Demand Justice Launches ‘Balls and Strikes’ Site for Commentary and Analysis on Judges and the Courts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 15, 2021

CONTACT: [email protected]

DEMAND JUSTICE LAUNCHES ‘BALLS AND STRIKES’ SITE FOR COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS ON JUDGES AND THE COURTS

WASHINGTON, DC— On Wednesday, Demand Justice launched Balls and Strikes, a new site featuring original commentary, analysis, and data on the Supreme Court, judicial nominations, and legal culture. 

Balls and Strikes will publish essays and reporting that take a critical, progressive perspective on the legal system, along with databases tracking President Biden’s nominees to the federal bench, the approach of Democratic Senators in recommending  judicial nominations, and the demographic and partisan makeup of each circuit.

Jay Willis will serve as the site’s editor-in-chief. Previously, Willis was a staff writer at GQ and a senior contributor to The Appeal. His coverage of courts, democracy, politics, and law has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, and Deadspin, among others.

Balls and Strikes will feature several Contributors who will write regularly for the site. The Contributors announced Wednesday include:

• Adam Cohen, formerly of The New York Times editorial board and author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America
• Madiba Dennie, an attorney whose legal and political commentary has been featured in outlets including BBC News, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Nation
• Josie Duffy Rice, journalist and former president of The Appeal
• Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon, co-hosts of the 5-4 podcast
• Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent at The Nation and a consultant on Radiolab
• Lisa Needham, lawyer and a contributing writer to Rewire News Group, Dame Magazine, and The American Independent
• Shaun Ossei-Owusu, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a former contributor to The American Prospect

The site’s “About” page reads, in part: “Balls & Strikes seeks to hold courts, judges, and members of the legal profession accountable for their failures to fulfill their professed commitment to the cause of justice, and to facilitate some long-overdue conversations about how to make the legal system better.” The site will challenge the myth that judges, in the words of Chief Justice John Roberts at his Senate confirmation hearing, “call balls and strikes.”

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