<ul class="summary-list"><li>Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings have been fraught with racial overtones and microaggressions.</li><li>Republicans badgered her about Critical Race Theory and other topics that had little to do with the job.</li></ul>The racial overtones on display during the confirmation proceedings for <keyword id="11893011" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="supreme-court" source="Orion">Supreme Court</keyword> nominee <keyword id="13038053" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ketanji-brown-jackson" source="Orion">Ketanji Brown Jackson</keyword> have roots in the discriminatory reasons the Senate started having such hearings nearly a century ago; to stonewall the first Jewish man nominated for the court.Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing is the latest in nearly a century of incidents in which lawmakers used the process to cast doubt on nominees who didn't fit the historic mold of white, male justices, historians and judicial scholars told Insider. The Senate judiciary committee held its first confirmation hearing in 1916 because President Woodrow Wilson had nominated celebrated Boston attorney <keyword id="13460751" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="louis-brandeis" source="Orion">Louis Brandeis</keyword> — which because of his Jewish background, was an unprecedented and controversial move at the time.<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-B-Taney">With one exception</a>, only white, Protestant men served on the US Supreme Court until 1894. When Wilson chose a Jewish lawyer, all hell broke loose.At the time, antisemitism was far more widespread and acceptable in American society, and Jews in the US were often barred from elite business, academic, legal, and social circles because of their status as a religious and ethnic minority.Before Brandeis, confirmation processes had typically been a formality, with the Senate taking a swift up or down vote on whether to seat a new justice. But Brandeis' nomination prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold the first-ever confirmation hearings, and allow witnesses for and against his nomination, according to the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/07/up-until-the-postwar-era-u-s-supreme-court-confirmations-usually-were-routine-business/">Pew Research Center.</a> The entire process took an unprecedented four months while a vicious public debate about his qualifications ensued."What happens with Brandeis is that the opposition talks in what can only be described as antisemitic code," said Paul Finkelman, chancellor and distinguished professor of history at Gratz College near Philadelphia, told Insider. While those critics never implicitly named Brandeis' religion, their criticism was a thinly veiled version of an antisemitic stereotype that painted Jews as greedy and money-mongering. Lawyers with the American Bar Association, and the president of Harvard University at the time, wrote letters against Brandeis' nomination. "One of the things they say is that he is too greedy, he's made too much money as a lawyer. Because Brandeis becomes, very early on, an extremely successful lawyer," Finkelman said.Finkelman saw a clear thread, from Brandeis to Jackson, of critics using Supreme Court confirmations to indirectly attack a nominee based on their gender, race, or religion.For three days, white Republican senators repeatedly have brought up Supreme Court cases revolving around slavery and interracial marriage and questioned Jackson about the legal underpinning of those cases. They advanced a baseless claim that as a judge, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hawley-baselessly-claims-scotus-nominee-lenient-on-child-porn-experts-2022-3">she'd been lenient on people accused of child pornography charges.</a> Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas went so far as to wave a children's book meant to teach children about racism in front of Jackson and ask her to define critical race theory.As Jackson fielded questions from senators, the Republican National Committee posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1506282786843410432?s=20&amp;t=nF6r35uUZ7WeIy4bpUJp2w">graphic on Twitter</a> with her initials crossed out and replaced with CRT, the acronym for critical race theory."The nastiness," Finkelman said, "is the same."<div type="image" title="Judge Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court history" height="1470" width="2000" msid="90429539" hostid="261"></div><h2>A minefield for minority nominees ever since</h2>Confirmation hearings for minorities, women, and nominees of color "tend to disproportionately focus on the candidates' judicial philosophy, their take on issues like race and gender discrimination, things that have coding in the race and gender of the nominee," <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/what-bidens-scotus-nominee-will-face">said Alice Bannon</a>, director of the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.That dynamic played out with Jackson's hearing, Bannon said.Cruz repeatedly peppered Jackson with questions about race that had nothing to do with her qualifications for the job."Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?" Cruz said, asking about the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cruz-presses-scotus-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson-critical-race-theory-2022-3">Cruz also asked Jackson to define critical race theory for the record.</a> "It is an academic theory that is about the ways in which race interacts with various institutions," Jackson responded, providing a standard definition of the concept, which has lately been weaponized by conservatives as a culture war issue."It doesn't come up in my work as a judge. It's never something that I've studied or relied on. And it wouldn't be something that I would rely on if I were on the Supreme Court," Jackson said. Cruz's insinuation, however, was that since Jackson was a Black woman, it would.Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hawley-baselessly-claims-scotus-nominee-lenient-on-child-porn-experts-2022-3"> implied that Jackson had been lenient</a> on people accused of child pornography, and had not sentenced them harshly enough. Legal experts <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hawley-baselessly-claims-scotus-nominee-lenient-on-child-porn-experts-2022-3">told Inside</a>r that Hawley's argument took Jackson's actual judicial record out of context. Hawley's implication was clear: that as a judge, Jackson was soft on crime. And it was difficult to extricate that argument from her race, observers said."This is just the latest manifestation of trying to whip up white fear and anxiety," said Steve Phillips, a founder of media and political strategy organization Democracy in Color.Bannon pointed to the confirmation process for Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1967, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as precedent for Jackson's experience.While Marshall had his defenders in the Senate, like New York's Republican Sen. Jacob Javitz, his nomination was opposed by white, predominantly southern and segregationist senators, Wil Haygood writes in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/books/review/wil-haygoods-showdown-thurgood-marshall-and-the-supreme-court-nomination-that-changed-america.html">"Showdown," his book about Marshall's confirmation</a>.Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat, asked Marshall, "Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?"Other segregationist opponents sought to link the political turbulence of the moment to the confirmation hearing, while also denying that their motivations were linked to racism, Haygood argues.In one instance, Sen. John McClellan, an Arkansas Democrat, told Marshall, "I know there is a crisis in this country, a crime crisis. And I know the philosophy of the Supreme Court one way or the other on these vital issues is going to be of untold consequences and has already been in my judgment of serious consequences to the crime situation."Marshall "faced far more scrutiny than other recent nominees," Bannon said. "A lot of questioning around so-called 'tough-on-crime' questions that a lot of historians who have looked at those questions really contextualize as grounded in the fact that he was the first Black justice."<div type="image" title="Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor sits during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021." height="2211" width="2948" msid="90429540" hostid="261"></div><h2>Justice Sotomayor faced similar criticism as recently as 2009</h2>During her confirmation hearing in 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor — another historical nominee — also faced criticism from Republicans that centered on her race and gender after she referred to herself as a "wise Latina" during a speech years earlier.Sotomayor had told students at the University of California, Berkeley law school in 2001 that, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."Years later during her confirmation, Republicans, such as former Sen. John Kyl of Iowa and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, implied that Sotomayor's comments cast doubt on her ability to be impartial as a jurist."You say, if there are enough of us, we will make a difference, inferring that it is a good thing if we begin deciding cases differently," Kyl said. Sotomayor, who became the first woman of color and first Latina on the Supreme Court, was forced to walk back her comments and defend her ability to judge impartially.During her confirmation process, Sotomayor was<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/us/politics/16judge.html"> also forced to resign from the exclusive women's club, Belizian Grove</a>. Republicans had accused her of participating in an organization that discriminated against men.

