* Nichol charges that conservatives’ “obsession to ‘reform’ our education system” through vouchers, charter schools, and standardized performance measures “is matched only by [their] unequaled, defining pledge to ignore and, in operation, actually increase child poverty.”

* Nichol has condemned North Carolina’s “Woman’s Right to Know Act,” which requires that a pregnant woman, shortly before having an abortion, must undergo a “real-time ultrasound” that affords her an opportunity to see an image of the fetus inside her womb. By Nichol’s telling, the “boldness,” “arrogance,” “paternalism,” “condescension,” and “imperiousness” of this requirement “are breathtaking.”

* Nichol co-authored the 2011 book Federal Courts, and contributed to the 2008 book Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent.

* Nichol has published articles in the University law reviews of Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Duke, and Virginia. He has been a political columnist for the Rocky Mountain News and hosted a public affairs television show, Culture Wars, for KBDI in Denver. He has been a monthly op-ed writer for the Raleigh News & Observer since the early 2000s. He publishes regularly in The Progressive Populist, and has written for The Nation, the Washington Post and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

* In 2013, the North Carolina ACLU honored Nichol with its W.W. Finlator Award.