Media Mentions

Harvard Law School Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos and other Harvard faculty consider the massive logistical and political challenges facing states in November.

This past year, millions of families (mine among them) experienced remote learning and entertained the idea of home schooling for the first time. Some of these families are eager to send their kids back to school. Others will make do with remote learning this school year, and still others are certain to take up more seriously the idea of home schooling. When they do, they will discover two things. First, home schooling is already an attractive option for many American families, and it is the reality for an estimated 1.7 million children. Second, home schooling in America generally has become dangerously politicized and unregulated...Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School, published an 80-page paper in the Arizona Law Review this year titled "Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection," summarizing years of research and wide survey evidence in the field. Bartholet also planned to participate in an academic conference on the subject (later postponed because of COVID-19). Bartholet told me she was immediately inundated with many hundreds of angry and threatening messages and was the subject of a series of negative articles posted on the website of the Home School Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, a home-schooling advocacy group with hyperconservative leanings founded in 1983, whose founder, Michael Farris, is closely allied with other religious right leaders. In a way, the abuse proved one of Bartholet's central theses: that much of home-schooling advocacy right now is in the hands of a small but belligerent minority who believe that parents have absolute rights over their children and that any form of regulation amounts, in the words of some home-schooling families, to "tyranny." Lawmakers have run into similar resistance.

President Donald Trump's powers to dispute the election results if Democratic candidate Joe Biden is victorious in November may hinge upon whether allies support such a challenge. Asked on Sunday, the president would not confirm whether or not he would accept the results of November's election. This has prompted backlash from Democratic lawmakers, with his behavior branded dictatorial, and calls for people to prepare to take action should he refuse to accept the results. Trump's remarks came after the president's frequent attacks on mail-in voting, which he has suggested—without evidence—could undermine November's outcome. Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, told Newsweek Trump's comments prompted him to "worry more than ever before that the 240-year history of peaceful successions of administrations might not hold this time and that the American experiment is in the gravest danger it has faced since the Civil War." Tribe suggested that if the results were certified by Congress, and all prior contests had been resolved, on January 6 that Trump would thereafter need to enlist allies "in order to exercise anything resembling real power." ...He bases this around the notion the president cannot run the executive branch without assistance, while others are barred from using its authorities at the behest of anyone other than the legitimate president—with the threat of criminal prosecution should they choose to. Tribe said while that offers some protection in that scenario, it does not prevent Trump posing challenges along the way.

The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding on how the president might try to rule by decree. John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws...In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump declared he would try to use that interpretation to try to force through decrees on healthcare, immigration and “various other plans” over the coming month. The White House consultations with Yoo were first reported by the Axios news website. Constitutional scholars and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights. “This is how it begins,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, wrote on Twitter. “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If ever there was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us.” ...Constitutional scholars have rejected Yoo’s arguments as ignoring limits on the executive powers of the president imposed by the founders, who were determined to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Tribe called Yoo’s interpretation of the Daca ruling “indefensible”. He added: “I fear that this lawless administration will take full advantage of the fact that judicial wheels grind slowly and that it will be difficult to keep up with the many ways Trump, aided and abetted by Bill Barr as attorney general and Chad Wolf as acting head of homeland security, can usurp congressional powers and abridge fundamental rights in the immigration space in particular but also in matters of public health and safety.”

When Sebastian Thrun was starting Google’s self-driving car project in 2009, commercialising the technology was not on anyone’s mind...Back then, it made sense that autonomous driving was just a research project. Eleven years on, however, the industry still has little idea what to do with the technology, despite some big advances over the past decade. As the much-hyped, seven-year quest to develop a driverless Uber service has suffered several setbacks, the appetite is now switching beyond robotaxis in search of more profitable avenues...Investors are still interested in autonomy but the focus has shifted towards practical services such as grocery delivery, automated warehouse robots, and autonomous functions restricted to highways...Waymo is the only service to have removed safety drivers from the equation, in 2017, but only for the sunny, wide roads near Phoenix, Arizona. Just before the coronavirus outbreak, its ride-hailing service Waymo One was offering customers between 1,000 and 2,000 rides a week, with 5-10 per cent being driverless. Impressive as this may be, it underscores that an Uber-like conquering of cities has not been a plausible model. That does not mean robotaxis are dead per se, but the idea is now on life-support. Aside from fringe efforts, the robotaxi dream is now confined to those with the major financial firepower of a tech company or car giant that can spend many more years on the effort. Ashley Nunes, a Harvard researcher, says: “Bringing the tech to market will require fundamentally rethinking the concept by scaling back where and how the tech can be deployed and the types of returns investors can expect.”

