The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is certainly an intriguing one, and has been gaining traction. Swiss voters just turned it down. But it is still alive in Finland, in the Netherlands, in Alaska, in Oakland, CA, and in parts of Canada. 

Advocates of a UBI include Charles Murray on the right and Anthony Atkinson on the left. This surprising alliance alone makes it interesting, and it is a reasonable response to a growing pool of Americans made jobless by the march of technology and a safety net that is overly complex and bureaucratic. A comprehensive and excellent analysis in The Economist points out that while fears about technological unemployment have previously proved misleading, “the past is not always a good guide to the future.”

Robert Greenstein argues, however, that a UBI would actually hurt the poor by reallocating support up the income scale. His logic is inescapable: either we have to spend additional trillions providing income grants to all Americans or we have to limit assistance to those who need it most. 

One option is to provide unconditional payments along the lines of a UBI, but to phase it out as income rises. Libertarians like this approach since it gets rid of bureaucracies and leaves the poor free to spend the money on whatever they choose, rather than providing specific funds for particular needs. Liberals fear that such unconditional assistance would be unpopular and would be an easy target for elimination in the face of budget pressures. Right now most of our social programs are conditional. With the exception of the aged and the disabled, assistance is tied to work or to the consumption of necessities such as food, housing, or medical care, and our two largest means-tested programs are Food Stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Liberals have been less willing to openly acknowledge that a little paternalism in social policy may not be such a bad thing. In fact, progressives and libertarians alike are loath to admit that many of the poor and jobless are lacking more than just cash. They may be addicted to drugs or alcohol, suffer from mental health issues, have criminal records, or have difficulty functioning in a complex society. Money may be needed but money by itself does not cure such ills. 

A humane and wealthy society should provide the disadvantaged with adequate services and support. But there is nothing wrong with making assistance conditional on individuals fulfilling some obligation whether it is work, training, getting treatment, or living in a supportive but supervised environment.

In the end, the biggest problem with a universal basic income may not be its costs or its distributive implications, but the flawed assumption that money cures all ills.  

Downloads

• Download full paper

The loss of the Afghan provincial capital Kunduz was a psychological shock to the Afghan people, a strategic and tactical defeat for both Afghanistan and the United States, and a tragedy for those at the Doctors Without Borders hospital there. Yet the shock may prompt essential changes. It is important to examine both Afghan and U.S. responsibility for the disaster, what is happening now and what needs to be done. President Obama’s decision Thursday to maintain existing U.S. force levels into next year was absolutely correct to achieve the goal he stated of “sustainable Afghan capacity and self-sufficiency.”

Kunduz, which has since been recaptured by Afghan forces, was more than just the first provincial capital to be taken by the Taliban; its fall was highly symbolic because it was the site of the Taliban’s last stand in 2001. The poor initial performance of Afghan security forces and the tragic bombing of a nongovernmental organization hospital in the midst of a chaotic response to the attack sparked national disappointment in Afghanistan and international concern. All this came on the back of a dismal year in which many more Afghan civilians died than did so while international forces fought the Taliban, and the national unity government, which came into office on a wave of hope a year ago, stalled on filling essential positions and reforming governance.

The United States and its allies share responsibility for the military losses. We built security forces that depend on air power and need continued intelligence and advisory support. But instead of ensuring that these capabilities are available, we have severely limited air support, transferred key intelligence enablers to Iraq and created a patchwork system that left key areas, including Kunduz, without effective advisers. Our withdrawals from these vital functions based on politically driven timetables ignored reality on the ground, including Taliban capabilities and the embrace of the Islamic State by some militants.

But Afghans need to understand that U.S. support is not, and should not, be a blank check. Both the government and the opposition need to work to improve their military, political and governance performance, and come together instead of pulling the country apart.

