Boden Lecture: Gerken Warns About “Shadow Parties” Dominating Politics
Heather Gerken views the political party faithful in the Republican and Democratic parties as “the most glorious creatures in American politics.”
But Gerken, the J. Skelly Wright Professor at Yale Law School, told several hundred people in the Appellate Courtroom in Eckstein Hall on Monday that she is concerned that the party faithful are being left out as political power moves increasingly into “shadow parties” of powerful people in political elites. She feared the result would be a decrease in the force on parties to “do right” by voters.
Gerken, whose views on how politics works in America have received wide attention from both scholars and policymakers, gave the annual Boden Lecture at Marquette University Law School.
In a second session at the Law School, she addressed a separate provocative topic: how innovation in American policy has been undertaken increasingly at the state and local levels in recent years, rather than at the national level. She discussed “How ‘Local’ Should Politics Be?” along with Charles Franklin, professor of law and public policy at the Law School, and Craig Gilbert, Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as part of the “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” series.