The racist history of Senate confirmation hearings that started when a Jewish person was first nominated for the Supreme Court in 1916

<ul><li>The <keyword id="295698" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="harvard-law-review" source="Orion">Harvard Law Review</keyword> has elected <keyword id="16361672" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="apsara-iyer" source="Orion">Apsara Iyer</keyword> as its 137th president.</li><li>American woman to head the prestigious publication in its 136-year history.</li></ul>The Harvard <keyword id="1657425" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="law-review" source="Orion">Law Review</keyword> has elected Apsara Iyer as its 137th president, making her the first Indian-American woman to head the prestigious publication in its 136-year history. The 29-year-old Harvard Law School student, who has been investigating art crime and repatriation since 2018, succeeds Priscila Coronado. "Since joining the Law Review, I have been inspired by her (Priscila's) skillful management, compassion, and capacity to build vibrant, inclusive communities. I am so grateful that we 'Volume 137' inherit her legacy, and I am honored to continue building on this important work over the next year," Iyer said in a statement announcing her appointment. Iyer graduated from Yale in 2016 with a B.A. in Economics and Math, and Spanish. Her dedication to archaeology and indigenous communities led her to pursue an MPhil at Oxford as a Clarendon Scholar and, in 2018, to join the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU), a Harvard Law Review release said. At the ATU, she investigated art crime, coordinating with international and federal law-enforcement authorities to repatriate more than 1,100 stolen works of art to 15 different countries. Iyer enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2020, where she is a student in the International Human Rights Clinic and member of the South Asian Law Students Association. Committed to fighting illicit antiquities trafficking, Iyer took a leave of absence from Harvard Law School in 2021-22 to return to the DA's Office, where she worked on an international antiquities trafficking investigation and rose to be the deputy of the ATU. "Apsara has changed the lives of many editors for the better, and I know she will continue to do so. From the start, she has impressed her fellow editors with her remarkable intelligence, thoughtfulness, warmth, and fierce advocacy. The Law Review is extremely lucky to have her lead this institution," Iyer's predecessor, Coronado, said. The Law Review, founded in 1887 by future <keyword id="6354977" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="supreme-court" source="Orion">Supreme Court</keyword> Justice Louis D. Brandeis, LLB 1887, is an entirely student-edited journal with the largest circulation of any law journal in the world. Former President <keyword id="15962" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="barack-obama" source="Orion">Barack Obama</keyword> was the journal's first Black president. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/new-patent-suggests-that-apple-could-bring-a-foldable-iphone-with-a-self-healing-display-in-the-future/articleshow/97302738.cms">New patent suggests that Apple could bring a foldable iPhone with a self-healing display in the future</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apples-mixed-reality-headset-could-feature-full-body-facetime-avatars/articleshow/97300580.cms">Apple's Mixed Reality headset could feature advanced hand tracking and may work as a second display for Mac</a>

In a first, Indian-American named President of Harvard Law Review

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Half of US states are cutting off enhanced <keyword id="414451" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="unemployment-benefits">unemployment benefits</keyword> over the next few weeks.</li><li>This is going to throw millions of Americans into a real-world economic experiment that could hurt many people.</li><li>Biden and the federal government could step in, but America's misguided tradition of a hands of federal government is stopping them.</li><li>This is an <keyword id="6356002" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="opinion">opinion</keyword> column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.</li></ul>Partisan <keyword id="6358883" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="politics">politics</keyword>, Congress' legislative language, and interest group lobbying are about to turn America's 160 million workers into guinea pigs. We're all about to be part of a huge study on whether <keyword id="6358907" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="unemployment">unemployment</keyword> insurance keeps people out of the labor market.The biggest variable in this 50-state experiment is the new unemployment benefits created during the pandemic. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-states-cutting-unemployment-benefits-expanded-300-weekly-biden-stimulus-2021-5">Republican governors in nearly two dozen states</a> are rolling back key benefits that helped people through the downturn: expansions in unemployment insurance to workers not previously covered, increased length of coverage for unemployed workers, and topped-up weekly payments are some of the initiativesThese GOP lawmakers argue that the benefits are no longer needed now that the pandemic is receding and ending them will push Americans back to the labor market. On the other hand, some economists and progressive Democrats argue that the benefits are not generous enough to discourage people from finding work, and that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cutting-expanded-unemployment-benefits-huge-mistake-hurt-millions-of-americans-2021-6">removing them is needlessly cruel to beneficiaries</a>.While experimentation within states can generate superior solutions, it can also have its downsides in states that eschew equity. In these cases, federal power is the last line of defense for marginalized people, but Washington has a long history of abandoning them instead of taking a stand.<h2>50 laboratories: a Brandeis legacy</h2>In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."This notion that policy experimentation at the state level could land on the right answer faster than top-down public policymaking from Washington has been a popular justification for a light touch from the federal government. The "50 laboratories" theory has also helped social scientists study the effects of policy change by observing the differences between states.Brandeis' famous quote came in a dissent to a Supreme Court decision which effectively rolled back a state's effort to forge its own path, in this case Oklahoma was attempting to set new regulations on businesses operating in the state. Brandeis disagreed with the majority, which said Oklahoma could not impose its own rules on an ice manufacturer.Brandeis was the son of an abolitionist Kentucky family and a progressive Boston lawyer, arguably the father of the legal concept of "right to privacy" in the United States and a key anti-corporate voice who supported government intervention against concentrated monopoly power. He played a role in the development of the Federal Reserve and defended workplace and labor law in court.Brandeis supported the idea that Oklahoma be allowed to regulate an ice manufacturer, but argued for it in a language more consistent with conservative ideals of state sovereignty or business supremacy that has since been co-opted in the popular imagination. No need for federal intervention if a state enacts harmful policy - they'll eventually see the light! This attitude was also visible late in Brandeis' career in several decisions that took teeth out of The New Deal during the Roosevelt Administration.<h2>Progressive passivism in policy</h2>The American system is generally loath to enforce national standards on states. One good example is Medicaid, the country's low-income healthcare system. Instead of being run by the federal government, Medicaid is technically voluntary and administered by states. The federal government only encourages participation in its various programs through substantial funding incentives. This has left some states to ignore Medicaid programs that could be a huge help to their citizens. As recently as 1981, Arizona did not participate in Medicaid at all and 13 GOP-run states have refused to implement a huge expansion of the program passed in 2010 as part of the Affordable Care Act. A similar situation is now playing out with the stepped-up funding for unemployment insurance programs administered by states. These new efforts expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance to gig workers, raised payouts, and extended the number of weeks that workers would be eligible for income support.With labor <keyword id="31671" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="markets">markets</keyword> still sorting through the giant shock of COVID, these benefits have been the target of businesses who rely on large pools of low cost labor. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-owners-service-employees-staff-covid-pandemic-unemployment-2021-5">Restaurants especially have railed</a> against the payouts, arguing that the benefits are causing a "labor shortage" and raising their labor costs. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-subway-struggle-to-find-workers-forcing-changes-2021-4">Service industry groups have lobbied</a> aggressively to kick people out of the UI system so they can <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-workers-unemployment-insurance-benefits-covid-19-pandemic-poverty-wage-2021-4">get back to their preferred labor market</a> - one where there is a large pool of people who are willing to accept low <keyword id="6356975" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="wages">wages</keyword>.Evidence from the <a href="https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/household-income-spending/unemployment-insurance-job-search-and-spending-during-the-pandemic">JP Morgan Institute</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/JedKolko/status/1402640644598816772">Indeed.com</a> show little evidence that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/labor-shortage-unemployment-jpmorgan-says-politics-not-economics-2021-5">cutting off expanded UI is likely</a> to fuel large increases in labor supply. But that hasn't stopped more than half of the governors in the country from refusing free money from Washington and halting payments to the unemployed in a brutal form of economic shock therapy.As the various phase-outs of expanded UI roll in over the next few months, we will be able to compare labor market outcomes in states that do or don't phase out benefits. The 50 laboratories will be working away to the benefit of greater labor market understanding. But the small gain of having a few real-world experiments for academics to be able to write papers about pales in comparison to the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/economist-why-ending-pandemic-unemployment-benefits-terrible-for-us-economy-2021-5">human cost of culling unemployment insurance</a>.<h2>Biden and Brandeis: birds of a feather</h2>Allowing this sort of experiment - with American workers as the subject - isn't set in stone. The Biden Administration could at least be pitching a fight against this outcome but has so far not stepped into the fray. As <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Letter-to-Secretary-Walsh-on-UI-May-2021.pdf">noted</a> by Senator <keyword id="6656369" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Bernie-Sanders">Bernie Sanders</keyword> in May, the text of the CARES Act -which the UI expansion is built on - says the Department of Labor "shall provide" benefits to individuals, which could be interpreted as mandating payments regardless of what states want. But nobody in the administration has tried to force this issue with states refusing payouts.Both Brandeis and Biden share a belief that the right argument will win out eventually, and that outright exercise of power by the federal government should be used carefully. Their cautious and light touch approach has direct costs that must be acknowledged in an era where exercise of political power on behalf of those without it is a forgotten habit.

