Stephen Spaulding is senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program, where he works to realize a fair and inclusive judiciary system that protects fundamental rights, democratic values, and the rule of law, with a focus on the U.S. Supreme Court. He has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, in government, and in the nonprofit advocacy sector.
Before joining the Brennan Center, he was the policy director of the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, where he advised its chair, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), on all matters within the committee’s jurisdiction, including election administration, election security, campaign finance, artificial intelligence in elections, and Senate rules and procedure. He previously served as the senior elections counsel to the U.S. House Administration Committee, where he advised its chair, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and House leadership on federal election law and worked on the successful House passage of multiple bills to protect and strengthen access to voting and democratic accountability. Spaulding previously served as special counsel to Commissioner Ann Ravel of the Federal Election Commission, advising on a broad array of legal issues under federal campaign finance law, including enforcement actions, rulemakings, and agency management.
Spaulding held multiple positions at Common Cause, most recently as vice president of policy and external affairs and earlier as its chief of strategy and legal director, and he was previously a litigation associate at Goodwin Procter. He began his career as a trial preparation assistant in the rackets bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he worked on long-term organized crime investigations.
Spaulding has appeared as a guest on CBS News’s 60 Minutes, NPR’s All Things Considered and 1A, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and multiple shows on MSNBC and CNN. His expert commentary has been quoted by many national and local outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Boston Globe, the Atlantic, and Slate, and his op-eds have been published by the Los Angeles Times, Politico, USA Today, NBC News, and the Hill.
He has testified in the U.S. Senate and House and multiple governmental panels and has authored several reports used by policymakers and cited by national media outlets, including Bullies at the Ballot Box (examining voter intimidation laws), The New Nullification at Work (assessing the impact of the filibuster on agency leadership), and Did We Fix That? (analyzing implementation of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration’s recommendations).
Spaulding earned his BA in political science from Haverford College and his JD cum laude from Boston College Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Third World Law Journal, subsequently published as the Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice.
