Yale Law Democrats
(YLDems)
Weekly Update
Dearest Democrats,
Last week in Alabama, we witnessed a stark reminder of what's at stake this November. Make no mistake, the Alabama Supreme Court's IVF ruling is part of extremist Republicans' broader blueprint to restrict all forms of bodily autonomy for women. And as Black History Month draws to a close, we remember that Black history is also under attack from many of those same extremists. As Democrats, let's continue to show the rest of the country that we are the true party of freedom. And as law students, let's continue to develop the tools we need to fight for democracy.
Along those lines, we have some incredible events lined up over these next few weeks. We hope to see you at some or all of them.
Upcoming YLDems Events
Stuart Delery – Thursday, Feb. 29. Register HERE.Stuart Delery served as White House Counsel from July 2022 to September 2023, succeeding Dana Remus. On August 17, 2023, Delery announced that he would depart his position. Previously, Delery had served as Deputy Counsel to the President in the Biden administration, announced in December 2020. Prior to that, he was the Acting United States Associate Attorney General from 2014 to 2016.
Bharat Ramamurti – Wednesday, March 6. Calendar link HERE.
Bharat Ramaurti served as the deputy director of the National Economic Council for manufacturing, innovation, and domestic competitiveness from 2021 to 2023. He previously served as a member of the COVID-19 Congressional Oversight Commission, a congressional oversight body tasked with overseeing the Department of the Treasury's and the Federal Reserve Board's management of stimulus and loan programs mandated by the CARES Act.
State of the Union Watch Party! – Thursday, March 7.
Join us for an evening of food, drinks, humorous commentary, and hot takes as we collectively watch the State of the Union together. Stop by before or after Bar Review, or, if you're feeling extra ~political~, ditch Bar review altogether! You won't want to miss this!
External Events This Week
Judge Ralph K. Winter Lecture: "Clear Thinking About Economic Policy: Overcoming the Liberal and Conservative Vices" with Harvard Prof. Jason Furman - February 26. Register HERE.Jason Furman is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Professor Furman engages in public policy through research, writing and teaching in a wide range of areas including U.S. and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets and competition policy. He co-teaches Ec10 “Principles of Economics,” the largest course at Harvard University.
Previously, Professor Furman served eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including serving as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, acting as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. During this time, Professor Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration. Professor Furman also served under President Clinton.
Professor Furman is a member of numerous organizations including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of Thirty and the Economic Strategy Group. He also serves as a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and on the advisory boards for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Bund Summit, the Hamilton Project and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Professor Furman is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate and the editor of two books on economic policy. Professor Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Sponsoring Organizations: Yale Law School Office of the Dean, Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law
The Virtues and Vices of the Founders - February 27. Register HERE.
Should we look to the Founders for guidance on constitutional issues today? Did the Founders lead virtuous lives? Or did they fail to live up to their ideals? The We the People Speaker Series is hosting a conversation with Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, award-winning author and historian Joanne Freeman, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight about virtue, vice, and violence at the Founding. Jeffrey Rosen is the author of the new book The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. David Blight is Sterling Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and won the Pulitzer Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Joanne Freeman is a professor of American History at Yale University and her most recent book, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic, won the Best Book award from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic.
Sponsoring Organizations: Ronnie F. Heyman Crossing Divides Program
Tsai Leadership Program Fellows Info Session - February 28. Register HERE.
The Tsai Leadership Program offers an array of opportunities for deeper exploration into leadership. Come hear how you can become a Chae Fellow (private sector) or Ludwig Fellow (public sector) at an informational session with The Tsai Leadership Program Co-Heads and Executive Directors, Margie Adler of the Ludwig Program in Public Sector Leadership, and Mary Herrington of the Chae Initiative in Private Sector Leadership.
Current Chae and Ludwig Fellows will also share their experience. Current 1Ls and 2Ls will be eligible to submit a statement of interest to the Program starting in March.
Sponsoring Organizations: Tsai Leadership Program
Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Homicide - February 28. Register HERE.
“Climate change is not a tragedy, it’s a crime.” Could this increasingly common refrain among climate activists be more than just a slogan? Recent reporting has shown that major fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP knew that their products would produce, in their own words, “catastrophic” climate change. Instead of changing their business model or alerting the public about this existential threat, the companies funded a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign to block responses that would curb their dangerous but highly profitable conduct. They made trillions of dollars from their deception, while regular people around the world pay an increasingly devastating price – including, in countless cases, death. Could these acts constitute criminal homicide? Should Big Oil be prosecuted? Join legal experts, practitioners, and activists for a panel discussion of these timely questions of climate accountability.
Sponsoring Organizations: Yale Environmental Law Association, Public Citizen
"Governing Citizens' Assemblies" Conference - February 28. Register HERE.
