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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rethinking Swing Voters, Jonathan S. Gould
Rethinking Swing Voters, Jonathan S. Gould
Vanderbilt Law Review
In recent decades, swing voters in courts and legislatures have made many of the United States’ most important decisions of law and policy. It would be easy to conclude from the recent history of the Supreme Court and Congress that democracy or majority rule inevitably entails placing many of a society’s most important decisions in the hands of swing voters. Far from being inevitable, however, swing voters result from a highly contingent set of circumstances, both ideological and institutional.
This Article probes these contingencies, describing and evaluating swing voters and the power they hold. It first explains the conditions under …
Checks And Balances In The Criminal Law, Daniel Epps
Checks And Balances In The Criminal Law, Daniel Epps
Vanderbilt Law Review
The separation of powers is considered essential in the criminal law, where liberty and even life are at stake. Yet the reasons for separating criminal powers are surprisingly opaque, and the “separation of powers” is often used to refer to distinct, and sometimes contradictory, concepts.
This Article reexamines the justifications for the separation of powers in criminal law. It asks what is important about separating criminal powers and what values such separation serves. It concludes that in criminal justice, the traditional Madisonian approach of separating powers between functionally differentiated political institutions—legislature, executive, and judiciary—bears no necessary connection to important values …