In this discussion with Sunwater Institute President Matt Chervenak, Dr. Josh Chafetz discusses "overspeech" in Congress, the role of political parties, and how Congress operates. He also provides recommendations for reforms to strengthen the legislative branch of government.
About Josh:
Josh Chafetz received his B.A. from Yale University, his doctorate in Politics from Oxford (where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar), and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Following law school, he clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Before coming to Georgetown, he spent twelve years on the faculty at Cornell Law School.
His research interests include structural constitutional law, American and British constitutional history, legislation and legislative procedure, American political development, and the intersection of law and politics. His second book, Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers, was published by Yale University Press in 2017. He is also the author of Democracy’s Privileged Few: Legislative Privilege and Democratic Norms in the British and American Constitutions (Yale University Press, 2007) and is a co-editor (along with William N. Eskridge, Jr., Elizabeth Garrett, and James Brudney) of the leading casebook in Legislation, Cases and Materials on Legislation and Regulation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy, published by West.
His scholarship has been published in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Notre Dame Law Review, and Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, among others. He has also written for a number of popular press outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Slate, and The New Republic. In 2019-2020, he served as a member of the American Political Science Association Presidential Task Force on Congressional Reform.
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Chapters:
0:18 - Background
1:55 - What brought you to this area?
3:03 - What was it like to do your PhD in the UK versus here?
4:02 - Is there anything interesting you found?
5:36 - What is over speech?
10:16 - What do you mean when you say committee?
13:26 - How do you think about those three levels?
16:23 - How does transparency play out in committees?
19:28 - Are there hard and fast rules to say what's overspeech and what isn't?
22:05 - What information should a legislature provide to the public?
25:12 - How should information get from here to there?
28:34 - Challenge with committees
30:33 - How does overspeech play out as a negotiation of positions?
32:00 - Talk about the work you've done
38:39 - Should federal government changes back committee scope changes?
42:06 - What recommendations do you have for the non-legislative aspect of Congress?
47:12 - What percentage of that budget should be on the communication staff?
48:52 - What do you think congressional representation should mean?
50:23 - Who are these representatives representing in their districts?
52:08 - How should Congress allocate its time?
55:37 - how should debate, deliberation, or dialogue occur and how should it be structured in Congress?
57:15 - What about if committees had closed door meetings and they could have debate and dialogue there?
58:12 - what fundamental institutional improvement should Congress make within a 50 year timeframe?
59:57 - What book or article most shaped your thinking with respect to congressional reform?
1:01:18 - What do you have coming and what can we look forward to?