What is the way forward for progressives in a time when it seems both centrism and authoritarianism are resurgent? What should be the character and scope of a national program that progressives in and outside the Democratic Party can and should embrace? There are many places to look for answers to these questions, and no doubt the answers will have many inspirations. One of the most incisive articulations of an American progressive alternative is that of Roberto Mangabeira Unger, a Harvard Law professor, philosopher, and former Brazilian politician. He has written over two dozen books addressing an unusual diversity of topics, including critical legal theory—which he helped develop—economics, philosophy, and religion. Given this range, it would be unfair to reduce Unger’s work to one core idea. But perhaps the major theme of his work is summed up in his argument that “society is made and imagined, that it is a human artifact rather than the expression of an underlying natural order.” ...The Nation recently spoke with Unger about his proposal for an alternative progressive track for American politics. Along the way, we discussed racial injustice in the United States, Donald Trump’s election, democratizing new technologies, the future of education, and progressive taxation. Of pressing importance is the topic of structural economic and political change, and in turn, whether Unger’s vision is impractical. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

The St. Louis couple who emerged from their mansion in a gated community and aimed weapons at protesters marching past them last month were each charged Monday with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon. Lawyers Mark McCloskey, 61, and Patricia McCloskey, 63, have said they were merely defending their home on a private street in an upscale neighborhood from a crowd that was marching to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house to protest racial injustice. Video and photographs showing Mark McCloskey wielding a rifle and Patricia McCloskey aiming a pistol at the marchers created a firestorm of controversy between those who felt the couple was legally defending their home and those who felt they were menacing peaceful protesters...The McCloskeys and their supporters have said that the “castle doctrine” in Missouri law, and elsewhere, empowers a homeowner to stand their ground and use deadly force when threatened. But Harvard Law School Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. said Friday that “the law is crystal clear in Missouri, that a reasonableness argument is necessary for a defendant to take advantage of the Castle doctrine. The defendant has to be reasonably afraid of being in imminent danger.” Sullivan said that despite the McCloskeys’ claim that the entire Portland Place neighborhood was private property, and the protesters were immediately trespassing, “the castle doctrine would still be unavailable. The doctrine removes one’s duty to retreat. But they could only use deadly force if they reasonably felt they were in imminent danger. Based on the video evidence, that’s a very difficult argument to make,” because the protesters were unarmed and did not move toward the McCloskey residence, Sullivan said. “Otherwise,” Sullivan said, “the castle doctrine would swallow up all of the existing law and we’d have a ‘Wild Wild West’ out there.”

If Democrat Joe Biden defeats President Trump this November, his EPA will have a blank slate for writing climate rules. Because the Trump administration spent 3 ½ years demolishing its predecessor's Climate Action Plan, Biden's team would have an opening to update rules for carbon, methane and hydrofluorocarbons that would exceed their Obama-era counterparts or be more tailored to the political, judicial and economic realities of the 2020s. To be sure, a departing Trump EPA would leave finalized rules for power plant carbon, vehicle fuel economy, and oil and gas development, among other things, but most of those regulations haven't faced court reviews, allowing an incoming administration to ask that they be returned to the agency. That request — if granted — would clear the path for a Biden EPA to write new rules to go with the former vice president's promise of rejoining the Paris Agreement and the global effort to contain global warming...Meanwhile, the Trump administration has succeeded in moving the courts to the right, up to and including the Supreme Court. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote who retired from the court two years ago, usually sided with the court's liberal members on environmental cases like Massachusetts v. EPA, which established that EPA has the authority and obligation to address climate change under the Clean Air Act. The two justices Trump has nominated don't have that reputation...Richard Lazarus, a Harvard Law School professor and author of "The Rule of Five," which chronicles Massachusetts vs. EPA, said the agency under Biden would be aggressive. But he agreed that a conservative Supreme Court would be a barrier. "They will try to do more on power plants under a less ambitious legal theory," he predicted, adding that that would probably mean on-site emissions reductions.

