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Are courtesy meetings nuked?

July 10, 2018  ·  LegBranch Team
Image source: National Review By Mark Owens Process and procedure have begun to dominate debates about controversial or salient nominations to the federal bench. Frustration emerged when the regular procedures… Read More

Gender parity and the study of Congress

March 29, 2018  ·  LegBranch Team
Image source here By Colleen J. Shogan As Women’s History Month comes to a close, a fruitful discussion about women in the workplace and gender equity continues. American politics has… Read More

Is Congress Broken? Not Necessarily

May 25, 2017  ·  LegBranch Team
By Richard M. Skinner William F. Connelly, Jr., John J. Pitney, Jr., and Gary J. Schmitt, Is Congress Broken? The Virtues and Defects of Partisanship and Gridlock (Brookings Institution… Read More

Is Too Much Transparency Crippling Congressional Deal-Making?

November 27, 2016  ·  Rob Oldham
The U.S. Congress: Too much or too little transparency? by Rob Oldham President-elect Donald Trump prides himself on being a deal-maker and has said that he hopes to… Read More

Academic Panel On Congressional Capacity

May 30, 2016  ·  LegBranch Team
Lee Drutman and Kevin Kosar, the co-directors of the Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group, will be on a panel titled “Assessing Congress’ Capacity to Solve Problems.” This will occur… Read More

Will the Senate Go Nuclear Again?

July 27, 2015  ·  LegBranch Team
Put this in the “it’s not really nuclear” category. Despite several accounts reporting that Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) plans to go nuclear, don’t believe the headlines. That said this is… Read More

Liberal Bias in the Classroom: College of Charleston Edition

April 17, 2014  ·  LegBranch Team
You’ve heard about it.  College professors, who are disproportionately liberal, skew the views of their impressionable young students by assigning leftist books and poking fun at conservatives in the… Read More

Yes, Elections are Cultivating Polarization. But…

January 9, 2014  ·  LegBranch Team
Competition for power, gerrymandering, disappearing marginal districts define Congress’s electoral landscape. Today, the American electorate is both closely divided and increasingly uncompetitive. In other words, partisan majorities are narrower today… Read More

Blogging Hiatus

November 27, 2012  ·  LegBranch Team
Just a quick administrative note: I’ll be stepping away from the blog for the next several months. For the remainder of this academic year I am working in Congress as… Read More

Congratulations to Josh and Nate!

February 20, 2012  ·  LegBranch Team
I wanted to take a moment for a little Rule 22 self-promotion.  Congratulations are in order for a supermajority of this blog. Last week, Josh was awarded the American Political… Read More