Professor Bulman-Pozen, thank you so much for coming to sit for an interview with the Verdict. This is our first issue, and we’re super excited to have you here to talk about your role as a professor, your work as a scholar, and yourself as a member of the Columbia Law School community. Let’s get right into it.
Last year, you received the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching. You’ve been teaching since 2012, and it’s the second time you’ve won the teaching prize. Congratulations. How do you do it?
JBP: I think they just need to find someone to speak at graduation—they offer us the prize as an incentive.
It was a real honor to win the prize this time, and last time as well. I care a lot about my students and about teaching, and I try my best. The behind-the-scenes selection of the teaching prize is a bit of a mystery to me, so I don’t have any comment on that. But I will take it as appreciation for the effort I put into teaching.
We’re curious about your teaching philosophy. You have a no-laptops policy in class. Have you gotten pushback on that, from students who are trying to use laptops to take notes, do research, or check emails during class?
JBP: On checking emails during class, I think people look at their phones under the desk and think I don’t see them, which I absolutely do. I would like the Verdict to take note of that.
With respect to the actual use of laptops during class, I think sometimes people express concerns at the beginning of the semester. But I have found reliably, actually, in all the years I’ve been doing this, that by the end of the semester, students appreciate the time away from their devices. They appreciate the ability to engage directly with each other, with me, with the material, and not be easily distracted either by their own screens or by the screens of the people next to them. And to have to synthesize things and take notes accordingly, rather than just transcribe. So I’ve actually gotten universal and sometimes surprised appreciation for the policy. Not to say everyone likes it, and I’m sure plenty of people just don’t weigh in one way or the other at the end of the semester, but to the extent people do, it’s mostly to say, ‘you know, I was worried about this, but actually I appreciated it in the end.’
I also know I speak very quickly, and so I try to slow down or have people flag me, because that is the hazard. Obviously, we’re faster at typing than handwriting. So I try to make adjustments myself, and I’m always open to thoughts about how to best teach in the classroom without computers.
Do you think the policy also has an effect on class discussion? In Leg Reg last year, discussion of legal issues and legal theory was pretty solid when it was opened up to the class.
JBP: It definitely improves class discussion. People are just more engaged from the get-go. They have nothing better to do than to talk to each other. It’s a virtuous cycle, too, because when people aren’t on their computers, I see them and how they’re engaging and responding in real time. I’m more responsive to their responsiveness.
The big question on everyone’s mind is how to teach Leg Reg without Chevron. It seems you are still spending a day on Chevron and a couple of days on Loper Bright and open questions beyond. Has there been any guidance since that’s instructive for students to learn?
JBP: Well, it’s been a dull, dull summer for administrative law.
I think it’s still important to teach Chevron. Chevron was the paradigm for 40 years. And it shaped a tremendous amount of administrative law. It’s also important, when you look at a case that overrules such an important case, to figure out what it is overruling. What’s changing? What might not be changing?
We think right now Auer deference survived, even though it faced a similar challenge. But what does Auer deference look like in a world without Chevron deference? Can we really justify one and not the other? That question is explicit in the Kisor opinion, but now there are new questions about what that distinction looks like.
There’s also a question, I think, about the major questions doctrine. Major questions emerged against the backdrop of deference that Chevron had created, as a carveout to Chevron. I don’t think we would have gotten a major questions doctrine had there not been Chevron. Loper Bright overruled Chevron, but it doesn’t overrule the major questions cases. Are they now zombies, or are they part of an anti-deference paradigm that we’re living with?
And then, of course, there’s just the more fundamental question: What are courts now doing when they look at agency decisions? If they’re not doing the Chevron two-step, are they nonetheless deferring under a Skidmore approach, or some kind of new approach? When we see the Supreme Court cases—now you’ve gotten me going—I’ll just say, when you see the Supreme Court cases, the interpretive questions are often the sorts of legal questions that courts are equipped to address. But, as I think Justice Kagan’s dissent nicely emphasizes, most of the questions that lower courts are getting are really bound up in policy and very technical and complicated, but often small. They are often issues that courts have no business dealing with, and they probably are going to recognize that. We’re not going to know by the time I get to the post-Chevron unit this fall, but we’ll start to see what questions are bubbling up and how courts are dealing with them. It’s much too simple to say that there was deference and now there’s not, because neither is really true.
How do you adapt to changes in the law?
