René Lindstädt takes us through the important process of nominating Supreme Court Justices. He shows us why we should care a lot more, and how the political direction of a super-power, and our own lives, can be changed by the appointment of just one of these Justices.
René is Head of the School of Law and Politics, Professor of Law, and Professor of Politics at Cardiff University. He also serves as an Editor of the British Journal of Political Science, one of the leading international academic journals in the discipline. Before joining Cardiff University School of Law and Politics, he held faculty positions at SUNY Stony Brook in New York, Trinity College Dublin and the University of Essex, where he served as Head of the Department of Government and Director of the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis.
His research, which has been published in leading political science, law and interdisciplinary journals, focuses on questions of political accountability trying to understand how elected officials are kept in check by voters, the media and elected officials in other government branches. Most of his research studies legislatures, but he has also had a long-standing interest in constitutional courts, in particular the U.S. Supreme Court and its role in the American separation-of-powers system. In addition to his research publications, René is a frequent contributor to mainstream media, including TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Most of his commentary is on the U.S. politics.
In his free time, René is an avid fan of American sports (in particular professional baseball and basketball as well as college football) and rugby. In addition to watching games on TV and listening to them on the radio, he also does sports analytics – the use of statistical methods to study athletic performance – as a hobby.