The Kunduz setback does not mean the war is lost. Elite Afghan commandos delivered by recapturing critical areas. Whereas Mosul in Iraq remains in enemy hands a year after it fell, Kunduz has returned to government control. President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah appear to be heeding the call to action. During our recent 10-day visit to Afghanistan, each told us that they have agreed to an accelerated appointment process. Five new governors have been named, including three to critical provinces; further appointments and the long-delayed replacement of numerous senior officers is promised and must happen quickly. Appointments must involve effective individuals and cannot be merely political payoffs. Ghani has created a commission to investigate Kunduz, with a mandate to recommend action, that is led by opposition voices, including a former head of intelligence, though it sadly lacks female members.

If government performance takes off, public confidence could begin to be restored. More remains to be done. Afghan power brokers, intent on advancing personal agendas, seek to replace the government. They need to be pressed to stand down. The effort to reduce predatory governance in the provinces and Kabul cannot be shoved aside. Ghani and Abdullah must work effectively together despite the rapacious desires of their supporters and opponents. Broader consultation with the Afghan people is needed.

The United States needs to continue to step up to its own responsibilities, as well. Ground combat troops are not needed, but advisers and air power must be kept in place and not reduced on some blind, years-old timetable. Air power must be available to preempt attacks and not confined, as it is now, to desperate defense after attacks have begun. Afghan and foreign officials we spoke to foresee a crescendo of Taliban attacks as international forces withdraw. An even bigger Taliban offensive next year is likely to stretch battered Afghan forces further. We have not ended a war, only left it to the Afghans too soon.

The United States should maintain its current forces and funding levels, which are less than 10 percent of expenditures a few years ago, and focus on effectively advising Afghan forces. A reduction of the U.S. effort to a “pure” counterterrorism effort, still foreshadowed by the president’s hope of getting to about half the current force level sometime next year, would be disturbingly similar to what President George W. Bush tried a decade ago. Such a premature drawdown would abandon Afghan forces before they are ready, increasing the risk that a renewed terrorist haven will emerge.

Asking our allies to do jobs they are not equipped to do raises the risk of more reversals such as Kunduz and tragedies like the hospital bombing. Obama’s decision to maintain forces properly avoids preempting his successor’s choices about a difficult and evolving situation. That focus, and not a predetermined timetable, should continue to guide decisions throughout the remainder of this administration. The president’s public determination to maintain our current training and advising effort until Afghan forces do not need such help will provide a needed boost to both Afghans and our NATO allies — some of whom have been ahead of us in urging that we stay. And it is the right thing to do for our national interests.

This piece was originally published by The Washington Post.

Editor's Note: In this blog, Vera Songwe introduces the African Leadership Transitions Tracker, a new interactive that aims to start a broader conversation about leadership transitions and what they mean for the region and beyond.

On March 28, Nigerians voters will go to the polls to participate in their nation’s fifth election since the military handed over power to civilians in 1999. As Africa’s largest economy and an important oil exporter, this election comes at an important time for Nigeria and for the continent as a whole.

The recent passing of Singapore’s 30 year-long leader Lee Kwan Yew credited with having taken Singapore from a third world country to a fully developed country in less than a generation, has brought the question of leadership and leadership transitions back to the fore. A 2010 report by Michael Spence’s Growth Commission heralds Lee Kuan Yew as the hero of Singapore’s growth story. The African Leadership Transition Tracker hopes to launch a dialogue on what the frequency, nature, and scope of leadership transitions mean for African countries’ growth, stability, and development trajectory overall. Moreover, how have transition trends in the region changed from the time of the African founding fathers and the tumultuous years of the 1960s to the present day?