The US job market is about to turn into a giant science experiment - with millions of Americans as guinea pigs

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A 1905 <keyword id="11893011" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="supreme-court" source="Orion">Supreme Court</keyword> ruling grants states the authority to issue vaccine mandates.</li><li>The decision was upheld nearly 20 years later in a case barring unvaccinated children from school.</li><li>Experts say <keyword id="60973" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="biden" source="Orion">Biden</keyword>'s new vaccine rule is the most far-reaching one to come from the US government.</li></ul>Republican leaders and vaccine skeptics railed against President Joe Biden on Thursday after he required COVID-19 vaccines for federal employees, contractors, and businesses with more than 100 employees, accusing the commander-in-chief of <a href="https://twitter.com/GovKemp/status/1436078242574868486?s=20">overstepping</a> the government's authority.But US history begs to differ.It's not the country's first pandemic, and there's a strong tradition of vaccine mandates to quell diseases like smallpox and polio.Brian Dean Abramson, an expert in vaccine law, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vaccine-law-expert-explains-likely-legal-challenges-biden-vaccine-mandate-2021-9">told Insider</a> that while vaccines rules aren't new, they usually come from the state, not the federal government. He said it was common in the 19th century for states and cities to require the smallpox vaccine."But it's been a very long time since we've had anything this far-reaching, and we've never had anything this far-reaching come from the federal government before," Abramson said. The federal government has never attempted to issue a <keyword id="11899454" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="vaccine-mandate" source="Orion">vaccine mandate</keyword> to the scale of Biden's, but prior Supreme Court rulings have shown the court's willingness to allow them to proceed in various circumstances.One particular case occurred in 1904. A Massachusetts town gave its citizens a choice: take the smallpox vaccine or pay a $5 fine. Pastor Henning Jacobson refused to pay the fine, leading to a <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/197/11/">7-2 Supreme Court decision in 1905</a> in favor of the state and the validity of state-issued vaccine mandates.Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the majority opinion, ruling that Harlan's individual freedoms, such as not taking the vaccine nor paying the required fine, do not give him a free pass to restrict the liberty of others by allowing the virus to spread."There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good," Harlan wrote. "On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy."The Supreme Court affirmed the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/174/">decision in 1922</a>, ruling it was well within the rights of public and private schools to exclude unvaccinated students. Associate Justice Louis Brandeis issued the majority ruling, citing the Jacobson decision."Long before this suit was instituted, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, had settled that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination," <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/174/">Brandeis wrote</a>.<h2>Unanswered questions in the Jacobson ruling could divide the courts</h2>The landscape of the country has changed in the 116 years since the Jacobson ruling, presenting unanticipated challenges to the court's decision.Abramson told Insider the Jacobson v. Massachusetts case could both help and hurt the validity of Biden's new mandate. He said the court's decision could be interpreted in two ways in 2021:<ol><li>The Supreme Court favors vaccine mandates from all levels of government</li><li>The ruling never expressly grants the federal government the power to issue a vaccine mandate, only states and municipalities</li></ol>He said there's also a "little bit of wiggle room" in the case that could grant larger exemptions for people with fears of sickness or injury from the virus. Abramson told Insider the pastor in the original case was worried about receiving the smallpox vaccine due to side effects previously experienced by him and his family members."Jacobson had fears about the negative effects of the vaccine but didn't really substantiate those fears," Abramson said. "If it were proven that someone actually would be seriously injured by a vaccine, then the outcome might be different." He said the court never made that determination and the Biden Administration may need to factor in more leniency for medical exemptions."They left some room to say that if someone has a medical objection to vaccination and can demonstrate that harm would come to them, they might have a constitutional right to avoid vaccination," Abramson said.<h2>GOP leaders are preparing to sue the Biden Administration</h2>Republican governors across the country announced their plans Thursday night to fight the Biden Administration's new mandate in court: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said he would "pursue every legal option," Texas Gov. Greg <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/10/covid-delta-variant-live-updates/">Abbott said similarly</a>, and South Dakota <a href="https://twitter.com/govkristinoem/status/1436060414970892288?s=20">Gov. Kristi Noem</a> made Biden a promise:"See you in court," Noem said.State leaders are not the only politicians jumping into the legal fray against the Biden Administration. Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said the RNC also plans to sue the administration when the mandate goes into effect on November 1.<blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">-Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1436118614504050692?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2021</a></blockquote>Biden said on Thursday he's undeterred by the efforts from GOP governors to stymie the administration's COVID-19 response."If these governors won't help us beat the pandemic, I'll use my power as president to get them out of the way," Biden said.Erin Snodgrass contributed reporting.

