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Full-Text Articles in Law
Partisan Conflicts Over Presidential Authority, Jide Okechuku Nzelibe
Partisan Conflicts Over Presidential Authority, Jide Okechuku Nzelibe
Faculty Working Papers
A prevailing view in the legal and political science literature assumes that power holders seek to expand or contract their constitutional authority based on incentives that are intrinsic to the logic of the institutional offices they occupy. For instance, it is generally assumed that Presidents are empire builders who will almost always prefer maximum flexibility in shaping their policy objectives, whereas members of Congress may sometimes shirk their institutional prerogatives because of electoral incentives or collective action problems. A similar institutional logic underpins the view that federal courts will often seek to expand their interpretive authority in constitutional controversies at …
Strategic Globalization: International Law As An Extension Of Domestic Political Conflict, Jide Nzelibe
Strategic Globalization: International Law As An Extension Of Domestic Political Conflict, Jide Nzelibe
Faculty Working Papers
Traditional accounts in both the international law and international relations literature largely assume that great powers like the United States enter into international legal commitments in order to resolve global cooperative problems or to advance objective state interests. Contrary to these accounts, this Article suggests that an incumbent regime (or partisan elites within the regime) may often seek to use international legal commitments to overcome domestic obstacles to their narrow policy and electoral objectives. In this picture, an incumbent regime may deploy international law to expand the geographical scope of political conflict across borders in order to isolate the domestic …