In recent years, citizens’ assemblies — large randomly selected bodies of citizens convened to deliberate about political issues — have become a popular way for governments to address governance and legitimacy issues. These bodies of ordinary people are entrusted with the goal of generating policy recommendations and, sometimes, even legislative proposals on issues such as electoral reform, abortion, same-sex marriage, climate justice, and assisted suicide. As citizens’ assemblies may come to occupy a larger role in democratic governance, important questions need to be addressed: Who holds power within and over citizens’ assemblies? And who should? Citizens’ assemblies have so far been governed from the outside by government officials, experts, and professional facilitators. How much of the power belongs and should belong to the citizen participants themselves?
This day-long conference will bring together academics, political leaders, and practitioners to explore these critical questions. The focus will be on the recent French Citizens Conventions, respectively on Climate and End of Life, which explicitly thematized the question of governance. Each had an appointed “governance committee” running the process as well as some effort to include citizens in the internal decision-making process.
Sponsoring Organizations: ISPS Democratic Innovations Program, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies
LPE Presents: If We Burn, with Vincent Bevins - February 29. Register HERE.
Please join the LPE Project and YLS LPE Student Group for a lunch talk with award-winning journalist and author of The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins about his latest book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.
In recent years, more people have participated in protests than at any other point in human history. From 2010 to 2022, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. But we are not living in a world that is more just and democratic as a result. Vincent Bevin in his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, questions the outcomes of mass protests, exploring the paradox of how these protests often lead to results contrary to their original intent. Through a retrospective analysis of these movements, this groundbreaking study provides critical lessons for contemporary sociopolitical activism. Bevins will be discussing the implications of his findings and their urgent application to the moment we’re currently in.
Sponsoring Organizations: LPE Student Group, LPE Project
Rules for Public Office and Electoral Selection - March 1. No registration required.
How do rules for political office affect who decides to run for office? We explore how different types of potential citizen candidates (pro-social vs. rent motivated) value and trade off public office rules dimensions and how it influences the quality of the candidate pool. We use a factorial experiment across 10 low, middle and high income countries and randomly vary hypothetical rules for actual local public office and study their effects on the desire of respondents to run. We find that both higher wages and spending transparency increase individual willingness to run for local office. In contrast, stricter disclosure rules and longer working hours do not deter citizens from running. Moreover, local office rules do not affect candidate quality or representation gaps between respondents who are willing to run and those who are not. Our results have implications for the design of political institutions, political representation, and the micro-foundations for political selection.
Heike Klüver is Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Political Behavior at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Spokesperson of the DFG Research Training Group DYNAMICS. She previously held positions as Full Professor and Chair of Comparative Politics at the University of Hamburg, as Professor of Empirical Political Science at the University of Bamberg, as Junior Professor at the University of Konstanz and as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD from the University of Mannheim. Professor Klüver's research focuses on political behavior, electoral competition and governmental policy and relies on quantitative and experimental methods.
Sponsoring Organizations: ISPS Center for the Study of American Politics, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies
The Future of U.S. - China Relations - March 1. Register HERE.
What would be the feasible best future for US-China relations? And how can we get from here to there? These challenging questions will be the subject of discussion among several of the leading United States experts on U.S.-China relations, all from either the Brookings Institution or Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, and all previously serving in the U.S. government working on U.S.-China issues.
Sponsoring Organizations: Paul Tsai China Center, Brookings China Center
Job Opportunities
Biden-Harris 2024 Spring Legal Extern. Apply HERE.The Biden For President Campaign is seeking motivated individuals to serve as legal externs with the Campaign’s legal team. Externs are expected to work 20 hours/week for an academic semester. In addition to the responsibilities outlined below, the externship program will include educational opportunities, mentorship, and career development. The work schedule is flexible and can be structured around your academic schedule. Externships are structured to be eligible for academic credit to the extent permitted by your academic institution. Where possible, the Campaign will support externs in meeting the criteria to receive academic credit. Externships are unpaid. However, externs are provided with a $1,500 stipend toward living expenses.
Biden-Harris 2024 Summer Legal Extern. Apply HERE.
The Biden For President Campaign is seeking motivated individuals to serve as legal externs with the Campaign’s legal team. Externs are expected to work 20 hours/week for an academic semester. In addition to the responsibilities outlined below, the externship program will include educational opportunities, mentorship, and career development. The work schedule is flexible and can be structured around your academic schedule. Externships are structured to be eligible for academic credit to the extent permitted by your academic institution. Where possible, the Campaign will support externs in meeting the criteria to receive academic credit. Externships are unpaid. However, externs are provided with a $1,500 stipend toward living expenses.
Squire Patton Boggs Foundation (SPBF) Summer Fellowships. Apply HERE.
SPBF offers a public policy fellowship: students may work on any policy matters with non-profit domestic or international organizations and government offices. The awards are for $5,000 and involve a competitive process. This is a great opportunity for non-SPIF eligible students. For SPIF eligible students, YLS will provide additional support up to the SPIF level of funding. Applications should be submitted to Norma D'Apolito. Applications for the public policy track are due on March 1; students must secure host organizations in advance of the application deadline for these fellowships.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Board.
Live, Laugh, Love,
The YLDems Board