Our article, “Questioning Stereotypes about U.S. Site-Based Subsidized Housing” (forthcoming in the International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis), grew out of work done with the support of a Baldy Center research grant. The research examined data for all public housing and other site-based subsidized properties in the U.S. in order to determine the veracity of long-standing stereotypes about these properties. Stereotypes about government subsidized housing have dominated public discourse since the early 1950s. In many respects, these stereotypes have penetrated debates about public policies designed to address the shortage of affordable housing and become a mainstay in American society. This is true when public housing is discussed, but also with respect to the spectrum of fair and affordable housing policy. Read the blog.

 Across the globe, the impact of child disability on educational inequality has been relatively neglected. My current research focuses on the rising number of children with disabilities who grow up with stigma and bleak futures in China’s segregated special schools. By focusing on a uniquely marginalized population in a segregated educational setting, this research fills a compelling need to understand the intersection of disability and segregation – a dual marginality that continues to exist globally yet remains under-examined in educational, legal, and disability studies literature to date. Read the blog.

One of the chief intellectual discoveries of the past four years has been the degree to which government rests on norms: on a shared sense of the proper way to go about the business of government. This is unsurprising for followers of the law and society movement, with which the Baldy Center is so closely associated. From the beginning, scholars of law and society have demonstrated the limits of formalism in explaining how the law actually works. One can think of the Trump presidency as finally demonstrating for the wider world of legal scholars, the essential role of shared understandings, legal culture, accepted practice, informal conventions, and customs in our separation of powers. The judge-made doctrine has changed only at the margins, and its major holdings remain intact, but the real meaning of separation of powers has been altered dramatically. Read the blog.

We would like to start with a pop quiz. What is one of the common background characteristics of the following people (in categories 1 and 2 each)?

(1) Madeline Albright (Former US Secretary of State), Kamala Harris (US Senator, Vice President Candidate), Sergey Brin (Google Co-Founder)

(2) Kofi Annan (Former UN Secretary-General, Nobel Peace Laureate), Juan Manuel Santos (Former President of Columbia, Nobel Peace Laureate), Robin Yanhong Li (Baidu Co-Founder)

Read the blog.

In my work, I focus on violence which is explicitly and implicitly embedded in patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. I hold institutions accountable as I analyze policies and procedures that produce the social problems that we see around us. Here are four thoughts I’d like to share. Read the blog.

One of the most widely-used comprehensive sex ed curricula in the U.S. is entitled, Making Proud Choices! Echoing this cheerleading (and imploring) sentiment is the sex ed program offered youth in Maryland’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems, Power Through Choices, which includes the lesson, Creating the Future You Want. Read the blog.

One of the most widely-used comprehensive sex ed curricula in the U.S. is entitled, Making Proud Choices! Echoing this cheerleading (and imploring) sentiment is the sex ed program offered youth in Maryland’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems, Power Through Choices, which includes the lesson, Creating the Future You Want. Read the blog.

A study conducted by a Baldy Center research grant recipient, Anya Bernstein, “Interpenetration of Powers: Channels and Obstacles for Populist Impulses,” turns to political pragmatics focused on the people who actually populate the government by drawing on interviews with administrators in the government of two successful but quite different democracies – the United States and Taiwan. The study explores the separation of powers consciousness, the political identity of those who govern, and the separation, interpretation, and executive consolidation of government. Read the blog.

Even when women and people of color achieve positions of political power, that does not guarantee they will be able to wield the same amount of influence as similarly-situated white men.  Institutional norms may combine with social constructions of difference to create a system in which power is distributed disproportionately. Such a pattern is evident in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Benign procedural practices and laudable deliberative processes combine with divergent viewpoints generated by fundamentally different social experiences to create a system in which power is exercised unequally. Read the blog.

When you hear the word "homeless," what exactly comes to mind? Most times, the term immediately conjures up an image of a single adult sleeping under a bridge, in a park, or a car. In fact, very few fully understand the growing crisis of homeless youth. There is a significant body of research on educational outcomes for children and youth who experience homelessness and on outcomes for youth in foster care, yet little research that focuses on youth who have experienced all of these challenges. A study conducted by three Baldy Center research grant recipients, Annahita Ball, Elizabeth Bowen, and Annette Semanchin-Jones, “School definitely failed me, the system failed me,” takes a cross-system research approach to this critical, but rarely addressed social issue affecting youths in our society. Read the blog.

It has often been said of socialism that we don’t really know whether it works because it has never been tried, and because regimes that have called themselves socialist have in fact fallen far short of its ideals. Much the same might be said of democracy. Read the blog.

A “canon” is a set of writings generally regarded as the most authoritative, important, or well-executed of their kind. When law teachers speak of a “canon,” they usually mean a standard set of cases that forms the basis of an acceptable curriculum in their field. We teach our subjects from the canon. In my field, Constitutional Law, its principal members include Marbury, Gibbons, McCulloch, Youngstown, and Brown. Read the blog.

The “Right to Work” movement is a well-known guiding concept in the United States that affirms every American’s right to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union and pay fees. However, the term, the right to work, originally referred to a progressive call for the right to employment. A recent study conducted by Charles J. Whalen, Baldy Center Research Fellow, examines the calls for a job guarantee and then explains the need to reclaim the “right to work” as a cornerstone of progressive capitalism. This blog contains the critical takeaway points from Whelan's article, “Institutional Economics and Chock-Full Employment: Reclaiming the “Right to Work” as a Cornerstone of Progressive Capitalism. Read the blog.

The United States has experienced a disturbing expansion of income and wealth inequality in the past three or four decades. We only fully recognized this yawning divide in the material fortunes of Americans after the 2008 financial crisis, which did little to change the direction of the trend. The Coronavirus pandemic has only added fuel to the inequality fire in a particularly grave way. Income inequality might be condemned on its own terms and for its political (erosion of democracy) and economic (financial instability) consequences. These worrisome trends in economic inequality have caused scholars to look for policy solutions. For legal scholars, in particular, the question arises: can legal rules do anything about income inequality? A long-standing position within law-and-economics scholarship gives a clear answer to this question: No. Read the blog.

In the last year, roughly 10% of the U.S. population has tested positive for COVID-19. In that same period, about 28% of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons tested positive for the virus. More than 2,500 incarcerated people have died of COVID-related causes. Trapped in congregate settings with little to no ability to socially distance or protect themselves from COVID, people in prisons are particularly vulnerable in the midst of a global pandemic.  Read the blog.