Judith Resnik, Jonathan Lippman, Carol S. Steiker, Susan S. Silbey, Jamal Greene, and Linda Greenhouse participated in a conversation on the function of courts in the United States.

In today’s world—characterized by great-power competition and ongoing crises in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East—missile defense, previously a Cold War concern, has resurfaced as a prominent issue. State and non-state actors are relying on missile capabilities to achieve their military objectives. This article explores how missile strikes and missile threats are shaping new and ongoing global tensions.

The Academy hosted a meeting at the University of Chicago on the benefits and risks of nuclear, biological, and information technologies. The speakers included Robert Rosner, James M. Acton, Elisa D. Harris, and Herbert Lin.

Anti-intellectualism is on the rise, fueled in part by attacks on institutions of higher education. As a result, the public has begun to question the role these institutions play in society and whether they still provide the value they once did. For decades, colleges and universities have claimed to advance the public good, pointing to their research contributions as evidence of their value and their continued need for public support. Their internal processes, however, do not always reflect their commitments.

How might social research contribute to a retreat from mass incarceration, make the world fairer, and promote alternatives to punishment that help communities become safer and healthier? In a presentation at the Academy, Bruce Western explored this topic and the implications of mass incarceration for racial and economic inequality.

On April 30, 2024, the Academy hosted a virtual event that featured four contributors to the Dædalus volume on “Understanding Implicit Bias: Insights & Innovations”—guest editors Goodwin Liu (California Supreme Court) and Camara Phyllis Jones (King’s College London) and authors Jennifer Eberhardt (Stanford University) and Frank Dobbin (Harvard University)—who discussed some of the strategies and solutions to understand and combat implicit bias. The program included welcoming remarks from Academy President David W. Oxtoby. An edited transcript of the event follows.

There was a time before strong leaders, social inequality, and class systems. Coming of age in the 1960s, my motivation was to understand and hopefully help alter the world of unjust and unstable societies. This personal essay summarizes my career as an archaeologist studying the emergence of complex political systems.

A bipartisan Academy Commission recommended eighteen-year terms for Supreme Court justices to “help move the Court toward a less partisan future, restoring its legitimacy as an independent arbiter of justice.” The idea from Our Common Purpose is detailed further in a subsequent publication.

Harvard Law School professor and cochair of Academy project on Making Justice Accessible Martha Minow discusses forgiveness in the American legal system with NPR host Michel Martin.

Experts in five locations—Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.—to lead discussions about legal justice on November 11 as part of the Academy’s inaugural Distinguished Morton L. Mandel Annual Public Lecture.

An exploratory meeting at the Academy convened international legal experts, policymakers, and global security scholars to examine the effectiveness, limitations, and trajectory of international humanitarian law in the context of the changing character of armed conflict and a weakening commitment to the rule of law.

The Winter 2022 issue of Dædalus on “Reimagining Justice: The Challenges of Violence & Punitive Excess,” guest-edited by Bruce Western and featuring authors from academia, advocacy, and the justice system, shows how violence, criminalization, and punitive excess have been shaped by the deep contours of racial inequality and poverty in America.

Geoffrey R. Stone moderated a conversation with journalist Judith Miller, Judge Richard A. Posner, and author Gabriel Schoenfeld about the balance between freedom of the press and national security. Each panelist offered his or her perspective on bridging legal and ethical issues.

Washington Post chief correspondent and Academy member Dan Balz highlights ways ordinary citizens can address problems with the U.S. political system in an op-ed that includes recommendations from Our Common Purpose, including independent redistricting commissions, expanding the House, implementing ranked choice voting, and more.

The 2011 Induction weekend included a symposium on American Institutions and a Civil Society, which featured two panel discussions: The American Military and American Democracy and The Constitution, the Practice of Democracy, and Unintended Consequences.

On June 19–20, 2019, the Academy convened an Exploratory Meeting in Boston, MA, on “Water in Our Future.” The participants included water program officials, water policy experts, research scientists, and scholars in the humanities and sciences from the United States and around the world. The meeting was organized to help identify key questions related to water security and to inform how a potential Academy project might make a contribution in this area.

The Spring 2022 issue of Dædalus on “AI & Society,” guest edited by Academy member James Manyika, explores the many facets of AI: its technology, its potential futures, its effects on labor and the economy, its relationship with inequalities, its role in law and governance, its challenges to national security, and what it says about us as humans. What follows are a few additional remarks and insight from the volume’s guest editor on the collection.

A poll sponsored by the Academy, and conducted by the Center for Public Opinion at UMass-Lowell, reveals displeasure with the state of American politics and receptivity to changes in how we elect Congressional representatives.

Although global child mortality has dropped by 50 percent since 1990, neonatal mortality has declined much more slowly. Newborns now represent more than 40 percent of under-five deaths, and preterm birth is the world’s leading killer of children.