Elizabeth Garrett. Garrett is USC Vice President for Academic Planning and Budget and the Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics, Political Science, and Policy, Planning, and Development, and co-director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics. She earned her J.D. from the University of Virginia and subsequently clerked for Judge Williams of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall on the U.S. Supreme Court. From 1991-93, she served as legal counsel, legislative director, and budget counsel for U.S. Senator David Boren (D-OK). She joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School in 1995 and moved to USC in 1993. President Bush appointed her to serve on the nine-member bipartisan Tax Reform Panel in 2005. Garrett's primary scholarly interests are in cross-disciplinary curriculum development, legislative processes, direct democracy, the federal budget process, the study of democratic institutions, statutory interpretation, and tax policy. She is co-author of the Fourth Edition of the leading casebook on statutory interpretation: Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy (West Publishing, 2007). Garrett is a frequent political commentator on television, radio, and in print media. She has been an IRI director since 2004.

John G. Matsusaka. Matsusaka  is Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the USC Marshall School of Business, and a profesor in the Marshall School of Busines, Gould School of Law, and Department of Political Science at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1991, and has been at USC since then. Matsusaka has been a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a visiting scholar at UCLA and Caltech, and the John M. Olin Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He served as a consultant for the Council of Economic Advisors in the White House in 2002. His research focuses on political and economic organization, with specific interests in corporate diversification and restructuring, and initiatives and referendums. Matsusaka is the author of For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2004). His research has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of Law and Economics, and he was awarded the Merton Miller Prize for “most significant” paper in the Journal of Business in 2001. Matsusaka has been an IRI director since 1998.

Mathew D. McCubbins. McCubbins is a Distinguished Professor and the Chancellor's Associates Chair in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, an adjunct professor of law in the USC Gould School of Law, and co-director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics. McCubbins is a  fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, and has taught at the University of Texas, Stanford University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of San Diego Law School. McCubbins is the co-author of six books, The Logic of Delegation (University of Chicago Press, 1991), winner of the American Political Science Association's 1992 Gladys M. Kammerer Award, Legislative Leviathan (University of California Press, 1993), winner of the American Political Science Association's 1994 Richard F. Fenno Jr. Prize, The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Stealing the Initiative (Prentice-Hall, 2000), Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the US House of Representatives (Cambridge University Press, 2005), winner of the American Political Science Association's  Leon Epstein Award, and Legislative Leviathan, second edition (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He has published more than 60 scholarly articles in political science, economics, and biology, and served as co-editor of the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. He joined the IRI board in 2008.

Robert Rasmussen. Rasmussen is Dean of the USC Gould School of Law and the Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law. He received his J.D. cum laude from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was comment editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable John C. Godbold, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and worked in the Civil Rights Division Appellate Staff at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before joining USC, he was a professor at Vanderbilt University, where he served as associate dean for academic affairs and chair of the University Faculty Senate. Rasmussen was also a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and University of Michigan. Rasmussen is a widely cited scholar who is the author dozens of articles published in leading journals including the Supreme Court Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Michigan Law Review. His recent research focuses on fundamental changes in corporate reorganization practice. He joined the IRI board in 2008.

Dennis Polhill. Polhill is an expert in the privatization of government services and has been actively involved in the initiative and feferendum process since 1993. In 1970 he received bachelor's degrees in mathematics and general engineering from the University of Illinois. From 1970 to 1981 he held City Engineer and Director of Public Works positions in the cities of Urbana, Illinois; Cumberland, Maryland; and Lakewood, Colorado. After working for several years, he won a U.S. Department of Transportation fellowship and went to the University of Pittsburgh to achieve Master degrees in Transportation Engineering and in Public Administration. In 1981,Pohill left government service to found his own consulting firm and became a nationally recognized advocate for more efficient use of pavement maintenance budgets. Dennis currently serves as the Senior Fellow in Public Infrastructure at the Independence Institute, the Colorado public policy think tank. He has authored and published more than 100 articles and research papers on privatization, unfair government competition with private businesses, transportation issues and the initiative and referendum process. Dennis has appeared on numerous television and radio shows discussing reform issues. Polhill has been an IRI director since 1998.

M. Dane Waters (Chairman). Waters is the founder and chairman of the Institute. He also is the co-founder and board member of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe, a non-profit and non-partisan educational organization that studies the initiative and referendum process in Europe. Waters has lectured all over the world on governmental and electoral issues. He has provided strategic advice to individuals all around the world as well as to various foreign governments on the initiative and referendum process. He has authored and edited numerous articles and books on the importance of the initiative and referendum process. He has provided commentary on initiative and referendum to newspapers, radio talk shows and television stations around the world. Waters currently serves on the Board of the Appleseed Foundation’s Electoral Reform Project – a joint effort between American University and Harvard Law School whose purpose is to improve American democracy through reform of its electoral processes. Waters is the author of the Initiative and Referendum Almanac (Carolina Academic Press, 2003). Waters has been an IRI director since 1998.

Click here for Dane's official bio and to schedule interviews and speaking engagements (PDF).

BOARD OF SCHOLARS

R. Michael Alvarez, Professor of Political Science, California Institute of Technology

Vikram Amar, Professor of Law, Hastings College of Law, University of California

Lynn Baker, Frederick M. Baron Chair in Law & Co-Director of Center on Lawyers, Civil Justice and the Media, University of Texas

Shaun Bowler, Professor of Political Science, University of California- Riverside 

Bruce Cain, Robson Professor of Political Science & Director of the Institute for Government Studies, University of California- Berkeley

Todd Donovan, Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University

William Eskridge, John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School

Bruno Frey, Professor of Economics & Director of Center for Research in Economics Management and the Arts, University of Zurich

Philip Frickey, Richard. R. Jennings Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley

Elisabeth R. Gerber, Professor of Public Policy & Director of Center for Local, State & Urban Policy, Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

Clayton Gillette, Max E. Greenberg Professor of Contract Law, New York University School of Law

Marci Hamilton, Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law & Director of Intellectual Property Program, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Richard L. Hasen, Professor of Law & William M. Rains Fellow, Loyola Law School

D. Roderick Kiewiet, Professor of Political Science, California Institute of Technology

Gebhard Kirchgaessner, Professor of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law

Arthur Lupia, Professor of Political Science & Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

David B. Magleby, Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University

Phyllis Myers, State Resource Strategies

Daniel R. Ortiz, John Allan Love Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy & Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center, Harvard Law School

Daniel Rodriguez, Professor of Law, University of Texas Law School

Daniel A. Smith, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Florida

Caroline Tolbert, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kent State University

The Institute established the Advisory Board as a way of seeking expert advice from individuals of all political persuasions regarding the initiative and referendum process. Members of the Advisory Board aren’t necessarily supporters of the I&R process, but whom have strong opinions about the subject. Their support and guidance have been instrumental in ensuring the neutrality of the Institute and in helping make certain that all viewpoints regarding the I&R process are represented. We hope to expand this list over the coming year and to actively engage this group in the planning and execution of the documentary.