As an initial step towards thinking this question through, Brookings’s African Growth Initiative is today launching the African Leadership Transitions Tracker as a resource both to inform readers about African political history and a tool to initiate analysis on what leadership changeover might mean (or not mean) for development. The Transitions Tracker specifically records all changes that have occurred at the head-of-state level in every African country between the end of the colonial period and the present day. We are hoping that recording this information and presenting it visually (and as a downloadable data set) will help start a broader conversation and support additional work on these issues. Brookings will update this data on a regular basis, and we welcome your feedback as we further refine this interactive. Moreover, the information we present today is by no means the full story—key variables are needed to complement this study, including, for example, the various political party affiliations of leaders within a country or cross tabulations with resources that seek to measure the level of citizen participation and engagement in these transitions. However, as further analysis takes place, we are hoping that the African Leadership Transitions Tracker will enrich dialogue about developments occurring in the region and place current news on elections or other types of changeover events within the broader context of the continent’s leadership story overall.  Over the next few months, we will be running a series of articles based on this data.  

Special thanks to Ehui Adovor, graduate student at George Washington University and the many AGI research assistants, analysts, and program staff that have supported this project, including Jessica Pugliese, Brandon Routman, Christina Golubski, Andrew Westbury, and Amy Copley.

Recent political movements within the United States have raised concerns about the health of American democracy. With hyper-partisanship dividing the country and Donald Trump—the most unlikely, unsuitable, and unpopular presidential nominee of a major party in American history—securing the Republican nomination, the question emerges of whether democracy in America has gone awry.  And if so, is it too much or too little democracy that’s to blame?

To help address those questions, in this paper, Thomas E. Mann summarizes and discusses the findings of Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels’ ambitious treatise on American democracy: “Democracy for Realists.” Achen and Bartels contend that the traditional conception of voters as rational, attentive decision-makers does not hold against empirical evidence. Instead, voters are best understood as members of partisan groups, which influence their perception of candidates, issues, and even simple facts. According to Achen and Bartels, perceived social identities drive voting decisions, rather than rationality.

Mann notes that most scholars would agree that voters do not follow the expectations of idealistic models, but draws attention to competing theories that are far less damning to voters’ rationality. In particular, the research of Paul Sniderman and Arthur Lupia suggests that voters are far more capable than Achen and Bartels would assert. In their view, voters have enough rationality and information to ensure a well-functioning democracy.

As Mann summarizes the arguments:  Achen and Bartels believe that citizens and elections are held to impossible, idealistic standards in the folk theory of democracy, which perpetuates myths and works against government responsiveness. Sniderman and Lupia, on the other hand, are offended by those who dismiss citizens as ignorant and incompetent; they seek to defend voters’ dignity and demonstrate the rationality and efficacy of their behavior in American democracy.

What does this scholarship tell us about the coming presidential election, and the future of American democracy?  Ultimately, Mann concludes that Achen and Bartel’s perspective is not anti-democratic, even if it is built on a belief that too much importance is placed on the often random and myopic outcomes of elections.  Instead, Mann believes that “Democracy for Realists” reveals the real democratic deficit facing America is one stemming not from too much democracy, but  from “asymmetry in political resources and representation of different segments of American society.” Truly understanding this problem and its root cause is a step toward strengthening American democracy. 

Downloads

• Download the paper

A recent blog suggested that CMS’ efforts to standardize assessment data was based on a goal of “….creating a functional measurement tool that could be used throughout the industry.” In fact, CMS has been working since 2005 to meet the Congressional directive to standardize assessment information at hospital discharge, and post-acute care (PAC) admission and discharge for payment and quality reporting purposes (Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). The CARE tool was developed as part of the national Post-Acute Care Payment Reform Demonstration (PAC PRD). The conceptual domains and items were selected with the input of the wide range of stakeholder communities working with PAC populations. Clinicians from acute hospitals and each of the four PAC settings, including long term care hospitals (LTCHs), inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRFs), skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and home health agencies (HHAs) identified items to test in four areas: medical status, functional status, cognitive status, and some social support factors. Input was given by physicians, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, social workers and case managers working in each of the different levels of care. Initial item selection was based on a review of existing assessment items, including those in the three Federally-mandated instruments, (the IRF-PAI, MDS 2.0, and OASIS-B which were in effect at this time) and the input of each of the scientific communities working in these areas.

