Keynote Address by Professor Miriam Seifter
"Trust and Democracy under State Constitutions"
How do institutions vital to the operation of a democratic society lose trust—and can it be restored? Government ineffectiveness can diminish public confidence. Representational failures erode the popular will of the majority. These and other vectors of mistrust are pressing problems that lack easy solutions. Still, the erosion of trust—and of democracy—may be redressable under the design of state constitutions and state institutions. State constitutions embody a deep commitment to popular sovereignty, majority rule, and political equality. They have been repeatedly rewritten and amended to empower popular majorities, and their commitment to the “democracy principle” can inform a number of contemporary conflicts. Actions at the state level can provide otherwise elusive opportunities to rebuild trust.
Panel Participants
Wayne Bena
Nebraska Secretary of State's Office
Wayne Bena was named Nebraska Deputy Secretary of State for Elections in September of 2017. Prior to accepting this role, he served as Election Commissioner of Sarpy County for eight years, giving him a unique view of elections from both the county and state perspective. Wayne was successful in convincing all three of the states Elections vendors to sign on with Homeland Security for security assessments prior to the 2018 General Election.Additionally, Wayne collaborated with Omaha-based Election Systems & Software and the Center for Internet Security to achieve the installation of a Network Intrusion Monitoring device called an Albert Sensor to protect the State’s voter registration system. This project won a National Award for Election Innovation from the National Association of State Election Directors in 2019 and has since been copied in seven other states.
The Election Division also won a CLEARIE Award from the Election Assistance Commission in 2022 for its work to make polling sites ADA accessible. Wayne and his team successfully steered the way for the state to hold both statewide elections in 2020 safely and on time during a global pandemic. Wayne also wrote legislation allowing Nebraska to accommodate the Census being late in order for redistricting to occur prior to the 2022 elections.
Wayne holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and law degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Professor Eric Berger
University of Nebraska College of Law
Professor Eric Berger's scholarship focuses on constitutional law. Much of his work explores judicial decision making in constitutional cases, with special attention to deference, fact finding, rhetorical strategies, and other under-theorized factors that help shape judicial opinions in constitutional cases. His article Individual Rights, Judicial Deference, and Administrative Law Norms in Constitutional Decision Making, 91 B.U. L. REV. 2029 (2011), was named the 2011 winner of the American Constitution Society's Richard D. Cudahy Writing Competition on Regulatory and Administrative Law. Professor Berger has also written extensively about lethal injection litigation.
Professor Berger has testified in the Nebraska legislature about a variety of constitutional issues, including free speech, lethal injection, and the process for amending the U.S. Constitution. He is also the faculty advisor to the Law College's chapter of the American Constitution Society and to the Community Legal Education Project, which sends law students into Lincoln schools and community centers to teach about the Constitution.
Read more about Professor Berger here.
Professor Jenny Breen
Syracuse University College of Law
Professor Jenny Breen teaches Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and Labor Law. Her interdisciplinary scholarship is centrally concerned with democratic governance in the United States and pays particular attention to the roles of gender and labor politics. Her current research examines the Supreme Court’s relationship to democratic erosion in the United States. She has also written in the areas of immigration and criminal law. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals includingUtah Law Review, New Labor Forum,Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, theUniversity of Hawai’i Law Review,American Criminal Law Review, and theJournal of Policy History.
Prior to arriving at the College of Law, Professor Breen practiced immigration law and then worked as a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Rosemary S. Pooler on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She also taught Politics at Ithaca College, including courses on U.S. Politics and the Politics of Work.
Read more about Professor Breen here.
Professor Wilfred Codrington III
Brooklyn Law School
Professor Wilfred Codrington III is a constitutional law scholar with a focus on constitutional reform, election law, and voting rights. He was previously the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Fellow and Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law where he focused on voting and election security, constitutional reform, and the rule of law. He also taught graduate and undergraduate courses at NYU Wagner School of Public Service on topics of law, public policy, and politics. Professor Codrington was also a Fieldwork Supervisor for the Brennan Center Advocacy Clinic, an NYU Law School clinic devoted to teaching public policy through real world legal reform campaigns that impact the laws of democracy and the regulation of election contests.
He is the co-author of The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union (The New Press 2021), which examines the history of constitutional amendments and the tension between the overall progressive arc of constitutional change and the conservative grip on the broader conversation about the Constitution. Among his recent articles are “So Goes the Nation: What the American West is Telling us about How We’ll Choose the President in 2020,” 120 Columbia Law Review 43 (Forum) (March 2020); and “The Benefits of Equity in the Constitutional Quest for Equality,” 43 N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change 105 (The Harbinger) (2019).
Read more about Professor Codrington here.
Sen. Danielle Conrad
Nebraska Unicameral
Senator Danielle Conrad is a civil rights attorney who was elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 2006 and 2010. During her first two terms of service, she served as a member of the Appropriations Committee. Senator Conrad has a reputation for being a hard worker and someone who reaches across party lines. She has been selected by her peers to serve in numerous leadership roles including the Redistricting Committee, Committee on Committees, Legislative Performance Audit Committee, and Chair of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Task Force.