How a Supreme Court decision from 1905 set the stage for vaccine mandates

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5dd5792bfd9db22b927331e2-2400/gettyimages-1182166042.jpg" alt="elizabeth warren wealth tax" />Sarah Rice/Getty ImagesDemocratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks to her supporters after officially filing to be on the ballot for the New Hampshire state primary at the State House on November 13, 2019 in Concord, New Hampshire.<ul class="summary-list"><li>David Goldstein is a senior fellow at Civic Ventures and cohost of the "Pitchfork Economics" podcast. </li><li>In this opinion piece, he writes that "it is no longer possible to choose democracy without also choosing to tax concentrated wealth." </li><li>The wealth tax debate, he says, isn't just about money. It's about who has power. "A democracy that cannot rein in such a dangerous concentration of wealth and power isn't really a democracy at all," he writes. </li><li>For more on this topic, listen to the latest episode of "<a href="https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/PPY5667678674?selected=TYT5802129186">Pitchfork Economics</a>." </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul>"We must make our choice," Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned Americans near the dawn of the New Deal. "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Eighty years ago, our republic made the choice to address this existential threat of concentrated wealth by embarking on an era of highly progressive taxation and broadly shared economic growth. Working together as one nation, we pulled ourselves out of the Great Depression and through the Second World War, defeating fascism abroad while building at home the largest and most prosperous middle class the world has ever seen. The wealthy still saw their wealth increase, but not nearly as fast as the majority of working and middle-class Americans. But over the past 40 years, all of this progress has been reversed by a trickle-down agenda of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the powerful, and wage suppression for everybody else that has reimposed a level of wealth and income inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. And as Justice Brandeis warned, the wealthy and powerful are doing everything they can to fend off any democratic challenge to their wealth and power. In Washington, DC and in state capitals across the nation, high-priced lobbyists are now writing the rules as giant corporations monopolize market, political, and regulatory powers for themselves. Through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the unlimited political dollars unleashed by Citizens United, an increasingly autocratic Republican Party and its wealthy patrons are seeking to subvert Congress and the Electoral College in order to exert minority rule. Even more worrisome, a decades long campaign to establish a corporatist majority in our courts is threatening to ratify the radical notion of the "<a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/barr-speech-federalist-society-impeachment.html">unitary executive</a>," a dangerous legal theory that would place near dictatorial powers in the hands of the President.<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5d9df8c63b33a728b6025994-2400/goldy-resize.jpg" alt="David Goldstein" />Courtesy of David GoldsteinDavid Goldstein.America is once again facing a Brandeisian choice between democracy and concentrated wealth. And it is only in this context that the rhetorical backlash to the wealth tax can be fully understood.To be clear, in our 21st century economy it is no longer possible to choose democracy without also choosing to tax concentrated wealth. "The reason for that," explains economist Gabriel Zucman on the <a href="https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/PPY5667678674?selected=TYT5802129186">latest episode of "Pitchfork Economics</a>," "is that when you are very wealthy, you can own a ton of wealth while reporting little taxable income." For example, Warren Buffett owns about $80 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock, yet his taxable income is realized only when he sells shares - about $10 to $20 million a year. "That's why for billionaires, you need a wealth tax," says Zucman. "A progressive income tax is not enough."If both Brandeis and Zucman are right - that democracy and concentrated wealth can't coexist, and that we can't curb concentrated wealth without taxing it directly - then the wealth tax debate is about much more than just money. It's about power. It's about who will have the power to write our laws, to set our priorities, and to craft our tax code - a handful of billionaires or the American people?When billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tearful-billionaire-has-some-advice-for-president-trump-change-your-approach-or-get-out-of-the-race-2019-11-04">literally cries</a> that a wealth tax "would lead to unnatural acts," it isn't a few percent of his $3.2 billion fortune that he fears losing, but his power. When the famously tax-averse <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/9/20956153/mike-bloomberg-president-2020-jeff-bezos-phone-call-amazon-hq2">Jeff Bezos calls up Michael Bloomberg</a> to urge him to run for president, that's two multi-billionaires having a personal chat about power. And when Wall Street donors <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html">threaten Democratic leaders</a> that they'll back Trump if the party dares to nominate wealth tax advocate Elizabeth Warren, there isn't a clearer example of the power of wealth being used to undermine our democracy.That concentrated wealth leads to concentrated power has been true throughout all of human history. And the failure of our tax system to regulate extreme inequality, warns Zucman, is "adding fuel to the fire." Over the past 60 years, the 400 wealthiest Americans have used their outsized political power to help lower their own taxes from an effective rate of 56% in 1960 to 47% in 1980 to a mere 23% in 2018. For the first time ever, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/08/first-time-history-us-billionaires-paid-lower-tax-rate-than-working-class-last-year/">these 400 billionaires now pay a lower effective tax rate than working class Americans</a>, even as they've increased their share of our nation's wealth to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#37cf36c37e2f">almost $3 trillion</a> - more than that of the bottom 60% of American households combined.But there is no economic law that says we cannot reverse these trends. "It's not for economists or anybody to decide what the top tax rate should be," says Zucman, "it's for the people to decide through democratic deliberation and the vote."A democracy that cannot rein in such a dangerous concentration of wealth and power isn't really a democracy at all. And America cannot rein in concentrated wealth unless we choose to tax it.Or to paraphrase Brandeis: "Democracy - use it or lose it."This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s). <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/deepak-chopra-how-to-unleash-your-happiness-creativity-productivity-2019-11">Deepak Chopra explains how to unlock your natural happiness, creativity and productivity</a></h3> <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/PaZ3miNy-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;"></iframe>