Developers of proprietary systems such as the UDS-MR©, Inter-RAI ©, and AM-PAC ©, as well as public domain items tested in clinical trials such as the PROMIS items, were all reviewed as part of this process. The selected items needed to be in the public domain so the measures could be modified as science advanced practice.

Over 200 providers participated nationwide to submit over 53,000 CARE assessments over the course of the PAC PRD. Participating clinicians also provided feedback during training and exit interviews. In general, positive feedback was provided on most items. Feedback showed that almost all items were commonly collected on existing instruments in hospitals and PAC providers, although some of the information may have been informally noted in charts rather than provided in the structured form of the CARE items.

The items were tested for reliability so they could be applied consistently across populations and settings. Most of the items were previously tested and found reliable in at least one of the five levels of care. Two types of reliability tests were conducted on the final CARE tool item set used in the PAC PRD. The results showed that most items when applied to the other four settings were at least as reliable as the existing Federal assessment items (Kappa scores of 0.6 or better) ensuring their reliable use in future quality measures or payment models would reach consistent results. Complete reports on item reliability and PAC PRD results can be found here.

Data standardization is critical to allow providers to exchange information as they follow the patient. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 directed CMS to use standardized assessment items at acute hospital discharge and PAC admission and discharge to allow for empirical comparisons of key questions arising out of changing incentives in the Medicare payment policies. The standardized CARE items are consensus-based versions of the items already collected by clinicians. These and additional items being incorporated into CMS’ assessment item library represent the “best in class.” The team developing the CARE item set represented the leading experts in each of the areas – Dr. Margaret Stineman of the University of Pennsylvania, developer of the function-related groups associated with the proprietary FIM©, Dr. Deborah Saliba, UCLA, lead developer of the MDS 3.0, and Dr. Chris Murtaugh of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Team members included Drs. Anne Deutsch and Trudy Mallinson of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Input was also given by Dr. David Hittle, of the University of Colorado who has worked closely with the OASIS tool, Dr. Samuel Markello, formerly of the UDS-MR©, and Dr. Patrick Murray of Case Western University.

The blog suggested that, “the early reviews of the CARE tool have been poor.” While this clearly is not true, it is worth pointing out that the author owns one of the key proprietary assessment instruments. The CARE items have been evaluated for reliability and they meet the national standards; they allow providers and others the opportunity to download the e-specification of the items without charge and to have the clinicians trained for free under CMS’ regular assessment training initiatives. CMS is currently developing quality measures using the “best in class” assessment items which all meet scientific standards. The quality measure development process already requires CMS to submit measures for endorsement by the National Quality Forum. The “loophole” identified by the UDS-MR© author is non-existent. The Measures Application Partnership is part of the existing NQF process included in the IMPACT legislation. Further, use of uniform data elements across settings, such as those used in the currently collected pressure ulcer measure, allows for exchangeability and improves communication across the system, finally creating a “data follows the person” system.

The BBC is doing something I think is awesome but many of my American friends think is awful: gathering information of the social class background of their recruits. The move is part of an aggressive strategy to promote more diversity both on the airwaves and behind the scenes at the public service broadcaster. The civil service has been moving in the same direction.

Some questions arise:

Race and gender are relatively straightforward characteristics, notwithstanding the recent nonsense over restrooms for transgender people. Defining social class is a much more complex business. Many variables could be included, including occupational status, income or wealth, as well as education or cultural capital.

But the goal here is simply to find a measure that is good enough for the purposes at hand. The BBC asks whether either of your parents has a college degree. This is not a bad approach. Education is an important dimension of social class in itself, and strongly related to others. The BBC is also going to ask whether at any point in childhood the person in question was eligible for free school meals. (The questions are voluntary.)

Such proxy measures are narrow measures of class. But they are better than the current ones, since there are none.

