On Thursday, October 29, 2020, the ABF hosted a virtual conversation titled, “The 2020 Election and the Fate of U.S. Constitutional Democracy”.
The event featured: Tom Ginsburg, ABF Research Professor; Aziz Z. Huq, the Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School; and Susan Stokes, Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Chicago Center for Democracy at the University of Chicago. The event was moderated by Ben Griffith, Principal of Griffith Law Firm and Adjunct Professor at the University of Mississippi Law School.
The 2020 election is taking place at a time of deep anxiety about the future of the American experiment. Rampant polarization, misinformation, and violence have marked the run-up to the election, even as the COVID-19 pandemic has put great pressure on polling systems. And yet the real risks to constitutional democracy in the United States are not of sudden collapse, but instead slow processes of democratic erosion that have been in operation for some time and will continue after the election regardless of the outcome.
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The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.