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The Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy

is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the analysis of voting and elections processes.

LEARN FROM OUR LATEST RESEARCH

The Grant Institute provides research grants for the study of how rules and regulations affect elections. For example, it seeks to better understand the relationships between photo ID laws and turnout, third-party ballot collection rules and public confidence in elections, and the pace of tabulating, reporting, and certifying election results and citizen trust in electoral outcomes.

Derek Lyons

PRESIDENT

Derek Lyons is the President and CEO of the Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy.

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The Board Of Directors

Bobby Burchfield

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD

Bobby R. Burchfield is The Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy Chairman of The Board.

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Daron Shaw

BOARD MEMBER

Daron Shaw is Professor, University Distinguished Teaching Professor & Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics.

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Judge Janice Brown

BOARD MEMBER

Ret. Judge Janice Rogers Brown is a Senior Fellow and Senior Visiting Jurist in the Public Law and Policy Program at UC Berkeley School of Law.

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John Yoo

BOARD MEMBER

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Mission & What We Fund

The Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy promotes rigorous and objective study and analysis of the American democratic process.

The Grant Institute pursues its mission by supporting research on issues important to the voting and elections process. Among other priorities, the Grant Institute will support research into the history, philosophy, and future of American democracy; empirical work evaluating the effectiveness, benefits, and public acceptance of existing or proposed electoral mechanisms; and analyses of whether the American electoral processes at all levels are meeting constitutional objectives.

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571-775-1682

Email:

info@grantdemocracy.org

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Derek Lyons

Derek Lyons is President and CEO of the Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy. Mr. Lyons has worked for nearly 15 years at the highest levels of law and public policy, providing strategic advice to policymakers in the White House and the Congress. He served for nearly four years as White House Staff Secretary and Counselor to President Donald J. Trump, in the Senate as the Chief Counsel to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and in the House of Representatives as a Legislative Assistant to Representative Jeb  Hensarling. 

Outside of Government, Boyden Gray & Associates and Gibson Dunn, Mr. Lyons has represented an array of corporate and non-profit clients in high-stakes constitutional, regulatory, and commercial litigation matters in state and federal court, including the Supreme Court. Most recently, Mr. Lyons was the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at AppHarvest, Inc., a publicly traded controlled environment agriculture company headquartered in Morehead, Kentucky, where he was responsible for all legal and corporate governance matters. He began his legal career as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and he holds degrees in economics and political science from Duke University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Bobby Burchfield

Bobby R. Burchfield is The Ulysses S. Grant Institute for the Study of Democracy Chairman of The Board. Before retiring from the practice of law in March 2021, after serving as a partner in three international law firms, Bobby was a trial and appellate  lawyer who tried cases before judges and juries and argued appeals throughout the United States. His cases addressed a broad  range of subjects  including antitrust, commercial  disputes, constitutional law,  election law, and class action issues. Bobby argued two important First Amendment cases in the Supreme Court of the United States 

(McConnell v FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC), as well as two dozen appeals in the lower courts. Over a 40-year career, Bobby never lost a jury trial. Among other recognitions, he was listed for many years in Best  Lawyers in America, and Chambers Partners rated Bobby highly for Commercial Litigation and for Election Law. Bobby is an Adjunct Professor at George Washington Law School, teaching a  seminar entitled “Fundamentals of Free Speech as Applied to Contemporary Issues.” He also  serves on the Board of Trustees at Wake Forest University, is Vice President for Finance for the Executive Board of the National Capital Area Council of the Boy Scouts (NCAC), is Chair of two Super PACs, and serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board of the George Washington Law School. A graduate of Wake Forest University (BA 1976 with distinction in Economics and Political Theory) and the George Washington Law School (1979 with high honors), where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, Bobby clerked for the Hon. Ruggero J. Aldisert of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He served as General Counsel of President George H.W. Bush’s Re-Election Campaign in 1992, by appointment of President George W. Bush on the Antitrust Advisory Commission (2005-07), and at the request of President Donald J. Trump as Ethics Advisor to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust (2017-2021).