JBP: It’s actually one thing that’s exciting about teaching at a law school versus other kinds of teaching where the curriculum might be more set: It changes. Even if there isn’t an upheaval in the doctrine, there are new cases, new developments, maybe a new statute that you want to think about incorporating and teaching. You have a foundation and materials that you always come back to, but you also want to account for recent developments and things that students may be particularly interested in that didn’t even exist the last time you taught. When I started teaching, there was no major questions doctrine, and in recent years people have become very focused on it. So I think that’s a nice thing. Sometimes you have to step back and ask whether the old material is really foundational. I try to keep tabs on that and adjust accordingly. But it’s always a work in progress.
Aside from your administrative law scholarship, you’ve also done a lot of work on state constitutions, including several legal articles and a casebook on state constitutions that you’re currently working on with Professor Miriam Seifter at the University of Wisconsin Law School. How did you get interested in state constitutional law? It’s a subject that kind of flies under the radar at law school.
JBP: I’ve had a long-standing interest in federalism and in how states work within our federal system, predating my joining the Columbia faculty. I wrote about it mostly from a federal perspective, but over time, I thought more about the state perspective.
I think I was not alone in seeing certain developments in federal constitutional law foreclosing important pathways that are actually open in the states. Right now, there’s a lot of attention on states, especially in the wake of Dobbs, for example, with respect to reproductive rights, and in the wake of Rucho with respect to gerrymandering and voting rights.
But I became especially interested even before the latest wave because of how state constitutions are these democracy-protecting majoritarian documents that are very different from the federal constitution. Once I started to see the possibilities, both intellectually and practically, I kind of got hooked. I’ve been working in that space since, and it’s been really gratifying. Just last month, for example, the Michigan Supreme Court relied in part on my work with Miriam Seifter to invalidate the state legislature’s attempt to gut initiatives to raise the minimum wage and provide for paid sick time.
Have you noticed any general patterns among state constitutions? Do all the New England states tend to have similar constitutions, or Western states that were founded more recently?
JBP: It’s a good question. There are definitely regional patterns, in part because of the constitutions that existed from the eighteenth century versus those that only emerged when places became states in the twentieth century. There are differences that have a regional character as well as a temporal character for that reason. Direct democracy is not really a New England thing, but rather more of a Western thing. So there are certain regional distinctions, but less than we might be inclined to believe. When state constitutions out in the West were being adopted and drafted, they looked to state constitutions that had been there from the start. They took New York’s constitution and said, what do we like in this? What do we not like? They took some provisions out of it and popped them right in. There’s a lot of borrowing that disrupts regional patterns, a lot of transformation over time, through amendment or outright replacement of constitutions that makes for new developments, but also more similarity across states.
In a lot of cases, you can find regional and temporal patterns, you can find a lot of state-specific language and doctrine, but you can also find much more of a shared constitutionalism than you might expect.
Is federalism one of the major focuses of the Center for Constitutional Governance, which you are a co-director of? What kind of research questions does the Center focus on?
JBP: Yes. As you probably know, since you’ve done thorough research for this interview, I run that center together with Kate Andrias, Olatunde Johnson, and Gillian Metzger.
The focus varies year to year, depending on what we’re working on and what the salient issues seem to be. We try to do a lot of programming for the community and for students. There’s often a federalism component, because a number of us are interested in federalism.
This fall, for example, we’re having one of our former students, Madiba Dennie, who wrote a book about originalism, and Aziz Rana, who wrote a book about constitutional veneration, come and give book talks. We’re going to do some programming around the election and election law. So we try to do different kinds of teaching, but federalism is a piece of that.
How can students get involved with the Center? More generally, how can students experience meaningful engagement with faculty members?
JBP: The easiest, most straightforward way is to go to office hours. “Do as I say, not as I did when I was a law student”—I didn’t go to office hours. I went one time in my whole three years, literally because the professor made me. It just seemed a little intimidating, a little unclear what one did at office hours, a little suck up-y—all these things that one might not want to be drawing oneself into.
And now, on the other side, I see that was a huge mistake. I should have definitely gone to office hours. So for those who may be approaching law school the way I did, go to office hours. We professors purposefully set aside time to see students. It’s certainly an opportunity to get questions answered, but it’s also an opportunity to talk about your interests, to talk about the law more generally, and to get advice about things beyond the class. It’s a great way to get to know your professors. Don’t go every week, just for the sake of doing it. But take advantage of that opportunity.
The law school also has an abundance of programming: talks that the centers put on, where a professor brings in a friend or colleague to give a talk, or similar opportunities. It’s not as direct of an interaction, but it’s a way of learning more about areas of law and being exposed to different kinds of ideas and people that could provide fodder for future conversations and follow-up.
