Election 2024: Columbia Law Experts on the Issues

Learn what the new administration and Congress could mean for antidiscrimination regulations, the environment, EU-U.S. relations, immigration, labor relations, national security, and taxation.

What's At Stake stars and stripes graphic in red and blue

Columbia Law School experts consider what’s at stake in the upcoming election, potential implications for law and policy in their areas of expertise, and how the results might affect the learning experiences of law students in their classrooms.  

Interviews have been edited and condensed.

Kate Andrias

Labor Relations

Kate Andrias 

Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law

What’s at stake? “The continued existence of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could be at stake. Conservatives and corporations are challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB, an agency that has existed since the 1930s and that is charged with protecting workers’ rights to organize unions and bargain collectively. To that end, SpaceX recently won a preliminary injunction from a Trump-appointed district judge in Texas. A Trump administration will almost certainly support constitutional attacks on the NLRB and other agencies while also appointing more judges willing to overturn long-standing precedent and undermine the ability of the government to protect workers, consumers, and the environment. Other regulations are also at stake, including child labor restrictions and health and safety protections.”

How will this come into play in your teaching? “In Constitutional Law, in the early 20th century, during what is known as the Lochner era, the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to limit the ability of both Congress and state legislatures to protect workers, consumers, and the environment. That changed in the 1930s with the New Deal. But it could well change again. In addition to learning the history of the doctrine, we will be asking how constitutional change occurs—how legislators, executive officials, and social movements all participate in shaping constitutional meaning, along with judges.” 

Will this issue influence your scholarship? “If Trump prevails, scholarship and advocacy regarding state and local law will become even more important; I will continue to research and develop pro-worker and pro-democracy reforms at the sub-national level while also studying how to preserve democracy in the face of authoritarian threats.”   

Professor Anu Bradford smiling

EU-U.S. Relations

Anu Bradford

Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization

What’s at stake? “This is a monumental presidential election, not just for the United States but also for Europe and the entire rest of the world. With President Biden departing office, the last post-Cold War president for whom transatlantic cooperation was a priority will be gone. Regardless of whether Harris or Trump is elected, the U.S.’s strategic priorities are shifting. The next U.S. president will be less Atlanticist and likely less committed to working with the EU, focusing on managing the more critical U.S.-China relationship and consumed by several other geopolitical challenges. As a result, the Europeans should be prepared to increase their own defense capabilities, bolster their economic security, and deepen their diplomatic engagement with other allies as a hedge for potentially deteriorating EU-U.S. relations. That said, the EU will always want to, and need to, work with the U.S.—no matter who occupies the White House.”

How has the election come into play in your teaching? “I am teaching European Union Law and Institutions this fall, so we are naturally focusing on the EU’s relationship to the United States, including how American foreign policy in the aftermath of the election will either help or hinder Europe’s ability to manage its own challenges and influence global policy.”

How will the election influence your scholarship? “As I am currently researching tech regulation, I will be particularly interested in how the next administration will approach the regulation of tech giants, including the deployment of antitrust laws or the regulation of artificial intelligence.”

Professor Michael Gerrard

Environment

Michael Gerrard

Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice

What’s at stake? “The largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. (and the world) are motor vehicles and coal-fired power plants. The Biden administration has issued regulations toughening the standards for both. Following what he did during his first term, Trump would no doubt weaken these standards, leaving us even further away from meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

How will this come into play in your teaching? “I teach these regulations in my climate change law course, so if there is a change in party control of the White House, I’ll need to completely rewrite my syllabus. That isn’t so difficult; what’s really hard is that my students realize that it’s their own futures that are at stake.”

Will this issue influence your scholarship? “The day that Trump was inaugurated in 2017, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, which I founded and direct, launched a website called the Climate Deregulation Tracker and started writing amicus briefs opposing the rollbacks. The day Biden was inaugurated in 2021, we rebranded the site the Climate Reregulation Tracker, and started supporting his new regulations. The election outcome will determine which of these two approaches we need to follow for the next four years.” 

Professor Elora Mukherjee stands in front of Columbia Law School

Immigration

Elora Mukherjee

Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law

What’s at stake? “Voters consistently name immigration as one of their top election concerns. If reelected, former President Donald Trump says he plans to conduct the ‘largest deportation operation in the history of our country’ and restrict immigration even further than he did in his first administration. Vice President Kamala Harris has supported bipartisan legislation to address border security—legislation that was defeated in the U.S. Senate in February 2024 after Trump convinced fellow Republicans to withdraw their support for immigration reform efforts in the months before the election.”

