J.D., Harvard University, 1977
B.A., Columbia University, 1974
Campaign Finance Regulation
Government Ethics
Law of the Political Process
Legislation
State and Local Government Law
Since joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 1983, Richard Briffault has combined public and government service with teaching, research, and scholarship. He is the Law School’s authority on state and local government; the news media often turns to him for his expert insight into and analysis of issues central to democracy and the political process such as campaign finance reform, government ethics, gerrymandering, election administration, and fair elections. He is also a leading thinker on “the new preemption,” a critique of states that are increasingly passing ideological laws that override local ordinances. Working with the Local Solutions Support Center, he educates city and county government officials on how to respond to state preemption.
Briffault is a pillar of the Columbia Law School community. He has served as a vice dean at three different times during his career. He sits on the advisory board of The Max Berger ’71 Public Interest/Public Service Fellows Program and on the board of directors of the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems.
A prodigious scholar, Briffault has written or coauthored more than 90 law review and journal articles as well as books and monographs, including Dollars and Democracy: A Blueprint for Campaign Finance Reform; Cleaning Up Hazardous Waste: Is There a Better Way?; the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions of the casebook State and Local Government Law; and The New Preemption Reader.
Before becoming an academic, Briffault was a clerk to Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, an assistant counsel to New York Governor Hugh L. Carey, and an associate at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. During his tenure at Columbia Law, he has served as a member of, or consultant to, an array of New York state and city commissions, including the New York State Moreland Act Commission to Investigate Public Corruption. From 2014 to 2020, Briffault served as chair of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board. He is the reporter for the American Law Institute’s Project on Principles of Government Ethics, vice-chair of the Citizens Union of the City of New York, and a member of the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics.
Like its predecessors, the 9th Edition focuses on the critical roles played by states and local governments and the complex structure of our state-local system. It challenges students to understand the values that inform the distribution of powers between states and local governments; the distinctive structures and organization of states and local governments; and the competing models of local government that frame the field. It then takes on local government formation and boundary change; home rule and state-local disputes; interlocal conflict and regional governance; state and local finance; and the local role in delivering government services. This Edition contains new treatments of state constitutions and city charters, state-local preemption conflicts, state and local taxation, policing, and more pervasive attention to the interplay of state and local government law with racial justice and social and economic equity.
The Columbia Law expert on the law of democracy says the nation’s greatest election problem is the efforts to undermine voters’ faith in them.