In this episode of Law & Democracy, we are thrilled to welcome Lori Ringhand, a distinguished professor of law at the University of Georgia. Professor Ringhand is an expert on judicial confirmations and has authored several books on the topic, including Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change and Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings. Join us as we dive into the complexities of the judicial confirmation process, explore its impact on democracy, and discuss how race and gender influence these critical proceedings. Professor Ringhand shares valuable insights based on years of research and experience in the field of election law.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• The historical evolution of Supreme Court confirmation hearings
• How constitutional change is influenced by judicial appointments
• The role of gender and race in shaping the confirmation process

Trivia Question: who was the 1st judicial clerk for a United States Supreme Court. Justice clerks, of course, are very important in the Supreme Court’s work today, but who was the 1st person to ever serve as a judicial clerk for a United States Supreme Court justice. Look for the answer on our next episode.

About Lori A. Ringhand: Lori A. Ringhand teaches courses on constitutional law and election law. She has been a member of the University of Georgia School of Law faculty since 2008 and was named a Hosch Professor in 2012 and awarded a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professorship, UGA’s highest teaching honor, in 2021. She is a nationally known Supreme Court scholar and the author of two books about the Supreme Court confirmation process: Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change (with Paul M. Collins) published by Cambridge University Press; and Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, (with Christina L. Boyd and Paul M. Collins), forthcoming Fall 2023 with Stanford University Press. She also is the co-author of Constitutional Law: A Context and Practices Casebook, which is part of a series of casebooks dedicated to incorporating active teaching and learning methods into traditional law school casebooks. Ringhand also publishes extensively on election law related issues, and was awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair Award at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland to explore the different approaches to campaign finance regulation taken by the United States and the United Kingdom. Ringhand served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 2015 to 2018 and as the interim director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center from January 2020 to July 2021. She was presented with the C. Ronald Ellington Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2010 and 2015, and the John C. O’Byrne Memorial Faculty Award for Furthering Student-Faculty Relations in 2017. For the 2016-17 academic year, she served as a Women Leadership Fellow, a program developed by the UGA Provost’s Office. Ringhand graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she served as an articles editor on the Wisconsin Law Review. She also holds a Bachelor of Civil Law degree, awarded with distinction, from the University of Oxford. Before coming to UGA, she served on the faculty of the University of Kentucky College of Law and as a visiting scholar at the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law.