Constitutional Lawyer Maxwell L. Stearns

Everybody’s Flawed, and Everybody Has Something to Contribute

Maxwell L. Stearns is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. His latest book, Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy, draws on a world tour of different democracies and outlines a plan to turn the U.S. government into a parliamentary system. Before the Zócalo and Los Angeles Times event “Would Parliamentary America Have More Fun?,” Stearns stopped by our green room to chat Law & Order, constitutional conventions, and how to make the …

March 1, 2024

UCLA Law Professor Kal Raustiala

Lawyers Care More About Fixing the World; Political Scientists Just Want to Understand It

March 15, 2019

Kal Raustiala is a professor at UCLA School of Law and the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches in the Program on Global Studies. Since 2007 he has served as …

Winning Freedom From Guantánamo With Forbearance and Trust

In the Shadow of Torture and Isolation, an American Lawyer and an Afghan Prisoner Bond Over Melted Mocha Ice Cream

By Anne Richardson | November 9, 2016

I first visited Obaidullah at Guantánamo Bay in the spring of 2009. Before that first meeting, all I knew were the disturbing accusations against him, that he had fired his …

I Defended Mapplethorpe in the Trial That Drew the Line Between Art and Obscenity

Cincinnati’s Famous Case Tussled With the Photographer’s Work and Its Place in Our Culture

By H. Louis Sirkin | June 6, 2016

On the Friday in 1990 when the collection of 175 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, called “The Perfect Moment,” previewed at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati, 8,000 people showed …

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