The billionaire backlash to the wealth tax isn't about money - it's about power. And our democracy lies in the balance.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Jennifer Taub is a legal scholar and advocate who's testified as a banking law expert before <keyword id="1575" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Congress">Congress</keyword> and appeared on MSNBC and CNN. </li><li>The following is an <keyword id="1591634" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Excerpt">excerpt</keyword> from her new book, "<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/623034/big-dirty-money-by-jennifer-taub/?pdivflag">BIG DIRTY MONEY: The Shocking Injustice And Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime.</a>"</li><li>In it, she examines <keyword id="543198" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="white-collar">white collar</keyword> <keyword id="39494" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Crime">crime</keyword>, its history, and why these offenders fail to face the consequences that street level criminals do from Congress and the Supreme Court.</li><li>She explains how the country's biggest crimes — like the <keyword id="6371665" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="financial-crisis">financial crisis</keyword> in 2008 to the ongoing opioid epidemic — have taken a toll in its citizens on a systematic level and the US can do better moving forward. </li></ul>America, we have a big dirty money problem.The corporate crime, elite impunity, and public corruption disease did not infect us overnight, though. We've been exposed now for so very long that we are almost immune. Almost.If you still get angry when you see prosperous predators get away with it, we still have a chance to fight back. I'm ready to speak up about what's broken and promote specific, significant, and enduring fixes. At the end of this chapter, following these proposed solutions, I'll explain why and how you can join this effort.You don't need a law degree or a lobbyist's contact list to exert influence. There are more honest people in America who believe that when we get big money out of politics and when big businesses and the elite are made to obey the law, we are all safer and our society is more just. <div type="image" title="Cover.BIg Dirty Money" height="2775" width="1838" msid="78536949" hostid="261"></div><h2>In a nutshell, here's the problem:</h2>The extremely wealthy and well connected have incentives and opportunities for crime and corruption. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.Extreme wealth is criminogenic and members of the upper classes provide one another with a kind of mutually assured immunity. It's difficult for law enforcement with comparatively limited resources to intervene.Prosecutors also have insufficient incentives to pursue complex and time-consuming cases against respectable high-status individuals and business entities. And the tools they have to detect and punish offenders have been dulled by the courts.Furthermore, the urgency to prioritize white collar crime is low when it's hard for the public to see the victims.Our most powerful counterweights are whistleblowers and journalists. Yet they lack the protection and financial support they need.Finally, we have incomplete and inconsistent data available on the amount and nature of white collar crime and white collar offenders. So what are the corresponding solutions? <h2>Cleaning up the mess</h2>First, we should create and fund a new division within the Justice Department to focus on detecting, prosecuting, convicting, and incarcerating big money criminals. This elite crime division should monitor the usual suspects so as to prevent crime where the incentives and opportunities are most prevalent.It's absurd that the same corporations face serious criminal or civil investigations and then reoffend again and again — often under the same leadership. Thus, a high priority of this new division should be to end the dependence on deferred prosecution and nonprosecution agreements. These DPAs and NPAs with large corporate offenders should not be allowed unless responsible high-level executives are prosecuted.If no one at the top is responsible, then the corporation itself if guilty should face criminal charges and a trial where witnesses testify and the public can learn of the misdeeds. As Nobel laureates George Akerlof and Robert Shiller explain in their book "Phishing for Phools," "If business people behave in the purely selfish and self- serving way that economic theory assumes, our free-market system tends to spawn manipulation and deception."The only way to stop their behavior is through sure and painful enforcement. Take their money, take their liberty, set an example.Success for prosecutors should be measured not by the number of cases closed, but instead by the scope of the harm and the number of victims helped by pursuing the matter. Implementation of this policy would recognize that white collar crime should be treated as seriously as organized crime. This division would have devoted funding, specially assigned attorneys, dedicated FBI agents, and support staff. It would focus on securing compliance with the law by bringing meaningful, complex cases against powerful offenders. It would take on large-scale firms where new and dangerous products and complicated regulations exist. It would also monitor marketing and new developments and bring early cases to stave off emerging threats before they develop into industry practices.The division would work closely with devoted contacts within the enforcement divisions of the major federal administrative agencies. Instead of waiting for referrals, it would proactively research and anticipate businesses under stress that might choose to cut corners or engage in a race to the bottom. Second, we need to empower and encourage law enforcement to take on those difficult and time-consuming cases involving elite offenders and large businesses. To do so, we must amend some of the federal laws that have been weakened by the courts. This includes our antibribery statute. The law prohibiting bribery of public officials must be updated to create an outright ban on any gift giving to or acceptance of gifts by members of Congress above a specific low- dollar threshold. We also need to make it easier for law enforcement to trace money laundering, and make it harder for natural persons to hide behind shell companies formed in highly secretive jurisdictions, including Delaware.Toward this end, Congress should enact the Corporate Transparency Act, which has already passed in the House. It would require corporations, LLCs, and other business entities that appear to be shells (such as those that have few to no employees) to disclose, on an ongoing basis, their beneficial owners to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). This will help detect money laundering and tax evasion schemes.In addition, federal prosecutors should be better trained in the use of the responsible corporate officer doctrine to hold criminally accountable those executives who are in a position to affect the health and safety of the public. Third, we need to create more visibility and protections for victims of white collar crime. Toward this goal, we should create a nationwide registry for white collar criminal offenders. That way, before engaging in consumer or business transactions, ordinary people can consult the registry. This is similar to the concept of a sex offender registry, but given that white collar crime cases are typically prosecuted at the federal level, and offenders can live one place and use internet, mail, and telephone to target people across the country, it should be centralized. In addition, Congress should amend the Crime Victims' Rights Act of 2004 to make it more accessible to people harmed by white collar crime. Surviving family members of those who got hooked on opioids because of OxyContin, for example, should be informed before any government settlement.On tax evasion, imagine the impact if, in a tax fraud sentencing, a voice were given to those who depend upon public funds, such as mayors, town governments, citizens, or school boards. In addition to a voice, victims also need social safety nets. We cannot expect everyone to be fully compensated by offenders through civil and criminal settlements.Everything from extended unemployment insurance to Medicare for All helps those who have lost their savings to fraudsters, or lost their jobs because they chose to leave a corrupt business or spoke out against its criminal practices and were fired.Fourth, we need to protect and support both independent investigative journalists and whistleblowers. Independent journalists perform the difficult research that law enforcement under political pressure or other constraints cannot always perform. They shed light on major social problems and help rouse and rally the public to demand change. Yet they are under financial and physical threat. Congress should allocate funds to independent investigative journalist organizations that agree to share their research with newsrooms nationwide after initial publication so they can build on their work. We also need to empower whistleblowers, not just protect them from retaliation. Presently, under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act, we give whistleblowers special standing to directly sue contractors that are defrauding the federal government; the government can then choose to intervene and take over the matter and the whistleblower receives a portion of the recovery.Congress should expand this to provide standing to whistleblowers for a wider range of white collar crimes. Also, Congress should ban forced arbitration for both employment and consumer legal disputes. This will give employees and consumers their day in court and let sunlight disinfect workplaces and businesses. Fifth, we must restore funding to the IRS so it can recover money that goes uncollected due to understaffing. The agency must close the estimated $800 billion "tax gap" — the difference between what the IRS believes it is owed and the tax receipts it actually collects.In addition, with more staff, the IRS can avoid the problem of having to let so many delinquent accounts go uncollected due to expiration. Also, Congress should close the glaring loopholes in the tax code and also create a more equitable system, including a wealth tax, to help decrease the vast income inequality that makes so many of the uber- wealthy above the law in the first place. And sixth, we need to improve data collection across all law enforcement agencies nationwide that report through the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting system. We need to be able to track all criminal offenses, including designated white collar offenses, the income and assets of the alleged offenders, and the estimated financial losses involved.Further, there needs to be one centralized database to track to their final disposition the numbers and types of all civil charges and settlements by all federal agencies, even where these cases do not result in referrals for criminal prosecution by the Justice Department.<h2>Meeting the challenge</h2>A hundred years ago, progressive legal reformer Louis Brandeis wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." But today, to clean up this white collar crime epidemic, we need more than vision. Today the crime today is hiding in plain sight. Now we need to use our voices.As abolitionist Frederick Douglass proclaimed in 1857, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."It's time to demand an end to this elite crime spree. We must act, and not just for us, but for the society that will be here generations to come. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. And we owe it to the people who have come before us, like journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.The last two sentences of her final blog post were: "There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate." May her memory be a call to action. From "BIG DIRTY MONEY" by Jennifer Taub, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Taub.<div type="image" title="Jennifer Taub.credit Jill Greenberg" height="450" width="300" msid="78536951" hostid="261"></div>Jennifer Taub is a legal scholar and advocate whose writing focuses on "follow the money" matters — promoting transparency and opposing corruption. She has testified as a banking law expert before Congress and has appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's Newsroom. Taub was the Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law in fall 2019 at Harvard Law School and is now a professor of law at the Western New England University School of Law. A former associate general counsel at Fidelity Investments, she is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School.

How America should be addressing its 'dirty money' problem around white-collar crimes, according to a legal scholar