Diversity can benefit organizations by widening the range of viewpoints and perspectives. A mixed team is a better team. Class background may be as important here as other factors.

Take two people of a different race or gender, each raised by wealthy East Coast parents, attending a top-drawer private high school, and graduating from an Ivy League college. They may not be as different from each other as they are from a white man raised by a poor single mother in a small Appalachian town.

The BBC is historically an upper middle class institution: “BBC English” meant a posh accent. The British professions in general have in fact tended to draw from a narrow talent pool. Around 7 percent of students attend private high schools (or “public schools”, in British). But they are strongly over-represented in the top professions, including journalism:

From a broader societal perspective, the persistence of class inequality is of course bad news for upward social mobility.

Simply raising awareness of a potential class bias in hiring and promotions could be valuable. Reforming institutional practices—for example the allocation of internship opportunities—may also help. Broadening the search for talent beyond the marquee brands of higher education is likely to diversify the class background of recruits; the BBC is also moving to both name-blind and institution-blind applications. At the same time, greater support for less traditional hires may help them to succeed.

The U.S. sees itself as a classless society, one reason Americans recoil against monitoring social class. It is an understandable instinct. But the perpetuation of class status is now at least as big a problem in the U.S. as in the UK. Even as white privilege and male privilege have diminished, class privilege has survived. A little more class-consciousness might not hurt.

Downloads

• Download full paper

Mercutio: I am hurt. A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped. Is he gone and hath nothing? — Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, scene 1, 90–92

The eurozone crisis, which includes the Greek crisis but is not restricted to it, has undermined the credibility of the EU institutions and left millions of Europeans disillusioned with the European Project. The euro was either introduced too early, or it included countries that should never have been included, or both were true. High rates of inflation left countries in the periphery uncompetitive and the constraint of a single currency removed a key adjustment mechanism. Capital flows allowed this problem to be papered over until the global financial crisis hit.

The leaders of the international institutions, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, together with the governments of the stronger economies, were asked to figure out a solution and they emphasized fiscal consolidation, which they made a condition for assistance with heavy debt burdens. The eurozone as a whole has paid the price, with real GDP in the first quarter of 2015 being about 1.5 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008, seven years earlier, and with a current unemployment rate of 11 percent. By contrast, the sluggish U.S. recovery looks rocket-powered, with GDP 8.6 percent above its previous peak and an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent.

The burden of the euro crisis has been very unevenly distributed, with Greece facing unemployment of 25 percent and rising, Spain 23 percent, Italy 12 percent, and Ireland 9.7 percent, while German unemployment is 4.7 percent. It is not surprising that so many Europeans are unhappy with their policy leaders who moved too quickly into a currency union and then dealt with the crisis in a way that pushed countries into economic depression. The common currency has been a boon to Germany, with its $287 billion current account surplus, but the bane of the southern periphery. Greece bears considerable culpability for its own problems, having failed to collect taxes or open up an economy full of competitive restrictions, but that does not excuse the policy failures among Europe’s leaders. A plague on both sides in the Greek crisis!

During the Great Moderation, it seemed that the Bretton Woods institutions were losing their usefulness because private markets could provide needed funding. The financial crisis and the global recession that followed it shattered this belief. The IMF did not foresee the crisis, nor was it a central player in dealing with the period of greatest peril from 2007 to 2009. National treasuries, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank were the only institutions that had the resources and the power to deal with the bank failures, the shortage of liquidity, and the freezing up of markets. Still, the IMF became relevant again and played an important role in the euro crisis, although at the cost of sharing the unpopularity of the policy response to that crisis.

China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is the result of China’s growing power and influence and the failure of the West, particularly the United States, to come to terms with this seismic shift. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have deliberately excluded China, the largest economy in Asia and largest trading partner in the world. Reform of the governance structure of the World Bank and the IMF has stalled with disproportionate power still held by the United States and Europe. Unsurprisingly, China has decided to exercise its influence in other ways, establishing the new Asian bank and increasing the role of the yuan in international transactions. U.S. policymakers underestimated China’s strength and the willingness of other countries to cooperate with it, and the result has been to reduce the role and influence of the Bretton Woods institutions.

