SCOTUS forecasting: A new justice and the dynamics of the Supreme Court

Barbara A. Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Director of Presidential Studies at the Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has authored or edited 12 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate. In 1994–95, she received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award as the outstanding Supreme Court Fellow. In addition to providing research for Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s speeches, she briefed more than 3,000 visitors to the court from 70 different countries. From 1996 through 2008, she taught in the Supreme Court Summer Institute.

Saikrishna Prakash, a Miller Center senior fellow, is the James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law and Paul G. Mahoney Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School. His scholarship focuses on separation of powers, particularly executive powers. He teaches Constitutional law, foreign relations law, and presidential powers. At Yale Law School, he served as senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and received the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. After law school, he clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the author of Imperial from the Beginning: The Constitution of the Original Executive  (Yale University Press 2015).

Schwartzman is the Joseph W. Dorn Research Professor of Law and director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy. He teaches constitutional law and the First Amendment (Religion Clauses). His areas of interest include law and religion, jurisprudence, and political philosophy. Schwartzman received his B.A. from the University of Virginia and his doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. During law school, he served as articles development editor of the Virginia Law Review and received numerous awards, including the Margaret G. Hyde Award, the Daniel Rosenbloom Award, and the Hardy Cross Dillard Scholarship. After graduating, Schwartzman clerked for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Prior to joining the faculty, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities. In the spring of 2013, he was a visiting professor at the UCLA School of Law.