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John Sivolella is Senior Fellow in Law and Policy at the Pioneer Institute.  He’s leading the development of PioneerLegal, the Institute’s public-interest law initiative.

In addition to his work with the Institute, John is on faculty in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D.  There he teaches a seminar, Political and Legal Influences on Federal Government Agencies. 

John has also been on faculty at Columbia’s School of International and Political Affairs, where he taught The Politics of Policymaking in ‘Advanced’ Democracies, a core class in the M.P.A. program.  His research focuses on federal agencies, executive power, public law and federal courts.

He is a regular contributor to WBUR’s opinion page, Cognoscenti.  He occasionally provides radio commentary for WBUR and NPR.

John is a member of the Massachusetts State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  He served on Governor Charlie Baker’s ‘Better Government’ Transition Team.

John was in law practice in Manhattan, focusing on corporate and securities law.  He was legal counsel to the Governor of New Jersey, where he supervised the process for evaluating nominees for judicial appointments, was the Governor’s senate liaison, and advised on issues pertaining to health and human services.  He was also a judicial law clerk on the New Jersey Supreme Court.

John received his J.D. from New York University School of Law and an M.P.A from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.  He received a B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Rutgers University.