Can the old institutions be reinvented and made more effective? In Europe, the biggest problem is that bad decisions were made by national governments and by the international institutions (although the ECB policies have been generally good). The World Bank and IMF do need to reform their governance, but it may be too late to bring China back into the fold.

With just over six months to go until the Iowa caucuses, news organizations are already speculating about what the Bush or Clinton or Trump Sanders administrations might look like. Though it might seem premature, their impulse is the right one. After the winner of the 2016 presidential race is announced in November of that year, the new President-elect will have just under three months to build his or her new government. From choosing cabinet members and key White House staff to setting the policy agenda and dealing with unanticipated crises, the presidential transition process is a huge undertaking, and one that requires much more advance planning than it is usually given.

Acknowledging the short timetable that surrounds the presidential transition process, on July 31 the Senate passed the “Edward ‘Ted’ Kaufman and Michael Leavitt Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015.” If passed by the House and signed into law, this bill would require the president to establish a “White House Transition Coordinating Council” six months prior to the presidential election. This council would work with transition representatives for both candidates to prepare for the challenges that will lie ahead.

Under the new bill, the President would also be tasked to create an “Agency Transition Director’s Council.” This council would ensure that federal agencies function effectively through the transition. Again, transition representatives for each candidate would work with a group of senior representatives from the agencies, planning leadership changes and identifying potential obstacles.

Additionally, agency directors would designate “acting officers” for all essential non-career positions. In the event that these positions become vacant during the transition, a career civil servant from the agency will take over as “acting officer” until a replacement is appointed.

The Bush to Obama transition was one of the smoothest in history, and this bill reflects the best practices learned from that experience. (Full disclosure: one of the co-authors of this blog, Eisen, was the deputy general counsel of the Obama transition.) The Bush administration was ready early to work with the transition teams for both major party candidates. It offered a model of organization and cooperation with both campaigns well before Election Day. Once the election was decided, that engagement intensified, with constant contact and seamless teamwork between President-elect and his team and President Bush and his. Indeed, even after Election Day, many Bush appointees were asked to and did stay on longer in order to give the administration more time to find suitable replacements (See, e.g. Burke, p.594).

The Obama administration will undoubtedly "pay it forward" and meet those same high standards in addressing the upcoming transition. Nevertheless, codifying recent best practices as law makes eminent sense now, while we are all paying attention to the upcoming election—and knowing a future administration may not be as cooperative unless required by law. Although Inauguration Day 2017 may seem far off, there is actually not a moment to spare for this important legislation to proceed.

The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is certainly an intriguing one, and has been gaining traction. Swiss voters just turned it down. But it is still alive in Finland, in the Netherlands, in Alaska, in Oakland, CA, and in parts of Canada. 

Advocates of a UBI include Charles Murray on the right and Anthony Atkinson on the left. This surprising alliance alone makes it interesting, and it is a reasonable response to a growing pool of Americans made jobless by the march of technology and a safety net that is overly complex and bureaucratic. A comprehensive and excellent analysis in The Economist points out that while fears about technological unemployment have previously proved misleading, “the past is not always a good guide to the future.”

Robert Greenstein argues, however, that a UBI would actually hurt the poor by reallocating support up the income scale. His logic is inescapable: either we have to spend additional trillions providing income grants to all Americans or we have to limit assistance to those who need it most. 