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bfb4db6e97c631008b7277-4385-3289/ap749765253769.jpg" alt="Antonin Scalia" data-mce-source="AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis" data-mce-caption="U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia discusses his background as a law student with fellow Justice Elena Kagan, Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss." />AP Photo/Rogelio V. SolisU.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia discusses his background as a <keyword id="6355470" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Law">law</keyword> student with fellow Justice Elena Kagan, Monday, Dec. 15, 2014, at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.</div></div></div>The sudden death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia leaves an open seat on the bench. Scalia had served 30 years since being appointed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan, and was widely known for his staunch conservative stance. His death not ony leaves a void, but could change the make up of the court altogether. "His departure leaves a huge political fight in the offing," said legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on CNN. "There will be one of the great battles in United States Senate history," Toobin characterized, to replace him.The nomination process is pretty straightforward, but today's political climate makes it complicated. Article II of the Constitution gives the president power to appoint Supreme Court justices with the "advice and consent of the Senate." Today's interpretation means that the president will nominate someone, and the candidate will answer questions in a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee.The Senate then gives consent with a vote, and a Supreme Court justice is appointed for life.The entire confirmation process can be lengthy. Justice Louis Brandeis took four months to be appointed from when he was nominated in late January 1916 to his confirmation by the Senate in June of that year. This is where President Barack Obama runs into trouble. Given it's an election year, it's unclear whether the Senate would even consider a nominee under the circumstances, said NBC's Chief legal analyst Pete Williams. "I would be very surprised, frankly, if a vacancy can be filled in time for the next term to start when it starts in October, but it's such an unexpected thing, such a sudden thing, it's such a shock, and that's the way these things tend to go," Williams said.Since the Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, Williams cautioned that the Senate is in a position that they will have to weigh carefully going into the election season. "When something like this happens there is no choice, but it is a very difficult time, and it's certainly going to be something that the Senate is going to have to think about, whether they're going to leave the Supreme Court with just eight Justices and wait until the presidential election to see if a Republican gets elected and will appoint the next nominee or go ahead and fill this vacancy," Williams said.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is already advocating to delay appointing a new justice until after the election."The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President," McConnell wrote in a statement.Under the Constitution, Obama does have the right to put forth a nominee. The biggest unknown will be on what timeline will he or she would be evaluated, if at all."[The] question will be whether President Obama's nominee ... will get a vote at all in the remaining months of his presidency," Toobin said.

'One of the great battles in US Senate history:' Here's what it will take to replace Scalia

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57088c7452bcd044008bbc6c-2251-1688/2016-04-09t034221z_1_lynxnpec3801s_rtroptp_4_usa-obama.jpg" alt="President Obama" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Jim Young" data-mce-caption="U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Chicago Law School in Chicago, Illinois, United States, April 7, 2016." />REUTERS/Jim YoungUS President Barack Obama speaks at the University of Chicago Law School in Chicago, Illinois, United States, April 7, 2016.</div></div></div>President Barack Obama said Donald Trump and Ted Cruz "have done us a favor" at a high-dollar Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraising dinner in San Francisco on Friday night.Obama was speaking about the Republican-controlled House and Senate when he first mentioned the top two GOP presidential candidates."This notion that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz are outliers and that now suddenly the Republican establishment wants to ... they're embarrassed by them," Obama said, according to a White House press release. "Why? They're saying the same things that these members of the Freedom Caucus in the House have been saying for years.""In fact, that's where Trump got it," he continued.Obama said Trump was simply listening to positions of Republican members of Congress on immigration, national security, taxes, and programs such as Medicaid and Medicare."He'd been paying attention, and he said, 'you know what, I can deliver this message with more flair - (laughter) - with more panache,'" the president quipped.Trump, the GOP frontrunner, and Cruz, a Texas senator snapping at his heels for the nomination, have done the Democrats a big favor because they both "stripped away any veneer" that the Republican party is about "responsible governance," Obama said, adding that those have been the "central tenets" of many Republicans in Congress during both his presidency and previous White House administrations.He then called out Trump's plan to build a massive border wall along the US-Mexico border and Cruz's talk of increasing police surveillance on US neighborhoods with large Muslim populations, although he made a point of saying that a substantial number of Republicans are "embarrassed by it."The presence of Trump or Cruz at the top of the ticket provides a special opportunity for Democrats running for House and Senate seats, he said.Obama continued:If we are successful, not only can we advance the causes that so many of you have fought for and devoted your time and effort and energy and money to, not only do we have a chance to pass immigration reform and pass early-childhood education, and rebuild our infrastructure, and invest in science and research and development that has been at the heart of the dynamism in our economy - not only do we have a chance to do all those things, but I actually genuinely believe it gives an opportunity for Republicans to step back and reflect on where it is that they're going.He concluded his speech by noting the importance of the election and that he will still be making his stances known after he's out of office."In 10 months, I will no longer be president of the United States," he said. "But in 10 months, I will - contrary to Mr. Trump's opinion - still be a citizen of the United States. And I've said this before, quoting Justice [Louis] Brandeis, the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen."Obama <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-donald-trump-mexico-wall-2016-4">increasingly made a point</a> of calling out Trump and Cruz in recent weeks after spending the initial months of the primary season mostly quiet on the rise of the party's frontrunners. On Tuesday, he called Trump's newly released strategy to make Mexico pay for a giant wall along the border a "half-baked" plan."Good luck with that," Obama said sarcastically of the plan to block remittance payments from the US to Mexico. He later called Cruz's stance on immigration "just as draconian" in the news conference.Earlier this month, Obama critiqued Trump's foreign policy in another press conference, this one coming at the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit, which was attended by various world leaders in Washington, DC. Those remarks came shortly after the Manhattan billionaire <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-transcript.html">told The New York Times</a> that he would be open to a nuclear-capable Japan and South Korea in exchange for an ease in security commitments for the US.Those comments "tell us that the person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world, generally," Obama <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-donald-trump-south-korea-japan-nuclear-2016-4">said during that news conference</a>. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-donald-trump-gop-ted-cruz-hillary-clinton-election-politics-2016-4">NEW POLL: 7 in 10 Americans do not want Trump as their president</a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="QwbzRvMjE66okHsjXr1A3Vy8UsdFuw2F" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'QwbzRvMjE66okHsjXr1A3Vy8UsdFuw2F',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

OBAMA: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz 'have done us a favor'

