A Conversation with Jacob Eisler on Constitutional Law, Political Fragmentation, and Judicial Power

In this episode, we welcome Jacob Eisler, the James Edmund and Margaret Elizabeth Hennessey Corry Professor at the Florida State University College of Law, where the 2025 Election Law Conference (ELC) was hosted. Professor Eisler shares highlights from the conference, which brought together leading scholars from across the nation to discuss the practice and theory of election law, with a focus on the most urgent issues currently facing American democracy—representation, democracy and economic inequality, fair districting, and challenges to electoral integrity. The keynote address was delivered by Nicholas Stephanopoulos, the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. The 2025 ELC at Florida State built upon the 2024 Election Law Conference at Washington University School of Law, continuing the tradition as a leading annual conference on constitutional law, democratic theory, and the electoral process in the American legal academy. Publications referenced in this episode: 1. The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law by Richard L. Hasen 2. The Ohio State Law Journal 2025 Symposium 3. The Two Faces of Representation by Ashraf Ahmed 4. The Law of Freedom: The Supreme Court and Democracy by Jacob Eisler About Professor Jacob Eisler Jacob Eisler joined Florida State University College of Law in 2023 as the James Edmund and Margaret Elizabeth Hennessey Corry Professor. Professor Eisler researches constitutional law, election law, criminal law (with a focus on anti-corruption law), legal theory, and law and technology. He applies moral and political theory to questions of judicial reasoning and institutional design, with particular emphasis on the relationship between legal doctrine, democratic self-rule, and the conditions necessary for political liberty. He is the author of The Law of Freedom: The Supreme Court and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and his scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the Emory Law Journal, the UC Davis Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Election Law Journal. He is regularly interviewed or quoted in national and international media on matters related to law and politics.