An article by Cass Sunstein: Some conservative legal thinkers speak of a “Lost Constitution” or “Constitution in Exile.” By that they mean the Constitution as it was understood before President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal helped form the modern regulatory state. Their Constitution in Exile would invalidate key parts of contemporary government. Some conservatives want to revive the long-dead “nondelegation doctrine,” which was once taken to forbid Congress from granting broad discretion to regulatory agencies. The Supreme Court made a strong movement in the direction of the Constitution in Exile in its most recent term, when it ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may not be made independent of the president. The court stopped well short of upending the regulatory state. But it was just a preliminary skirmish. Bigger battles are brewing. Those who want to defend modern government — including Democrats if they regain power in November — will need to think hard about appropriate reforms if the Supreme Court begins to invalidate larger features of the U.S. government as it exists today. A Supreme Court bent on resuscitating the nondelegation doctrine would put important parts of the Clean Air Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in jeopardy. Those who believe in the Constitution in Exile also have trouble with the idea of independent agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. The president has limited control over the heads of such agencies; he cannot fire them simply because that’s what he wants to do.

Donald Trump has handled the pandemic arguably worse than any world leader and has lied about it serially. No one can dispute that. The question though is, can Trump be criminally charged with manslaughter for intentionally failing to warn Americans about the known threats of COVID-19—and worse, lying about them? As a lawyer, I believe the answer should be yes—at least if it can be proven that Trump knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of COVID-19 because he believed it helped his re-election efforts, and Americans relied on those lies to the detriment of their health/lives...Now to be clear, Trump being successfully prosecuted for lying is still a challenge, as many well-known legal experts explained. Laurence H. Tribe, the famed professor at Harvard Law School, had harsh words for Trump’s actions saying that, “Trump is almost certainly morally responsible for tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths that would not have occurred but for his recklessly misleading public pronouncements and his grossly negligent failures to act rationally on the basis of the medical evidence available to him.” But with that said, Tribe added, “proving that Trump caused these deaths beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial would be almost impossible.”

An article by Laurence Tribe: In 1971, seven Asian elephants were captured from the wild, imported to California, and sold for $800 each to a safari park. As if to reinforce the indignity of taking these magnificent beings from their natural habitats and depriving them of lifelong relationships with members of their herd, their captors named them after Snow White’s seven dwarves. Today, only four of these elephants survive. One of them, ironically named Happy, has been imprisoned for the last 40 years at the Bronx Zoo. She is now 49 and lives in a small, barren space that experts have said cannot meet the needs of any elephant. Until 2002, the zoo also imprisoned Grumpy, euthanizing her after two other elephants attacked her. Happy was the first elephant to demonstrate self-awareness via the well-established mirror self-recognition test. In late 2018, she also became the first elephant to be the subject of a habeas corpus hearing. Happy’s case, brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, will soon come before an appellate court in New York City. She has the chance to reclaim her dignity through recognition of her legal right to liberty and release to an elephant sanctuary. Today, Happy is considered a “thing” with no rights that we as humans have any legal obligation to respect. That needs to change. The just course is for courts to recognize Happy as a rightsholder (in legalese, a person) and order her release to an environment suited to her needs. That is why this week I submitted an amicus brief in support of Happy’s petition to be recognized as a holder of rights under the law.

