Headed to Washington

MATTHEW SLAUGHTER, ASSOCIATE professor of business administration at the Tuck School, has been tapped by President Bush to serve on the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). His nomination to the prestigious panel was announced by the White House in late September, along with that of former Dartmouth economics professor Katherine Baicker, who recently accepted a position at UCLA's department of public policy.

The author of Globalization and thePerceptions of American Workers, Slaughter says he expects to be of most value in his role of "offering analysis and advice to the executive branch" when it comes to such matters as international business, trade relations with China and immigration. No stranger to Washington, he has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund and a consultant to such Washingtonbased entities as the U.S. Labor Department and the World Bank.

When his nomination will come before the Senate is unclear, but he may begin working in a consultative role with CEA staff within a matter of weeks.

With a new chief justice on the bench and another new justice waiting in the wings, we asked government professor Lucas Swaine for background reading about the nation's highest court: A People's History of the SupremeCourt by Peter Irons (Penguin, 2000). The Oxford Companion to theSupreme Court of the United States, second edition, K.L. Hall, J.W. Ely, and J.B. Grossman, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2005). New Deal Justice: The ConstitutionalJurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, FelixFrankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson by Jeffrey D. Hockett (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).