Senator Conrad was re-elected in 2022 and was the first woman to beat term limits in Nebraska. She has the second most seniority in the Legislature and is presently a member of the Education Committee, Government Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and Retirement Systems Committee. Senator Conrad is best known for her work in support of civil rights and economic justice. Senator Conrad earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Nebraska College of Law. She has an extensive professional background as a public interest attorney, nonprofit executive, political consultant, and ballot initiative expert. Senator Conrad resides in the beautiful East Campus neighborhood in North Lincoln with her husband and two young children.
Read more about Sen. Conrad here.
Professor Jacob Eisler
Florida State University College of Law
Professor Jacob Eisler researches in the areas of constitutional law, election law, criminal law (focused 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 a focus on the relationship between the Supreme Court’s 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 is published or forthcoming leading law reviews and peer reviewed journals, including the Emory Law Journal, the UC Davis Law Review, the Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, and the Election Law Journal. He is regularly interviewed or quoted in leading media outlets nationally and internationally on matters related to the law and politics.
Read more about Professor Eisler here.
Professor Anthony Gaughan
Drake University Law School
Professor Anthony Gaughan teaches Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Election Law, and Legal & Constitutional History. Prior to joining Drake Law, he was a litigator with a large Wisconsin law firm. Professor Gaughan is also an Iraq veteran and former U.S. Navy officer.
He is author of the book, The Last Battle of the Civil War: United States versus Lee, 1861-1883 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011) (peer reviewed), a legal history of the Supreme Court's famous Arlington National Cemetery case. He has published articles with a wide range of journals, including the Journal of Supreme Court History; the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy; the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy; the American Journal of Legal History; the British Journal of American Legal Studies; the Ohio State Law Journal; the Fordham Law Review; and the American University Law Review.
Read more about Professor Gaughan here.
Professor Brandon Johnson
University of Nebraska College of Law
Professor Brandon Johnson’s research sits at the intersection of administrative law, the separation of powers, and the law of democracy. His writing focuses on the ways democratic institutions, including Congress, the Presidency, and the Administrative State interact, and the ways in which the courts attempt to shape those interactions. Professor Johnson’s articles and essays have appeared in nationally recognized publications including Wake Forest Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, Boston University Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review Blog. Professor Johnson teaches courses on Administrative Law, Civil Procedure, and Election Law.
Read more about Professor Johnson here.
Professor Anthony Michael Kreis
Georgia State University College of Law
Professor Anthony Michael Kreis joined Georgia State University College of Law faculty in 2020, and holds a courtesy appointment with the department of Political Science. At the College of Law, he teaches constitutional law and employment discrimination. Professor Kreis’s academic interests span the areas of constitutional law, civil rights, legislation, the law of democracy, and American political development.
His research uses qualitative empirical methods and doctrinal analysis to assess how social change and the law interact and affect each other. A great deal of Professor Kreis’s research focuses on the relationship between American political history and the development of law over time.
Active in law reform efforts, Professor Kreis has participated in civil rights litigation and civil rights legislative initiatives. He co-authored amicus briefs in major civil rights cases before the United States Supreme Court, including Bostock v. Clayton County and Comcast v. National Association of African American-Owned Media. In addition to appearances in state legislatures across the country, he has testified numerous times before the Georgia General Assembly about marriage, civil rights, employment discrimination, LGBTQ rights, and religious liberty. In 2017, Professor Kreis authored the Illinois state law banning gay and transgender panic defenses in murder trials, the second law of its kind in the United States, which has served as a model for other jurisdictions.
Read more about Professor Kreis here.
Professor Kyle Langvardt
University of Nebraska College of Law
Professor Kyle Langvardt is a First Amendment scholar who focuses on the Internet’s implications for free expression both as a matter of constitutional doctrine and as a practical reality. His written work addresses new and confounding policy issues including tech addiction, the collapse of traditional gatekeepers in online media and 3D-printable weapons.
Professor Langvardt was awarded the Schmid Professorship for Excellence in Research for the 2024-25 academic year. Professor Langvardt’s most recent papers appear in venues including the Journal of Free Speech Law, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, the Yale Law Journal Forum, Georgetown Law Journal, and the Fordham Law Review. Professor Langvardt is also a co-editor of Media and Society After Technological Disruption, a multiauthor volume published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press.
Read more about Professor Langvardt here.
Dr. Gina Ligon
National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE)
Dr. Gina Ligon received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Minor in Quantitative Psychology from the University of Oklahoma.
Prior to joining University of Nebraska Omaha, she was a full time faculty member at Villanova University in the Graduate Programs in Human Resource Development. She also worked as a Director of Performance Consulting at St. Louis-based Psychological Associates.
Her research program focuses on the identification and development of high level talent; she has specific expertise in innovation and leadership, and has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on these subjects. Organizational structures and leadership in non-normative organizations (e.g., violent ideological) are also of interest to her.
Read more about Dr. Ligon here.
Professor Daniel Walters
Texas A&M University School of Law
Professor Daniel E. Walters writes about administrative and regulatory law, with a particular focus on the implications of democratic theory for the administrative state, on public participation in administrative processes, on deference doctrines, on empirical studies of administrative behavior, and on the court-agency relationship. His articles have appeared in many of the top journals in law and public administration, including theYale Law Journal, theStanford Law Review, theMichigan Law Review, and theGeorgetown Law Review.
Read more about Professor Walters here.
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