Brighton graduate Toby Merrill was named to Time Magazine's list of the "100 Next." That's because Merrill has been a leader in the fight against predatory for-profit colleges and institutions. As student debt piled past one trillion dollars, Merrill launched a plan to combat what she calls the "worst-of-the-worst student debt." Merrill is the founder and director of Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending. Her team represents thousands of former students who have been fleeced and lied to, often ending up with piles of debt and worthless degrees. One of her most recent cases named Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as a defendant. We discuss the plight of student loan debt, the worst offenders, and why the industry is still so profitable. Our guest: Toby Merrill, founder and director of Harvard Law School's Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Jacklynn Walters has homeschooled her oldest child for the last 6 years. When schools closed early this year to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, this mom of four says she didn’t have to worry about her children’s education...Walters volunteers as the media director for the homeschooling organization Midwest Parent Educators. She says more parents are inquiring about homeschooling...More parents are choosing home school over in-class instruction when school resumes this fall as school districts roll out their reopening plans during the global health crisis. A recent poll from the American Federation of Children shows 40 percent of respondents are more likely to pursue homeschooling after coronavirus lockdowns...Homeschool critics worry that students will be left behind as more parents consider alternatives. “In this country, we have almost no regulation of homeschool,” said Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet. “Only a dozen states require that parents have any credentials whatsoever. Those states only demand a high school degree.” Bartholet, who serves as the faculty director of Harvard’s Law School's Child Advocacy Program, adds that she supports virtual learning so students can remain safe during the current health crisis but she’s concerned about children’s safety as more parents choose to homeschool permanently. “One of the greatest protections for children against abuse and neglect has been the protection of the mandated reporter system, which means that certain people are designated as mandated reporters and they then have to report any suspected abuse and neglect,” she said.  “Teachers are mandated reporters […] and they constitute the largest group of people who report to child protection authorities abuse and neglect."

Last month, the United States Senate signed a bill that would increase regulation on Chinese companies listed on American exchanges. Listed companies will be required to prove that “they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government,” in addition to being subjected to three consecutive years of audit inspection by American regulators.  How did we get here, and how is this bill gaining rare bipartisan traction? The answer lies in investigative investment firm Muddy Waters.  According to Muddy Waters’s website, it produces three types of research reports: “Business fraud, accounting fraud, and fundamental problems.” It is known for publishing research on Chinese companies believed to be fraudulent...Muddy Waters more recently published research on Chinese online tutoring company GSX Techedu, accusing the company of fabricating online user traffic with bots. While GSX’s listing on the NYSE was not hit as hard, Muddy Waters’ due-diligence research sure gained its fair share of attention. This prompted a protectionist reaction from Congress; legislators were motivated by a desire to defend American investors. It received almost nonexistent legislative opposition...If Chinese firms are indeed in danger of being delisted from American exchanges, some experts note potential backfiring on Wall Street. Harvard Law Professor Jesse Fried predicts the transfer of these Chinese companies to exchanges in Hong Kong or the mainland as a response. He also expects a sharp fall in stock prices if Beijing disallows American inspections on Chinese-owned company audits–which could seriously hurt American investors just before these firms privatize. Fried also notes China’s desire to build up its domestic exchanges. Abandoning American trading soil could open up an opportunity to further develop local stock markets, increasing the attractiveness of the region. He says that China is therefore not desperate to keep listings in the U.S.

The question of where the 49-year-old elephant, Happy, should live—in the Bronx Zoo or at a 2,500-acre sanctuary in Tennessee—is intertwined with the history of the age-old writ of habeas corpus, her advocates are arguing as her case comes to life again in the New York courts. Her advocates now include renowned Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar, Laurence Tribe, along with a group of 12 American and Canadian philosophers. Her primary benefactor and counsel of record is the Nonhuman Rights Project, a Florida-based nonprofit that defends “nonhuman animals” and that, for three years now, has argued in state court that Happy can only be happy if she is sent to the sanctuary, where she can bond with other elephants and roam with them for miles a day. Writes Tribe about why Happy should be considered a “legal person” under the writ, which has long been used by the imprisoned as a recourse against the power to hold them, “Happy is an autonomous and sentient Asian elephant who evolved to lead a physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially complex life. Every day for forty years, her imprisonment by the Bronx Zoo has deprived her of this life.” In his friend-of-the-court brief lodged on Happy’s behalf this week, he also writes, “New York’s common law of habeas corpus … has a noble tradition of expanding the ranks of rights holders.” “In a time that is becoming acutely aware of the four-century history of racial discrimination and its enduring legacy,” Tribe later adds, “it cannot pass notice that African Americans who had been enslaved famously used the common law writ of habeas corpus in New York to challenge their bondage and to proclaim their humanity, even when the law otherwise treated them as mere things.”