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bfc3496e97c62c008b72c4-3287-2465/rtr2e5rk.jpg" alt="scalia" data-mce-source="Kevin Lamarque/Reuters" data-mce-caption="Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as he testified before a House Judiciary Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing on The Administrative Conference of the United States? on Capitol Hill in Washington May 20, 2010." />Kevin Lamarque/ReutersSupreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as he testified before a House Judiciary Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing on The Administrative Conference of the United States? on Capitol Hill in Washington May 20, 2010.</div></div></div>The political battle to replace US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-dead-2016-2" target="_blank">who died in his sleep Saturday at a Texas ranch</a> at the age of 79, is set to be perhaps the "most consequential ... of the last 20 years."That is <a href="https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/698643685827674112" target="_blank">according</a> to veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson, who was one of many analysts weighing in on the political ramifications of Scalia's unexpected death Saturday.Many seemed to agree that it will be difficult for President Barack Obama, who will now be tasked with choosing a nominee to replace Scalia, to get his appointment through a polarized Senate in an election year.NBC chief legal analyst Pete Williams <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/13/pete_williams_id_be_very_surprised_if_senate_even_considers_supreme_court_nomination_in_election_year.html">said</a> he would be "very surprised" if the vacancy was filled before October, when the Supreme Court begins its 2016-2017 term."I would be very surprised, frankly, if a vacancy can be filled in time for the next term to start when it starts in October," Williams said, according to RealClearPolitics.Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that Scalia's "departure leaves a huge political fight in the offing.""There will be one of the great battles in United States Senate history," to replace him, he added. "The question will be whether President Obama's nominee ... will get a vote at all in the remaining months of his presidency," Toobin said.Indeed, a battle has already begun between top Republicans and Democrats over whether a nominee should be appointed before or after Obama leaves office in January.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said in a statement that the "American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice." "Therefore," McConnell added, "this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President."McConnell's statement is important, since as majority leader he has large control over what comes up on the Senate floor. And he was largely backed up by his rank and file Saturday.Scalia had served 30 years since being appointed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan. He was widely known for his staunch conservative legal philosophy, and many Republican presidential candidates have said he is the type of juror they would look to appoint to the high court.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56bfbe752e526575008b720c-2881-1876/ap598835460514.jpg" alt="Antonin Scalia" data-mce-source="AP Photo/Ron Edmonds" data-mce-caption="In this June 17, 1986 file photo, President Ronald Reagan speaks at a news briefing at the White House in Washington, where he announced the nomination of Antonin Scalia, left, to the Supreme Court as a result of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's resignation." />AP Photo/Ron EdmondsIn this June 17, 1986 file photo, President Ronald Reagan speaks at a news briefing at the White House in Washington, where he announced the nomination of Antonin Scalia, left, to the Supreme Court as a result of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's resignation.</div></div></div>Conn Carroll, the communications director for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), <a href="https://twitter.com/conncarroll/status/698626902160838656">said on Twitter</a> that the chances of Obama successfully appointing a Supreme Court justice to replace Scalia are "less than zero" - a sign of the polarizing fight to come.Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a presidential candidate, <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/698634625246195712">said on Twitter</a> that "we owe it" to Scalia and the nation "for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement."Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), also a presidential candidate, said in a statement that "the next president must nominate a justice who will continue Justice Scalia's unwavering belief in the founding principles that we hold dear."Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that "the fact of the matter is that it's been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year.""Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this President, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court justice."But in a preview of the battle set to hit Washington, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) released his own statement shortly thereafter slamming the notion that the Senate should wait to fill Scalia's seat."The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away," Reid said. "It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat. He added: "Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate's most essential Constitutional responsibilities."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/50d23993ecad04b25d00000c-3000-1945/scalia.jpg" alt="Scalia" data-mce-source="Getty Images/Spencer Platt" data-mce-caption="Justice Scalia at a Columbus Day parade." />Getty Images/Spencer PlattJustice Scalia at a Columbus Day parade.</div></div></div>Obama, for his part, said in a statement on Saturday that he plans to fulfill his "constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time.""These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone," he added.Under Article II of the Constitution, the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-it-will-take-to-replace-antonin-scalia-2016-2">president has the power</a> to appoint Supreme Court justices - but only with the "advice and consent of the Senate." Typically, the candidate appointed by the president has to answer questions in a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee before he or she is given a vote from the full chamber.Since President Gerald Ford's term in office, it has taken <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44234.pdf">an average of 67 days</a> for a president to nominate a candidate to that candidate receiving a final Senate vote, according to the Congressional Research Service. Because it is an election year, however, the process is bound to be even more politicized and lengthy than usual.For perspective, the last time a sitting Supreme Court Justice died during a presidential election year was Justice Joseph Lamar in 1916 - and it took his successor, Louis Brandeis, <a href="http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl33225.pdf">125 days to be confirmed</a> by the Senate (the longest in history.)President Obama has 342 days left in office. <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scotus-justice-makes-racial-remarks-2015-12">A Supreme Court Justice is under fire for racial remarks he made at a hearing</a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="F1YXRneTrNcpgWHxBuBLXwppQ_h3emTK" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'F1YXRneTrNcpgWHxBuBLXwppQ_h3emTK',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

'The most consequential political battle of the last 20 years' has already broken out over Scalia's replacement

The 100 smartest private colleges in America

<img class="float_right" src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/548df2dfeab8ea48080d8426-1200-924/nyu-graduation-3.jpg" border="0" alt="NYU graduation">If you're looking for exclusivity, academic excellence, and exposure to the brainiest students in the US, you may want to check out the universities below.</img>
We recently ranked&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-colleges-in-america-2014-10">the smartest colleges in America</a>, and&#xa0;private institutions dominated the top of the list. Only 17 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-public-colleges-in-america-2014-10">public schools</a> broke into the top 100. Here, we take a closer look at the highest-ranked private schools in terms of sheer student brainpower.
In order to determine a school's overall smarts,&#xa0;<a href="http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/960" target="_blank">Jonathan Wai</a>, a&#xa0;Duke University Talent Identification Program researcher,&#xa0;analyzed&#xa0;the average standardized&#xa0;test&#xa0;scores that schools report to&#xa0;<a href="http://www.usnews.com/" target="_blank">US News</a>.&#xa0;(Those that did not report scores are not included.)
These tests are often criticized, but research shows that both the <a href="http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/frey.pdf" target="_blank">SAT</a> and <a href="http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/koening2008.pdf" target="_blank">ACT</a> are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-colleges-in-america-2014-10">good</a> measures of general cognitive ability and&#xa0;give a reasonable snapshot of the brainpower level of that school.
ACT scores were translated into SAT scores (math + verbal) using&#xa0;<a href="http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/pdf/reference.pdf" target="_blank">this concordance table</a>,&#xa0;so that all schools could be compared using one metric. Then, an average of the 25th and 75th percentile was computed (<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/1339-us-colleges-ranked-average-student-brainpower.pdf" target="_blank">see a full description of the methodology and limitations&#xa0;here</a>).
On the following ranking, a (2) next to the school's name indicates that some or all students aren't required to supply scores; a (3) indicates that the school did not supply all students it has scores for, or did not tell US News if it had; a (4) indicates that the data is from a previous year, rather than from the most recent year; and a (9) indicates that the school may not require scores from all applicants and that it may not have submitted data for all students.
<h3>Here are the smartest private colleges in America:</h3>
<table style="width: 467px;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<colgroup>
<col width="70">
<col width="283">
<col width="114">
</col></col></col></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="xl65" width="70" height="14">Smarts Rank</td>
<td class="xl66" width="283">&#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; School</td>
<td class="xl67" width="114">
&#xa0;Average&#xa0;SAT
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">1</td>
<td>California Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1545</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">2</td>
<td>University of Chicago</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1515</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Princeton University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Harvard University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Yale University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">6</td>
<td>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">7</td>
<td>Columbia University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1485</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">8</td>
<td>Harvey Mudd College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1480</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">9</td>
<td>Stanford University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">10</td>
<td>Northwestern University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1470</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Dartmouth College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Washington University in St. Louis</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>University of Notre Dame</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Vanderbilt University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Rice University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Pomona College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">17</td>
<td>Duke University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1455</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">18</td>
<td>University of Pennsylvania</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1450</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">19</td>
<td>Tufts University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1445</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">20</td>
<td>Amherst College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1440</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">20</td>
<td>Swarthmore College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1440</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Brown University (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Carnegie Mellon University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Williams College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Bowdoin College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">26</td>
<td>Johns Hopkins University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1430</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">26</td>
<td>Carleton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1430</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">28</td>
<td>Cornell University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1420</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Georgetown University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Wellesley College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Claremont McKenna College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Haverford College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Washington and Lee University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Wesleyan University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">35</td>
<td>Vassar College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1395</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">36</td>
<td>Northeastern University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1390</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">37</td>
<td>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1389</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">38</td>
<td>Middlebury College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1385</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">38</td>
<td>Hamilton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1385</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">40</td>
<td>University of Southern California</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1380</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Case Western Reserve University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Reed College (9)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Bard College at Simon's Rock (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">44</td>
<td>Scripps College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1367</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">45</td>
<td>Emory University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1365</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">46</td>
<td>Oberlin College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1363</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Boston College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>New York University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Tulane University (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Colgate University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">51</td>
<td>Cooper Union</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1355</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>University of Rochester (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>Brandeis University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>Macalester College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">55</td>
<td>Colby College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1345</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">55</td>
<td>Bates College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1345</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Grinnell College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Bryn Mawr College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Barnard College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">60</td>
<td>Davidson College (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1335</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">60</td>
<td>Smith College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1335</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Wake Forest University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>University of Miami</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Colorado College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Mount Holyoke College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Connecticut College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">67</td>
<td>Whitman College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1321</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">68</td>
<td>Kenyon College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1320</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">68</td>
<td>Wheaton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1320</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Lehigh University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Franklin and Marshall College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">73</td>
<td>University of Richmond</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1310</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">73</td>
<td>Union College (NY) (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1310</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>College of the Holy Cross (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Pitzer College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Occidental College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Hendrix College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>St. John's College (NM) (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Villanova University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Southern Methodist University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Stevens Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Bucknell University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Denison University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Rhodes College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Hillsdale College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">87</td>
<td>George Washington University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1295</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">88</td>
<td>Boston University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1290</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Brigham Young University-Provo</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>University of Tulsa</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Centre College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Gettysburg College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>St. Olaf College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Lawrence University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Santa Clara University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">96</td>
<td>Bennington College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1280</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">97</td>
<td>Dickinson College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1278</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Lafayette College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Bard College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>St. John's College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Lewis &amp; Clark College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
&#xa0;
&#xa0;

