitive or controlled information; the relationship between US attorneys’ degree of autonomy and their plea/conviction rates; and the idea of Supreme Court term limits, which could reshape the court’s ideological composition more rapidly than the current arrangement allows.
To read more about the conference, click here.
The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives
Polarization, institutional distrust, and economic uncertainty are on the rise, says Josiah Ober, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and Stanford professor of classics and political science in a new episode of Hoover’s Policy Stories video series. Decline is only inevitable, Ober argues, if we choose it. He stresses that with a recommitment to civic education, dedication to a common good over unilateral perfection, and civic bargaining, Americans can ensure the United States endures and flourishes. The episode is based on a recently published book by Ober and coauthor Brooke Manville, The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives.
Ober has undertaken other initiatives to confront America’s decline in civic engagement. On April 13, he hosted civics educators from across the nation to talk about how universities can develop new curriculum to stem the tide. Part of what was discussed was the scale of Ober’s work on the Stanford Civics Initiative, which offers coursework to Stanford undergraduates on the ideas and practices of democratic citizenship. Many of the course offerings are taught by Hoover fellows, among them Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Kotkin, Peter Berkowitz, Michael McConnell, and Brandice Canes-Wrone.
Watch Ober’s Policy Stories episode on his new book here.
Click here to read about the April 13 civics conference.
Institutional Breakdown a Product of Endless, Burdensome Rule Making, says Philip K. Howard
If many institutions seem broken in America today, it may be because the people who work within them are hamstrung by a seemingly endless array of rules, procedures, and prescriptions, argues lawyer and writer Philip K. Howard in his new book, Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society.
In a talk at RAI on May 16, Howard explained that many of these hurdles—medical workers overburdened with paperwork, school principals kept from disciplining bad teachers, and so on—emerged with the growing legal and bureaucratic system of governing that appeared after 1960, which he says “disempowers people in their daily choices.”
Howard asserted that the growth of regulatory burden in the United States since the 1960s has made it virtually impossible to do anything relatively quickly in government. The impact is acutely felt, for example, in the process to obtain permits for new homes, factories, or public infrastructure, where regulation has turned what use to take weeks or months to approve into several years. He took aim at the narrow nature of political discourse today, where one side advocates more state funding and the other argues to dismantle it. He said that there instead needs to be a political movement focused on making the state more effective.
Click here to read more about Howard’s talk.
The Relationship between Election Laws and the Health of Democracy
In a paper for the Tennenbaum Program for Fact-Based Policy, Senior Fellow Justin Grimmer and Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh reviewed how US election laws have evolved over the past 50 years. They found two general trends: First, the gap between the priorities of Democrats and Republicans when it comes to voting rules has widened significantly during this period. Second, they see an overall move toward more liberal voting rules across the United States during this time. While Republicans tend to focus on policies to combat voter fraud, Democrats work to craft policies to expand voting access.
However, the net effect of these efforts on election outcomes and voter turnout appears to be negligible. In the paper, Grimmer and Hersh explore several reasons why this is the case.
You can read their paper here.
Grimmer spoke to Hoover’s Tom Church about the paper’s findings. You can watch the interview here.
Free Speech Unmuted: The Supreme Court’s Social Media Cases
In the ninth episode of Free Speech Unmuted, Hoover senior fellow Eugene Volokh and cohost Jane Bambauer of the University of Florida Law School discuss recent Supreme Court rulings on two cases concerning the limits of power for social media companies and whether the federal government can influence how they moderate the content posted by members of the public on their platforms.
In Moody v. Netchoice, the Supreme Court considered the Florida and Texas laws that tried to limit social media platforms’ power to moderate user posts. In Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court addressed whether the federal government impermissibly pressured social media platforms to moderate user posts. The content moderation that spurred both lawsuits arose from concerns about rampant COVID-19 disinformation circulating on social media sites.
What did the court tell us? Jane and Eugene try to figure it out.
Click here to listen to the episode.
Fellow Spotlight: Josiah Ober
Josiah Ober is a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution. He is also the Markos & Eleni Kounalakis Chair in Honor of Constantine Mitsotakis in the Department of Classics, professor of political science and classics, and professor of philosophy (by courtesy) at Stanford University, where he is the founder and currently the faculty director of the Stanford Civics Initiative. Ober’s scholarship focuses on historical institutionalism and political theory, especially democratic theory and the contemporary relevance of the political thought and practice of the ancient Greek world.
For more on RAI and its work, go to
https://www.hoover.org/rai
