Jim Patterson

Rick Santorum is the favored candidate in Tennessee as the state approaches its Super Tuesday primary election March 6, according to a new poll from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University. Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case this fall that could put new limits on the ability of colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions decisions. Legal and African American Studies experts from Vanderbilt are available to speak with media about these issues. Read More

George W. Bush can probably look forward to an upswing in popularity as time goes by, say two Vanderbilt political scientists. A poll by CBS News and The New York Times near the end of Bush’s 2001-2009 presidency showed his approval rating at 22 percent, making him one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history. Read More

Meet sociology professor Laura Carpenter, Vanderbilt's resident "sexpert." Her research interests include virginity loss and how chronic illness affects the sex lives of patients. Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a search warrant is needed to plant a physical tracking device on a vehicle. But only four members of the court – not a majority – were willing to go further and hold that continuously monitoring such a device for a month is also a search. Read More

Vanderbilt law professor James F. Blumstein has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that President Obama’s proposed expansion of Medicaid would put too much of an unforeseeable burden on the states. Read More

Protesters of proposed anti-piracy legislation being considered by Congress are right when they say the measures as written threaten the rights of Internet companies and consumers, said Daniel Gervais, co-director of the Vanderbilt Intellectual Property Program. Read More

Judge D’Army Bailey, retired circuit court judge and one of the founders of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, delivers the Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture at Vanderbilt Law School on Jan. 12, 2012. Read More

Vanderbilt political scientist David E. Lewis says a move for authority to shrink the federal government by President Obama is an attempt to preempt Republican challenger Mitt Romney from positioning himself as the candidate associated with government efficiency. Read More

Video purporting to show four U.S. marines urinating on dead Afghani fighters, if verified, would clearly fall under the category of a war crime, says a Vanderbilt University law professor. Read More

As the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp passes this month, a Vanderbilt law professor and former U.S. adviser on detainee cases says it’s time for new rules on deciding what to do with detainees whose allegiances are unclear. Read More

The nomination of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “is clearly an issue that has come to the forefront because of election year politics,” said David Lewis, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. Read More

The conventional wisdom about Newt Gingrich's troubles at the Iowa caucuses may be mistaken, says John Geer of Vanderbilt University. Blaming a barrage of attack ads aimed at the former House speaker for his decline in the polls may be inaccurate, Geer believes. Read More

Vijay Padmanabhan helps tread the line between detainees’ safety and human rights Vijay Padmanabhan (Sandy Campbell/Vanderbilt) Candidate Barack Obama pledged in 2008 to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. But as President Obama runs for re-election four years later, it remains open. Vanderbilt law professor and former State Department… Read More

Watch Professors Geoff Eley of the University of Michigan and Steven Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania speak during the Dec. 5 Vanderbilt History Seminar about E.P. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class.”  … Read More

Watch video of John Seigenthaler of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt speaking during a celebration of the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center and chairman emeritus at The Tennessean, spoke Nov. 28. The Bill of Rights was ratified on Dec. 15,… Read More

When the Republican presidential candidates ramp up anti-immigrant rhetoric this campaign season, they are likely to alienate conservative-leaning Latinos. Read More

Watch a distinguished panel of business and academic experts discuss the viability of record labels in the digital age during the first Vanderbilt-Melbourne Global Debate. The Nov. 15 debate was the first of an ongoing series born of Vanderbilt University’s partnership with The University of Melbourne. The debate… Read More

Applications are being accepted for the second class of Vanderbilt University’s innovative Ph.D/J.D. program combining the study of law and neuroscience. Vanderbilt launched the first such program in the country in 2010 when it enrolled Bowdoin College alumnus Matthew Ginther to be the first to take on the challenging curriculum that alternates classes at Vanderbilt Law School and the university’s graduate program in neuroscience. Read More

Watch video of Alondra Nelson, associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, speaking Nov. 8. Typically associated with the revolutionary rhetoric and militant action of the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Panther Party  did significant and lesser-known work pursuing equality in the… Read More