Douglas Keith

At the end of the day, our hope with State Court Report is to create a forum to analyze and put in context developments in state constitutional law at a time when it is getting much more attention. Our State Case Database is one more tool to help do that.

Why would a judge or advocate care about an opinion or briefs from another state? For one, the drafters of state constitutions themselves borrowed from other states, so anyone interpreting their own constitution may benefit from seeing how peers treated similar provisions

With the State Court Report launch today, I'm particularly excited about our new State Case Database, where we collect the most significant recent decisions in state constitutional law, and the briefs behind them. Here's a short 🧵 about the database

The database is also searchable by issue area and by state - a law student in Georgia can do a deep dive on the Georgia Supreme Court or see what courts across the country have been doing about state constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right to education

Why are the briefs important? Our hope is that advocates across the country can learn from one another's work, that academics and law students can better study state litigation, and that journalists can get a deeper look at cases they are reporting on

And, because she cannot thank herself, I want to be clear that we're here thanks to the incredible vision and leadership of @alicia_bannon . I'm so lucky to work with and learn from you!

We have been working on this for two years and are just so excited to share it with you

And more! We're just getting started, so look forward to more commentary about state constitutional development from more voices, more judicial interviews, and more coverage of major cases. If you want to receive next month's newsletter, sign up here: go.brennancenter.org/subscribe-stat…

And this fascinating interview w/ Washington Chief Justice Gonzalez: "It can do violence to require someone imagine themselves to be a slave owner who didn’t believe women had equal rights in order to understand what the Constitution means." brennancenter.org/our-work/resea…

We just published issue #2 of the State Court Report newsletter! As always you can sign up here: go.brennancenter.org/subscribe-stat… The newsletter includes timely news and commentary about state constitutional development in state courts. Here's what's inside this month🧵