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Full-Text Articles in Law
Evaluating Constitutional Hardball: Two Fallacies And A Research Agenda, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Evaluating Constitutional Hardball: Two Fallacies And A Research Agenda, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
This Reply addresses the responses by Professors David Bernstein and Jed Shugerman to our essay Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball. Bernstein's response, we argue, commits the common fallacy of equating reciprocity with symmetry: assuming that because constitutional hardball often "takes two" to play, both sides must be playing it in a similar manner. Shugerman's response, on the other hand, helps combat the common fallacy of equating aggressiveness with wrongfulness: assuming that because all acts of constitutional hardball strain norms of governance, all are similarly damaging to democracy. We suggest that whereas Bernstein's approach would set back the burgeoning effort to study constitutional …
A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko
A Computational Analysis Of Constitutional Polarization, David E. Pozen, Eric L. Talley, Julian Nyarko
Faculty Scholarship
This Article is the first to use computational methods to investigate the ideological and partisan structure of constitutional discourse outside the courts. We apply a range of machine-learning and text-analysis techniques to a newly available data set comprising all remarks made on the U.S. House and Senate floors from 1873 to 2016, as well as a collection of more recent newspaper editorials. Among other findings, we demonstrate (1) that constitutional discourse has grown increasingly polarized over the past four decades; (2) that polarization has grown faster in constitutional discourse than in nonconstitutional discourse; (3) that conservative-leaning speakers have driven this …
Exemplary Legal Writing 2018: Four Recommendations, Jed S. Rakoff, Lev Menand
Exemplary Legal Writing 2018: Four Recommendations, Jed S. Rakoff, Lev Menand
Faculty Scholarship
In an age of mass incarceration, it is not so easy to find good in the U.S. criminal justice system. But The Secret Barrister makes you appreciate the better aspects of our system by showing just how dysfunctional the corresponding English system has become. The book — written by an anonymous junior barrister — is a devastating, sometimes hilarious, and frequently heart-breaking account of how the criminal justice system in England and Wales is not only broke financially but broken in its ability to deliver justice, whether to prosecutors, defendants, victims, or the public.