The 102 Smartest Private Colleges In America

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/548df2dfeab8ea48080d8426-1200-924/nyu-graduation-3.jpg" border="0" alt="NYU graduation">Slaven Vlasic / GettyNYU ranks at No. 47.</img>If you're looking for exclusivity, academic excellence, and exposure to the brainiest students in the US, you may want to check out the universities below.
We recently ranked&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-colleges-in-america-2014-10">the smartest colleges in America</a>, and&#xa0;private institutions dominated the top of the list. Only 17 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-public-colleges-in-america-2014-10">public schools</a> broke into the top 100. Here, we take a closer look at the highest-ranked private schools in terms of sheer student brainpower.
In order to determine a school's overall smarts,&#xa0;<a href="http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/960" target="_blank">Jonathan Wai</a>, a&#xa0;Duke University Talent Identification Program researcher,&#xa0;analyzed&#xa0;the average standardized&#xa0;test&#xa0;scores that schools report to&#xa0;<a href="http://www.usnews.com/" target="_blank">US News</a>.&#xa0;(Those that did not report scores are not included.)
These tests are often criticized, but research shows that both the <a href="http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/frey.pdf" target="_blank">SAT</a> and <a href="http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/koening2008.pdf" target="_blank">ACT</a> are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-colleges-in-america-2014-10">good</a> measures of general cognitive ability and&#xa0;give a reasonable snapshot of the brainpower level of that school.
ACT scores were translated into SAT scores (math + verbal) using&#xa0;<a href="http://www.act.org/aap/concordance/pdf/reference.pdf" target="_blank">this concordance table</a>,&#xa0;so that all schools could be compared using one metric. Then, an average of the 25th and 75th percentile was computed (<a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/56143/1339-us-colleges-ranked-average-student-brainpower.pdf" target="_blank">see a full description of the methodology and limitations&#xa0;here</a>).
On the following ranking, a (2) next to the school's name indicates that some or all students aren't required to supply scores; a (3) indicates that the school did not supply all students it has scores for, or did not tell US News if it had; a (4) indicates that the data is from a previous year, rather than from the most recent year; and a (9) indicates that the school may not require scores from all applicants and that it may not have submitted data for all students.
<h3>Here are the smartest private colleges in America:</h3>
<table style="width: 467px;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<colgroup>
<col width="70">
<col width="283">
<col width="114">
</col></col></col></colgroup>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="xl65" width="70" height="14">Smarts Rank</td>
<td class="xl66" width="283">&#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; &#xa0; School</td>
<td class="xl67" width="114">
&#xa0;Average&#xa0;SAT
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">1</td>
<td>California Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1545</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">2</td>
<td>University of Chicago</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1515</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Princeton University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Harvard University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">3</td>
<td>Yale University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1505</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">6</td>
<td>Massachusetts Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">7</td>
<td>Columbia University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1485</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">8</td>
<td>Harvey Mudd College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1480</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">9</td>
<td>Stanford University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1475</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">10</td>
<td>Northwestern University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1470</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Dartmouth College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Washington University in St. Louis</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>University of Notre Dame</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Vanderbilt University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Rice University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">11</td>
<td>Pomona College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1460</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">17</td>
<td>Duke University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1455</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">18</td>
<td>University of Pennsylvania</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1450</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">19</td>
<td>Tufts University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1445</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">20</td>
<td>Amherst College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1440</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">20</td>
<td>Swarthmore College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1440</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Brown University (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Carnegie Mellon University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Williams College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">22</td>
<td>Bowdoin College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1435</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">26</td>
<td>Johns Hopkins University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1430</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">26</td>
<td>Carleton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1430</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">28</td>
<td>Cornell University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1420</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Georgetown University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Wellesley College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">29</td>
<td>Claremont McKenna College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1410</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Haverford College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Washington and Lee University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">32</td>
<td>Wesleyan University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1400</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">35</td>
<td>Vassar College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1395</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">36</td>
<td>Northeastern University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1390</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">37</td>
<td>Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1389</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">38</td>
<td>Middlebury College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1385</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">38</td>
<td>Hamilton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1385</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">40</td>
<td>University of Southern California</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1380</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Case Western Reserve University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Reed College (9)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">41</td>
<td>Bard College at Simon's Rock (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1375</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">44</td>
<td>Scripps College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1367</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">45</td>
<td>Emory University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1365</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">46</td>
<td>Oberlin College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1363</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Boston College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>New York University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Tulane University (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">47</td>
<td>Colgate University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1360</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">51</td>
<td>Cooper Union</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1355</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>University of Rochester (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>Brandeis University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">52</td>
<td>Macalester College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1350</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">55</td>
<td>Colby College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1345</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">55</td>
<td>Bates College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1345</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Grinnell College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Bryn Mawr College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">57</td>
<td>Barnard College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1340</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">60</td>
<td>Davidson College (3)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1335</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">60</td>
<td>Smith College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1335</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Wake Forest University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>University of Miami</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Colorado College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Mount Holyoke College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">62</td>
<td>Connecticut College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1325</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">67</td>
<td>Whitman College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1321</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">68</td>
<td>Kenyon College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1320</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">68</td>
<td>Wheaton College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1320</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Lehigh University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">70</td>
<td>Franklin and Marshall College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1315</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">73</td>
<td>University of Richmond</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1310</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">73</td>
<td>Union College (NY) (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1310</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>College of the Holy Cross (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Pitzer College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Occidental College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Hendrix College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>St. John's College (NM) (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">75</td>
<td>Villanova University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1305</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Southern Methodist University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Stevens Institute of Technology</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Bucknell University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Denison University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Rhodes College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">81</td>
<td>Hillsdale College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1300</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">87</td>
<td>George Washington University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1295</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">88</td>
<td>Boston University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1290</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Brigham Young University-Provo</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>University of Tulsa</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Centre College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Gettysburg College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>St. Olaf College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Lawrence University (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">89</td>
<td>Santa Clara University</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1285</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">96</td>
<td>Bennington College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1280</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">97</td>
<td>Dickinson College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1278</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Lafayette College</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Bard College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>St. John's College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xl64" height="14">98</td>
<td>Lewis &amp; Clark College (2)</td>
<td class="xl63" align="right">1275</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
&#xa0;
&#xa0;

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