How will this come into play in your teaching? “In the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, law student attorneys and I work in partnership with community groups to influence local and national immigration policy. Changes in immigration law and policy can have beneficial or devastating effects on the clients and communities we serve. Our clinic’s law student attorneys have done it all—from representing children ripped from their parents’ arms at the southern border to celebrating with our clients who have been granted asylum.”

Has the election influenced the work of your clinic? “Throughout the fall 2024 semester, our clinic is representing individual asylum seekers, including taking cases to trial. We are also partnering with Afrikana, a grassroots organization that seeks to meet the needs of the newest New Yorkers. Working in multiple languages, we are offering Afrikana members know-your-rights trainings on asylum and other forms of immigration relief and helping to prepare asylum applications.”

Professor Alex Raskolnikov

Taxes

Alex Raskolnikov

Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law

What’s at stake? “The huge and obvious issue for the next administration is what to do with the 2017 tax law that expires (in large part) at the end of 2025. The fate of the state and local tax deduction is just one politically charged issue. Hilariously, Trump recently proposed reinstating it after spearheading the effort to get rid of it in 2017. (The 2017 tax reform was passed without any Democrats voting in favor.) There are many, many other provisions that Congress and the president would need to agree to either keep or let expire.”

How will this come into play in your teaching? “Trump is now toying with getting rid of the income tax altogether and replacing it with some form of consumption tax. That is extremely unlikely to happen, but if it does, it would make the class I teach this semester—Taxation of Financial Instruments—obsolete. This entire subject deals with taxation of certain forms of capital income, and capital income is not taxable under a consumption tax system.”

Will this issue influence your scholarship? “One of my projects with Benn Steil [director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations] is a proposal to repeal the current tax preferences for Chinese portfolio investment in the U.S. This would force, indirectly, a reduction in the trade deficit with China. Either candidate may be receptive to the idea, but we won’t know until after the election.”

Kate Redburn

Title IX Regulations

Kate Redburn

Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Law* 

What’s at stake? “New protections for students who are LGBTQ+, parenting, or pregnant have drawn considerable opposition, and their continuation is likely to depend on litigation support from the winner of the 2024 presidential election. New definitions in the federal Department of Education Title IX, in effect since August, clarify that the statute encompasses discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and obligates schools to provide stronger support for student parents and pregnant students. Legal challenges seeking preliminary injunctions reached the Supreme Court, which denied the government’s effort to stay said injunctions for the duration of litigation. As a result, a complicated patchwork of antidiscrimination regulations greets this school year. We know that the election will be consequential for the 2024 rule because of past experience. In 2016, Obama issued guidance regarding Title IX protections for transgender students, which Trump promptly withdrew in early 2017. Trump has said he would reverse the 2024 rule ‘on day one,’ while Harris would presumably continue to support it.”  

How will this come into play in your teaching? “The 2024 Title IX rule sits at a familiar intersection of civil rights, administrative law, and the federal judiciary. I imagine that students who are interested in gender and sexual regulation will be eager to address the tricky substantive and procedural nuances in their discussions of antidiscrimination law, administrative rules and guidance, and education law. I certainly hope to dig into it when I teach a course on regulation of gender and sexuality in fall 2025.”

*Kate Redburn will be joining the full-time faculty in July 2025.

Professor Matt Waxman

National Security

Matthew C. Waxman

Liviu Librescu Professor of Law

What’s at stake? “As someone who teaches and researches national security law and international law, I’m focused on alliances. For 75 years, a bipartisan consensus has held that alliances like NATO are central to American foreign policy and to international security. The future of these alliances is at stake in November’s election. Trump and many of his supporters in Congress wrongly see alliances as outdated and a drag on American interests. I don’t think a future President Trump would formally withdraw from these pacts, but he wouldn’t need to. By signaling that the United States is not committed to allies’ defense, the alliance system could weaken or perhaps even collapse. That would be a win for China, Russia, and despots around the world.”

How will this come into play in your teaching? “For years, I’ve been teaching about alliances, and I think for many students who were born years after the Cold War ended, this hadn’t seemed like a huge policy and legal issue. A thing about alliances is that they don’t grab attention when they’re working best; it’s when they fail to stop aggression that they become most visible. As a domestic law matter, alliances raise important questions about presidential and legislative powers. I focus on the international law dimensions of alliances in my general survey course, The United States and the International Legal System, as well as my specialized seminars in subjects like maritime law.”

Will this issue influence your scholarship? “I’m currently writing about war and the Constitution, and one of the arguments is that the radical American foreign policy shift after World War II from aversion to embrace of ‘entangling alliances’ dramatically affected presidential and congressional powers and the balances between them.”