There are also smaller seminar style classes. CCG often runs a public law workshop or a practicum, but there are many other seminars too. I think those are great opportunities to get to know professors a little better, to get to know areas of law that don’t get lecture classes devoted to them but are important and might provide opportunities for your own research and writing as students. Those are some things I would advise.
Something else I recall as a 1L was work-life balance. You have to manage your stress, you have to stay healthy, you have to just be a person sometimes. But there’s so much to do in law school. What do you do to relax?
JBP: “Just be a person sometimes.” I like that. Well, I try to be a person sometimes as well. I spend time with my family. Being a professor as well as a parent is not always relaxing per se, but it’s enjoyable. It’s a very different sort of way of being a person in the world, to be a professor at work and then to come home and be a parent. This fall, we’re getting a puppy, so that will add to the craziness, but it should be fun.
I like to walk to and from work in Riverside Park; that’s my commute. I think it’s grounding; it’s a little bit of meditative time that I have to build into my schedule. And I like to take advantage of New York’s cultural opportunities when I can.
Do you have any restaurant recommendations?
JBP: I actually think the best food around Columbia is not sit-down restaurants. Absolute Bagels is some of the best food around campus. There’s a cute little Italian restaurant called Osteria Accademia that opened on Amsterdam. You should ask other professors who are foodies for the recommendations, because I’ll embarrass myself if I try to give you any kind of culinary landscape of New York. But I’ll stand behind Absolute Bagels. I think Professor Ahmed and I both have the Absolute Bagels hat. Don’t go at brunch because of the super long line. One has to have some self-respect and not wait in line for two hours for bagels. But if you go any other time, you can get a great bagel right away.
We’d like to ask about hopes and concerns for the rest of the semester. Last year was a difficult year, and we’re curious how you are approaching the new semester.
JBP: I don’t know what my answer to that question is. I think I’m approaching it with a sense of hopefulness about our community and some changes at the University, but also a great deal of uncertainty, if I’m being honest, about what’s going to happen both on campus and in the world, mere days before the start of the semester.
In your commencement speech last year, you talked about the importance of showing each other grace, making space for difficult discussions, and looking beyond the controversies of the moment. We’re trying to do that at the Verdict. Do you have thoughts on our project, or what we as a community could do better to fulfill that vision of community?
JBP: Well, I think it’s great to have a place where people can come together and share ideas about law school and otherwise. I hope that Columbia students will continue talking to each other even when they disagree, whether that’s through the more formal structures of class or outside of it.
And I will say, although we had many challenges, I think the law school was better than a lot of other parts of campus with respect to people’s ability to engage substantively with people they disagreed with and to try to actively support other students. I’m hopeful that we can build on those successes. I recognize quite a lot of failures all around as well, and I don’t mean to gloss over those, but I hope people are coming back to campus with some sense of community and shared purpose that we can build on.
Do you think there’s something special about the law school community that led us to retain more of a sense of community?
JBP: I think law students tend to be mature, professional, and have an eye on the future in a way that maybe college students do not. But I would like to think that in addition to those sort of obvious demographic points, everyone who’s come to law school wants to think deeply about legal issues. There are ways we structure legal argument, legal debate, cases: having to argue one side, having to argue the other side, giving reasons for what one thinks.
There are things about the law and therefore legal pedagogy that lend themselves to genuinely considering someone else’s perspective and trying to figure out the strongest points another person is making, even when you disagree, even if only to respond to those points. There are ways in which we structure our thinking that, I think, are conducive to having genuine conversations and maintaining community across disagreement. I don’t think we always do that, but there’s a real foundation that is special to law.
Why did you choose Columbia as a place for a career? Why would you choose Columbia today?
JBP: I chose to come to Columbia, and to stay at Columbia, mostly because of my tremendous colleagues. In the fields I work in, Columbia has the nation’s best faculty. And I don’t just admire my colleagues’ work; I genuinely like them and enjoy spending time with them, both those who were here when I joined the faculty and those who have been hired since. I’ve also been fortunate to have fantastic students from my very first semester through today. And it doesn’t hurt to have the benefits of the broader university and the city of New York. I’ve been very happy at Columbia, and I don’t ever plan to leave.
Thank you so much for sitting for this interview. We really appreciate your time.
JBP: Yes, thank you. Please edit out any nonsense I said and make it sound like I had a really sharp interview. And good luck with your first issue.
This interview was conducted by Charles Simonds, 3L, and Gloria Yi, 3L, and has been edited for length, clarity, and content.