The unique circumstances of this year's elections created quite a stir among state courts regarding mail-in ballots, with some requiring intervention by the Supreme Court. In these politically charged times, what is the role of the courts? 

Sam Wang interviews Marin Levy in this week's episode about state court packing, state court expansions, and more. She's a professor of law at Duke University, and her interests include judicial administration, civil procedure, remedies, and federal courts.

This episode was recorded prior to Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

ABOUT THE HOST

Wang is a professor at Princeton University, appointed in neuroscience with affiliate appointments in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and the Center for Information Technology Policy. An alumnus of Caltech, where he received a B.S. with honors in physics, he went on to earn a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Stanford University School of Medicine. He conducted postdoctoral research at Duke University Medical Center and at Bell Labs Lucent Technologies. He has also worked on science and education policy for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He is noted for his application of data analytics and poll aggregation to American politics. He is leading an effort at the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to build a 50-state data resource for legislative-quality citizen redistricting. His work to define a state-level legal theory to limit partisan gerrymandering recently won Common Cause’s Gerrymandering Standard Writing Contest. His neuroscience research concerns how the brain learns from sensory experience in early life, adulthood and autism.