2nd Annual Alex Geisinger Lecture with Nicholas Bagley: Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

4:30 PM-6:00 PM

The Alex Geisinger Lecture Series honors the memory of Professor Geisinger, a leading scholar of environmental law, administrative law, and public policy. Each year the law school invites a leading scholar in one of these fields to give a talk to the Drexel community. This year, we welcome Nicholas Bagley, Thomas G. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, as our guest lecturer.

A reception will follow the lecture.

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About the Lecture

The United States once prosecuted two world wars, built the national highway system, and created Social Security and Medicare. Today, we struggle with the basics. Housing shortages have spurred exorbitant prices and homelessness. Zero-carbon energy that could slow climate change is only sluggishly coming online. Even our transportation infrastructure is crumbling because building costs far exceed those of our peer countries. Why can’t we have nice things? At the root of the problem is an overlooked but radical change in American law from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our legal culture became captive to the belief that the only way to protect what we care about is to force government to follow strict procedural rules, backed by intensive court review. The result is that our institutions, caught in a web of laws, have stopped working effectively.