An article by Kenneth Mack: In our present racial crisis, the words of the writer and essayist James Baldwin have reemerged and become ubiquitous in American public discourse. Baldwin’s writings, sometimes shorn of context, are now quoted endlessly on social media and have been prominently displayed during protests against police brutality. Documentary filmmakers and feature film directors, including Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins, have mined his work for their craft. The noted writer and theater critic Hinton Als has curated a multimedia art exhibit dedicated to a complex representation of his life and persona. In addition, Baldwin’s queerness — his status as a gay black man — seems to invest his words with a special prescience for us. Baldwin achieved the height of his fame in the middle of the 1960s, when the novelist and former boy preacher’s beautiful and evocative words seemed to capture the stakes of the black freedom movement like nothing else — particularly for white liberals. It is that prophetic aspect of Baldwin that Eddie S. Glaude Jr., chairman of Princeton’s African American studies department, seeks to recover in his book “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.” The strength of Glaude’s book depends on how well he makes the case that Baldwin speaks directly to our times. “Begin Again” is, in fact, two different books. The first takes the reader on a deeply researched tour of Baldwin’s essays and actions from the mid-1960s forward. Glaude wants to rescue Baldwin’s legacy from many critics who contend that his art and insightfulness declined once he became an international icon and felt the need to speak for black America. Indeed, Baldwin’s novels and essays from the late ’60s on often received tepid or negative reviews. He sympathized with the emerging black power movement but endured withering, homophobic criticism from figures like Eldridge Cleaver.

In our latest episode of NothingWasted!, we chat with Emily Broad Leib, Clinical Professor and Director, Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), Harvard Law School. The Food Law and Policy Clinic provides legal advice to nonprofits and government agencies seeking to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and reduce barriers to market entry for small-scale and sustainable food producers, while educating law students about ways to use law and policy to impact the food system. We spoke with Emily about global food bank trends and laws; organic waste bans; and food waste as it relates to COVID-19, climate change and more. Here’s a glimpse into Emily’s observations.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has become a frequent topic in the news and political debate. In the past few months alone, the “law that created the internet” has faced attacks ranging from President Trump’s Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship to calls by Sen. Josh Hawley and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to revoke Section 230. But what does Section 230 actually say? Despite all the debate, there’s a remarkable lack of consistency among the law’s critics about its substance. It often seems that Section 230 means different things to different people for different reasons. To address this issue, I convened a weeklong lunch series of five 90-minute webinars...The fifth and final panel moved from the present to the future of Section 230, asking: What would the world look like without Section 230 in it? To begin the conversation, Kendra Albert, lawyer at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, and Lorelei Lee, a writer and sex worker advocate, described the effects of SESTA/FOSTA, legislation that endangered Section 230 protections for platforms organizing or hosting advertisements for sex work. Though proponents of SESTA/FOSTA argued it would hold sites liable for potentially advertising for sex trafficking, both Albert and Lee described how the loss of immunity had done little to help solve the problem of sex trafficking and only served to further marginalize an already at-risk community. The writer and activist Cory Doctorow spoke about early reform attempts on the internet, such as copyright, that had resulted in more censorship and harm to minority communities. Rejoining the conversation, Daphne Keller reminded the panel of how changes to Section 230 shape the global conversation—and, in turn, how the U.S. can learn from international bodies. The main struggle of the internet, the panelists discussed, is the tension of allowing people to minimize harms against themselves while maximizing the internet’s positive effects—which Doctorow framed as balancing tools for “self-reliance” against “inter-operability.”