Daron Shaw​

Daron Shaw is Professor, University Distinguished Teaching Professor & Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics. Professor Shaw earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to accepting a position at the University of Texas in the fall of 1994, he worked in several political campaigns as a survey research analyst. Professor Shaw also served as a strategist in the 2000 and 2004 presidential election campaigns. His research and teaching interests include American Government, Campaigns and Elections, Political Parties, 
Public Opinion and Voting Behavior, and Applied Survey Research. He is co-director of the Fox  News Poll co-director of the  University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, director of the Texas Lyceum Poll, and associate Principle Investigator for the 2020 and 2024 American National Election Studies. Professor Shaw is also a member of the national decision team for Fox  News, the advisory board for the MIT Election Data & Science Lab, the advisory board for the Annette Strauss Institute, and the editorial board for Political Behavior. Formerly, he served as President George W. Bush’s representative on the National  Historical Publications and Records Commission and as one of the academic directors for President Barack Obama’s Commission for Election Administration. Professor Shaw’s most recent books are The Appearance of Corruption (co-authored with Brian Roberts) and The Turnout Myth (co-authored with John Petrocik), both published by Oxford University Press. His first two books, Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters (Oxford Press, co-authored with Karen Kaufmann and John Petrocik) and The Race to 270 (Chicago Press), were published in 2008 and 2006, respectively. In addition, Professor Shaw has published articles in the leading journals in the discipline, including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Political  Communication, PS: Political Science, Party Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and American Politics Research.

Judge Janice Brown

Ret. Judge Janice Rogers Brown is a Senior Fellow and Senior Visiting Jurist in the Public Law and Policy Program at UC Berkeley School of Law. Judge Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to the  United States Court of  Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8, 2005. Judge Brown retired from the bench in 2017. From 1996 to 2005, Judge Brown was an Associate Judge of the California Supreme Court. Previously, she served as an Associate Justice of the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento 

and as the Legal Affairs Secretary to  Governor Pete Wilson. Prior to joining Governor Wilson’s senior staff, Judge Brown was an associate at Nielsen,  Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, a government and political law firm.  Before joining the firm, Brown served as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel for the state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, working primarily with business regulatory departments. She came to BT&H after eight years in the Attorney General’s Office, where she worked in both the criminal appellate and civil trial divisions. She also worked for two years for the Legislative Counsel and previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific’s  McGeorge School of Law. Judge Brown is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and California State University, Sacramento, where she majored in Economics. In 2004, Judge Brown received a Master of Laws degree in Judicial Process after completing the Graduate Program for Judges at the University of Virginia School of Law.

John Yoo​

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Professor Yoo has clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S Supreme Court and Judge Laurence H.  Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy  

assistant attorney general  in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers. Professor Yoo serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. Professor Yoo has written several books: The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005); War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror  (Grove/Atlantic, 2006); Crisis and Command: The History of Executive  Power From George Washington to George W. Bush (Kaplan, 2010); Taming  Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (Oxford, 2012) (with Julian Ku); Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (Oxford University Press 2014), and Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War (Encounter 2017) (with Jeremy Rabkin). He has also co-edited Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security  (Encounter, 2011); Current Issues in Korean Law (Robbins Collection Press 2014); and Liberty’s  Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State (Encounter 2016). Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court.  He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the  Wall Street Journal, New York TImes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others. Professor Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.

John Yoo​

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Professor Yoo has clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S Supreme Court and Judge Laurence H.  Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy  

assistant attorney general  in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers. Professor Yoo serves on the boards of the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Federalist Society’s Separation of Powers and Federalism Division, the Universidad Cientifica del Sur Law School, and the Asia-Pacific Law Institute at Seoul National University. Professor Yoo has written several books: The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11 (University of Chicago Press, 2005); War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror  (Grove/Atlantic, 2006); Crisis and Command: The History of Executive  Power From George Washington to George W. Bush (Kaplan, 2010); Taming  Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (Oxford, 2012) (with Julian Ku); Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (Oxford University Press 2014), and Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War (Encounter 2017) (with Jeremy Rabkin). He has also co-edited Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security  (Encounter, 2011); Current Issues in Korean Law (Robbins Collection Press 2014); and Liberty’s  Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State (Encounter 2016). Professor Yoo has published more than 100 articles in academic journals on subjects including national security, constitutional law, international law, and the Supreme Court.  He also regularly contributes to the editorial pages of the  Wall Street Journal, New York TImes, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review, among others. Professor Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.