Law prof takes on Georgia politics

The election of future Georgia state legislators will be directly impacted by the work of Law School professor Nathaniel Persily.

Appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Persily recently helped devise zoning plans for the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia State Senate.

"This is very sensitive political work because in effect you are determining which politicians are going to have jobs and which are not," Persily says.

Persily's work in the field of election law began with this most recent project.

Juggling cases that take him across the country along with his interactive teaching has proved a busy, but rewarding combination for Persily.

The Miami native currently serves a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Law School and also serves in the Political Science Department.

Persily's background includes a rigorous education -- he earned a Ph.D. in political science from University of California-Berkeley and a law degree from Stanford University.

"No one starts out their academic career thinking that they're going to be in as many schools as I've been in," Persily says.

Persily attributes his career as a professor to his interest in the public decision-making process that went on around him.

"I wanted to make sure what I was doing would have a practical effect on the world and I wanted to be involved in policy and in the fights about things that I thought were important," he says. "I think law professors have the ability to be more engaged with the real world."

Persily came to Penn in 2001, where, through his duties as a professor and outside duties as a lawyer, he has been able to achieve his goals in creating change and become nationally recognized as an expert in election law.

In the past, he has been appointed by courts in New York and Maryland to create redistricting plans.

With his most recent work in Georgia, Persily says he was able to achieve a positive impact on the fairness of the political system.

"In this case, some districts had close to 1,000 more people in them than other districts, so it violated notions of equality and the one person, one vote rule," Persily explains.

"The plan that was drawn up was based on certain criteria. Those criteria being that you want to have compact districts, you want to make sure not to break up too many subdivisional lines, and of course, abide the law -- that includes making sure the districts are equal, making sure they comply with the voting rights act."

This massive undertaking was completed in roughly two weeks, which Persily says were filled with many sleepless nights.

His enthusiasm about election law expands into the classroom as well.

In 2002, Persily had his Constitutional Law class help him write a Supreme Court amicus brief for the prevailing party in Utah v. Evans. Looking back on the event, Persily says that it was a "wonderful and unique experience," something his colleagues agree with.

"This to me is one of the single most remarkable things about him," Assistant Dean for Public Services Susan Feathers says. "I mean, I run the program, and rarely do we have a professor who literally took on his entire Constitutional Law course and had them work on high-level sophisticated legislation before the Supreme Court."

Third-year law student Rosanna Taormina has taken two courses with Persily and has worked closely with him in the organizing of this year's annual Law Review Symposium, which focused upon the law of democracy.

"I think that most every student that has had him likes him because he's so enthusiastic. You can tell that he loves his subject matter," Taormina says. "I think he brings to the table, not only his incredible brilliance, but the sense that he loves what he is doing. And he's had a great deal of firsthand experience that he brings to class."

Persily's teaching tactics help integrate his own experiences into the learning process.

"These kinds of war stories that I experience are a way of connecting the lessons learned in the books to what is actually happening out in the real world," he says.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.