A federal district judge’s decision striking down the Trump administration’s rollback of methane emissions standards could fuel other litigation over an obscure tool used to study the impacts of climate change. California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers last week rebuked the Bureau of Land Management for eliminating Obama-era restrictions on releases of the potent greenhouse gas from oil and gas infrastructure on public and tribal lands. Her opinion included a detailed assault on how the land agency used a metric called the social cost of methane, calling the approach “riddled with flaws.” Industry advocates say the judge improperly substituted her own judgment instead of deferring to the agency. But legal scholars expect litigants to use the decision to push for enhanced climate analysis in other federal decisions. “This decision will certainly be important as we work through litigation in other contexts,” said Hana Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program...Similar debates over the social cost of greenhouse gases—or about proper cost-benefit analysis more generally—are cropping up in litigation over the Trump administration’s decisions to undercut Obama-era targets for vehicle emissions, and constrain how the Environmental Protection Agency weighs the collateral benefits of air pollution rules. “It doesn’t bode well for some of their other rulemakings,” Vizcarra said of the Trump administration. District court decisions don’t create binding precedent for other courts, but they can be persuasive. What’s less clear, Vizcarra said, is whether the ruling will help climate advocates force agencies to use the social cost of carbon in the first place. The California court’s frustrations stemmed from the fact that the Obama administration used one approach, and the Trump administration used a very different one without adequate justification, she said.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made two decisions yesterday that affect renewable energy, prompting starkly opposing reactions from wind and solar supporters. In a unanimous vote, FERC rejected a contentious petition that sought to end nationwide net metering, a practice that requires utilities to pay rooftop solar owners for the extra electricity they generate...The commission rejected the petition by the New England Ratepayers Association (NERA) on procedural grounds, saying the request didn't identify a specific controversy or harm for the agency to address. Republican Commissioners James Danly and Bernard McNamee offered comments about the petition, raising questions about whether the commission might have an appetite to examine federal jurisdiction over net metering in the future...Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School's Environmental and Energy Law Program who has been critical of NERA's petition, said in general, he doesn't see the commission picking the issue back up, however. "Although perhaps yes if [Republicans] hold the majority for another five years, which might provide enough time for someone to file a more specific petition/enforcement action," he wrote in an email. Peskoe said Danly seemed to suggest parties might now bring lawsuits in federal court to challenge net metering. "Perhaps he knows something. His premise is that various courts might draw different conclusions about FERC's jurisdiction, and that would be a bad result," he said. "He therefore appears to suggest that FERC ought to weigh in, to ensure a uniform national approach to FERC's jurisdiction." He added that a court faced with a net-metering lawsuit could simply ask FERC to weigh in as has happened in the past.

State election officials are bracing for two trains on a possible collision course this fall: potential record turnout for the Nov. 3 general election, and an expected surge of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly COVID-19...Though the federal government can provide money and offer assistance, states control every aspect of voting except the date of Election Day, such as how elections are run, how and when voter registration takes place, the methods used to cast votes, what ballots look like, and how close races are handled. That local control comes with a price. “The core problem with the U.S. is you don’t have a single expert federal authority that runs elections that could have lots of resources, lots of expertise. You have 50 political secretaries of state; you have thousands of counties, all of which administer their own elections, and so, you’re never going to have uniform improvement or uniform competence when you have such a decentralized electoral system,” said Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an election law expert at Harvard Law School...The case Stephanopoulos said he’s most closely watching is one filed by the Republican National Committee and several affiliated organizations that seeks to bar the state of California from sending ballots to every eligible voter. State officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, say they want to avoid forcing citizens to choose between exercising their right to vote and risking their health. But Republicans, including President Trump and Attorney General William Barr, claim without evidence that mail-in voting invites fraud and makes it easier for foreign actors to interfere in elections. In June, the president said the “biggest risk” to his reelection is losing these legal fights to stop the expansion of mail-in voting.