Policy Research Shop Students Present Their Findings to NH Superior Court Judges

On Friday, May 20, 2022, four students from the Class of 1964 Policy Research Shop—Jason Norris, Paige Pattison, Isabella Sicker, and Naomi Valdez—traveled to the Administrative Offices of the NH Judicial Branch in Concord to present their PRS Policy Brief 2122-08, "Non-driving Related License Suspensions in New Hampshire," to the annual meeting of superior court judges in New Hampshire.  The research was commissioned by the Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court, Tina Nadeau. Justice Nadeau served as the Perkins Bass '34 Distinguished Visitor at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center in 2021.  During one of her visits to campus during the fall term of 2021, Justice Nadeau met with students in PBPL 45, the gateway course for the Policy Research Shop.  At that time, she provided guidance to these students in seeking to assess the efficacy of license suspensions for offenses not related to driving an automobile, e.g., failure to pay child support, failure to pay state fines, drug offenses.  The students developed a comparative case study research design that focused on the states of Vermont, New York, Michigan, and Virginia to highlight programs both similar to and quite different from the policies currently implemented in New Hampshire.  Chief Justice Nadeau and her colleagues on the Superior Court expressed their gratitude for the work undertaken by the students.  Frandy Rodriguez also worked on this project, but she is currently participating in the Government Washington, DC Program and could not attend the briefing in Concord.