Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU Law, received one of the American Bar Association’s Unsung Heroes of Democracy Awards on August 2, during the ABA’s annual meeting in Chicago. The awards honor 22 individuals and organizations whose work protects the security of US elections, often without publicity or previous acclaim. “With our Unsung Heroes of Democracy Award, the ABA wants to recognize those individuals and groups that have answered the call to stand up for our system of government,” ABA president Mary Smith said in a statement. “By simply doing their jobs, they help ensure our democratic system will endure.”
In making the award, the ABA cites two nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations that Bauer founded with his co-awardee, election lawyer Ben Ginsburg, a longstanding Republican campaign advisor. The Election Official Legal Defense Network, launched in 2021, helps election officials connect with pro bono legal counsel and communications professionals when they need advice or assistance. Pillars of the Community facilitates conversations between local leaders and election officials in order to foster better understanding of voting systems and build confidence in the electoral process.
Bauer currently serves as co-director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic, and previously served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama and as a legal advisor to President Joe Biden. Bauer co-chaired three independent projects, whose members were assembled at the invitation of ALI’s leadership: the Statement of Principles for ECA Reform (April 2022), Ethical Standards for Election Administration (January 2024), and Principles for Insurrection Act Reform (April 2024).
In 2013, President Obama named Bauer co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In 2021, President Joe Biden appointed him co-chair of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Bauer was general counsel to Obama for America, the president’s campaign organization, in 2008 and 2012. Bauer also served as co-counsel to the New Hampshire State Senate in the trial of Chief Justice David Brock in 2000 and counsel to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle during the trial of President William Jefferson Clinton in 1999.
Bauer is co-author with Jack Goldsmith of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency (Lawfare Press, 2020), books on federal campaign finance, and numerous articles on law and politics for legal periodicals. He has co-authored numerous bipartisan reports on policy and legal reform, including “The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration” (Presidential Commission on Election Administration, 2014); “The State of Campaign Finance in the United States” (Bipartisan Policy Center, 2018); and “Democratizing the Debates” (Annenberg Working Group on Presidential Campaign Debate Reform, 2015). Bauer is a contributing editor of Lawfare and has published opinion pieces on constitutional and political law issues in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, among other publications.