Richard H. Pildes

Courses

• Colloquium on Constitutional Theory

  This Colloquium is designed for students who want to be exposed to the best contemporary academic work in constitutional law and theory -- with that subject being broadly understood to include work in public law, including not only constitutional but administrative law as well as other areas. Every other week, one of the leading academics in the United States will present their current work; NYU faculty and students in the Colloquium will then ask questions and engage in a dialogue with the speaker. In the weeks without a speaker, students will discuss the papers to be presented and related work with the Colloquium leaders. Students will regularly be required to write reaction papers to the work being presented. This Colloquium is particularly oriented to students who might be contemplating academic careers at some point down the road and to those interested in academic work.

• Constitutional Democracies Colloquium

  This class will review constitutional structures of democracy in a variety of countries. We will have presentations by visitors in about half the classes, including judges from constitutional courts around the world. The focus will be constitutional oversight of democracy, judicial review of the structure of the political process, and the way modern constitutions are used to stabilize democratic regimes.

• Presidential Powers Seminar

  This seminar will focus on major current issues in the uses of executive power. These specific issues will vary by the time the seminar meets, but will include issues concerning the separation of powers, the scope of the President powers under statutes and the Constitution, and the relation of the executive branch to the courts. Readings and discussion will including contemporary cases, the historical development of legal doctrine on these issues and the changing nature of the presidency over time. We will examine these issues both as legal matters and from the perspective of the real-world functioning of the White House and Congress. Some of the larger themes we will explore include the growth of presidential powers over time and how presidential power should be understood in an era of highly polarized political parties. Class participation is expected. The final evaluation will be based on that plus an in-class exam that will likely take the form of a long essay on a major issue covered during the semester.

• The Administrative and Regulatory State (For 1Ls Only)

  The central institutions of the regulatory state are legislatures and administrative agencies, not courts. The central sources of law are authoritative legal texts, like statutes, not common-law decisions. How do lawyers work with the distinct institutions and the legal sources of authority of the regulatory state? How do we think in theory about what justifies the rise of the regulatory state, what the pathologies of this state might be, and how we might improve the quality of regulation? Is cost-benefit analysis, for example, a pernicious technocratic tool that allows elites to smuggle their ideological preferences into public policy? Or is it one of the few tools to bring a degree of rationality and common sense to an out-of-control regulatory state that stumbles erratically from problem to problem with no coherent sense of purpose? Indeed, what does it mean for public policy to be "rational" at all?

• The Law of Democracy

  This course covers the law regulating the structure of the democratic process. The course can be considered an advanced course in constitutional law. The course approaches these issues from several perspectives, including historical, doctrinal, and policy. The basic areas include the right to vote; partisan and racial gerrymandering; fair political representation; the Voting Rights Act; campaign finance; the role of political parties, issues concerning presidential elections, and other issues. The course focuses primarily on American law but will integrate comparative perspectives from time to time.