One option is to provide unconditional payments along the lines of a UBI, but to phase it out as income rises. Libertarians like this approach since it gets rid of bureaucracies and leaves the poor free to spend the money on whatever they choose, rather than providing specific funds for particular needs. Liberals fear that such unconditional assistance would be unpopular and would be an easy target for elimination in the face of budget pressures. Right now most of our social programs are conditional. With the exception of the aged and the disabled, assistance is tied to work or to the consumption of necessities such as food, housing, or medical care, and our two largest means-tested programs are Food Stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Liberals have been less willing to openly acknowledge that a little paternalism in social policy may not be such a bad thing. In fact, progressives and libertarians alike are loath to admit that many of the poor and jobless are lacking more than just cash. They may be addicted to drugs or alcohol, suffer from mental health issues, have criminal records, or have difficulty functioning in a complex society. Money may be needed but money by itself does not cure such ills. 

A humane and wealthy society should provide the disadvantaged with adequate services and support. But there is nothing wrong with making assistance conditional on individuals fulfilling some obligation whether it is work, training, getting treatment, or living in a supportive but supervised environment.

In the end, the biggest problem with a universal basic income may not be its costs or its distributive implications, but the flawed assumption that money cures all ills.  

Although we are early in the twenty-first century, breathtaking changes in technology are posing stark challenges to our constitutional values. From free speech to privacy, from liberty and personal autonomy to the right against self-incrimination, basic constitutional principles are under stress from technological advances unimaginable even a few decades ago, let alone during the founding era. In Constitution 3.0, we asked a group of provocative thinkers to imagine the ways in which technological change will challenge our constitutional and legal values in the year 2030.

Will privacy become obsolete, for example, in a world where ubiquitous surveillance is becoming the norm? Imagine that Facebook and Google post live feeds to public and private surveillance cameras, allowing 24/7 tracking of any citizen in the world. How can we protect free speech now that Facebook, Google, and other private intermediaries have more power than any king, president, or Supreme Court justice to decide who can speak and who can be heard? How will advanced brain-scan technology affect the constitutional right against self-incrimination? And on a more elemental level, should people have the right to manipulate their genes and design their own babies? Should we be allowed to patent new forms of life that seem virtually human? And we then asked our contributors to propose ways of translating and preserving constitutional values in the year 2030, in the face of dizzying technological change.

The launch event for the book, held on December 13 at Brookings, provoked a vigorous conversation that mirrored the debates in the book itself. My co-editor Ben Wittes and I invited Tim Wu and Carter Snead to discuss their contributions to Constitution 3.0 and to debate a question the U.S. Supreme Court is now considering: should the police be allowed, without a valid warrant, to secretly put a Global Positioning System device on the bottom of a car of a suspected drug dealer in order to track his movements, 24/7, for a month? The panelists disagreed about the proper outcome: Tim Wu argued that Google and Facebook now have more power over our private data than any police agent or Supreme Court justice, and yet the Constitution, as currently interpreted, restricts private corporations far less rigorously than it constrains the police. Carter Snead insisted that it’s not enough for judges to predict how much privacy people actually expect in the face of new technologies; instead, they need to identify how much privacy we should demand in order to live in a free society rather than a police state. Benjamin Wittes dissented, arguing that Congress, rather than the Courts, should protect the privacy of our geo-locational information, whether collected by GPS devices or stored on cell phones. And I channeled the spirit of the patron saint of Constitution 3.0, Justice Louis Brandeis. Brandeis would have been impatient, I think, with the government’s statements that we have no expectations of privacy in public; instead, Brandeis would have insisted on translating the constitutional Framers’ prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures into the 21st century. Now that GPS devices and cell phones can reveal far more about our movements, thoughts, and activities outside of the home than old style home break-ins could have revealed in the 18th century, Brandeis might have insisted that long term surveillance is unreasonable without a warrant.

If you watch the webcast, you’ll get a sense of debate among the panelists about who is best equipped to protect constitutional values in the face of new technologies: the Supreme Court, Congress, administrative agencies, private companies like Google and Facebook, political activism groups, or some combination of all of the above. Regardless of where you come out on these issues, I hope you’ll find the project of trying to imagine the constitutional challenges of the next few decades as challenging and rewarding as we did in writing the book.