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Litigation over election results serves an important role in legitimizing the democratic process, but when these challenges drag on for months, they can undermine that legitimacy and leave citizens without representation. North Carolina’s 2024 Supreme Court race, for example, took six months of post-election litigation to resolve, and some observers worry that similar delays could affect control of Congress in 2027. This Explainer examines the gaps in state laws that increase the risk of prolonged election contests and shows how state supreme courts can use their supervisory and rulemaking powers to ensure prompt resolution of such proceedings.

State legislatures regularly propose and enact laws that seek to shape the substantive outcomes of state courts. These measures, including court-packing efforts, jurisdiction-stripping laws, and more creative maneuvers to change judicial selection or authority, would amount to legal earthquakes at the federal level. At the state level, these efforts often receive virtually no attention. This Essay brings the potent category of outcome-shaping court reform measures into focus and evaluates it as a question of state constitutional law.

Amid federal upheaval, myriad important legal and policy developments continue to unfold at the state level. The Essays in this Special Issue were presented at, or grew out of, the fifth annual Public Law in the States Conference hosted by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School in May 2025.

The 2024–25 Wisconsin Supreme Court term wrapped up in June and July with a series of high-profile decisions, including on abortion, administrative rulemaking, and the governor’s partial veto power. This article summarizes some of the court’s most notable 2024–25 rulings, including several that implicate democracy and state constitutional law. It also previews what could be ahead in the court’s next term, which begins in September 2025.

Developed by two of the subject’s leading experts, the First Edition of State Constitutional Law: Cases and Principles provides a contemporary, authoritative treatment of the field, complete with majority approaches and alternatives across the country. The book provides detailed treatments of the wide range of state constitutional issues—not only rights, but also government structure, democracy, fiscal provisions, and intrastate relations.

As in recent election years, Pennsylvania courts faced a flood of election lawsuits in 2024, with many reaching the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. However, unlike in prior years where the high court readily intervened in election cases, it largely avoided them in 2024. A review of the court’s election cases shows that various procedural and jurisdictional rules limited its ability to resolve several high-profile disputes.

On April 1, 2025, Wisconsin voters will choose the newest justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In doing so, they will determine whether the court retains its current 4-3 liberal lean or flips back to a conservative-leaning majority. Either way, the race could have major implications for high-profile issues likely to come before the court, including abortion, election law, and union rights. To provide context and background on the supreme court candidates, this explainer details the types of cases Crawford and Schimel have handled as circuit judges, looks at how their rulings have fared on appeal, analyzes key democracy-related decisions they have authored, and examines what they have said about major issues that may soon come before the court.

Wisconsin is no stranger to big-money, politically charged state Supreme Court elections, and this year’s race might end up being the most expensive and divisive yet. What’s unfolding in Wisconsin highlights the growing tension between the ideals of an independent elected judiciary and the realities of many modern judicial campaigns—a tension epitomized by Elon Musk’s decision to join the fray.

This Article unpacks the state court supervisory power by mapping its sources, applications, and limits. The supervisory power has a basis in all fifty state constitutions and enables supreme courts to oversee their judiciary’s workload and operations. But as this Article shows, high courts are using this power beyond the humdrum of judicial administration to enhance substantive rights and remedies, facilitate their law development and agenda-setting capabilities, and mediate interbranch frictions. This Article’s core claim is that these more expansive applications of the supervisory power are generally defensible based on the evolution of state judiciaries and supreme courts’ unique roles in state governments.

More than a month after the November 2024 election, the result of the North Carolina Supreme Court race is still uncertain. There have been two recounts—one machine and one partial hand recount—neither of which changed the initial result: Democrat and incumbent North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs still leads over Republican North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin by just under 750 votes. The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) also rejected an election protest brought by Judge Griffin, challenging the eligibility of over 60,000 voters who cast a ballot in the last election. Judge Griffin, however, disputes that ruling, and litigation is now underway.