Law Commons^™

Judicial Credibility, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

Do people believe a federal court when it rules against the government? And does such judicial credibility depend on the perceived political affiliation of the judge? This study presents a survey experiment addressing these questions, based on a set of recent cases in which both a judge appointed by President George W. Bush and a judge appointed by President Bill Clinton declared the same Trump Administration action to be unlawful. The findings offer evidence that, in a politically salient case, the partisan identification of the judge – here, as a “Bush judge” or “Clinton judge” – can influence the credibility …

The Democratic Deficit, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Why democracy? Institutions of government and others must meet conditions of legitimacy. Why? and what are they? what are principles of legitimacy, like the principle of subsidiarity? and how does democracy fit in a theory of legitimacy? The paper surveys what it takes to be the seven most important advantages of democratic government: civil and political rights, more extensive opportunities for people to engage in public affairs, responsiveness to the expressed preferences of the people, stability, peaceful transfer of power, loyalty and solidarity. It then considers the role of legitimation in securing these advantages. These reflection lead to the question …

Trade Agreements, Regulatory Sovereignty And Democratic Legitimacy, Bernard Hoekman, Charles F. Sabel

Faculty Scholarship

Governments increasingly are seeking to use bilateral and regional trade agreements to reduce the cost-increasing effects of differences in product market regulation. They also pursue regulatory cooperation independent of trade agreements. It is important to understand what is being done through bilateral or plurilateral mechanisms to address regulatory differences, and to identify what, if any, role trade agreements can play in supporting international regulatory cooperation. This paper reflects on experience to date in regulatory cooperation and the provisions of recent trade agreements involving advanced economies that have included regulatory cooperation. We argue for a re-thinking by trade officials of the …

Why The State?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I offer two questions for the price of one: Why do so many jurisprudential theories focus on the state? And what is it about the State that gives it a special place in our social arrangements? I do not mean these to address all aspects of states. They are questions about the law or legal systems of states.

We have to be open to a negative answer to the second question, thus being critical of jurisprudential theories that focus more or less exclusively on the state. That need not deny that states have their own legal systems. It could merely …

Dignity Is The New Legitimacy, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

In this chapter, Jeffrey Fagan responds to Jonathan Simon’s essay by exploring the emotional dimensions of individual interactions with state actors. In a procedural justice vein, this chapter considers the dignitary implications of official maltreatment, focusing in particular on the dignity-injuring potential of unjustified, racially motivated, or otherwise abusive police stops. Such interactions not only personally humiliate, but they also deny the targeted individuals “basic and essential recognition” as social and political equals, instilling instead “a profound sense of loss.” Fagan calls for a jurisprudence that “recognizes the emotional highway between dignity and legitimacy.” This approach would “internalize[] the central …

Street Stops And Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments In Young Urban Men's Legal Socialization, Tom Tyler, Jeffrey Fagan, Amanda Geller

Faculty Scholarship

An examination of the influence of street stops on the legal socialization of young men showed an association between the number of police stops they see or experience and a diminished sense of police legitimacy. This association was not primarily a consequence of the number of stops or of the degree of police intrusion during those stops. Rather, the impact of involuntary contact with the police was mediated by evaluations of the fairness of police actions and judgments about whether the police were acting lawfully. Whether the police were viewed as exercising their authority fairly and lawfully shaped the impact …

Desistance And Legitimacy: The Impact Of Offender Notification Meetings On Recidivism Among High Risk Offenders, Andrew V. Papachristos, Danielle M. Wallace, Tracey L. Meares, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: Legitimacy-based approaches to crime prevention operate under the assumption that individuals — including violent offenders — are more likely to comply with the law when they believe that the law and its agents are legitimate and act in ways that seem inherently “fair” and “just.” While mounting evidence finds an association between such legitimacy-based programs and reductions in aggregate levels of crime and violence, no study has investigated whether such programs influence individual offending. This study evaluates the effectiveness of one such program — Project Safe Neighborhoods’ (PSN) Offender Notification Meetings — at reducing individual recidivism among a population …

Paradoxes Of Constitutional Democracy, Kevin Olson

Studio for Law and Culture

Drawing on the work of Frank Michelman and Jürgen Habermas, I outline two interconnected paradoxes of constitutional democracy. The paradox of the founding prevents a purely democratic constitution from being founded, because the procedures needed to secure its legitimacy cannot be spontaneously self-generated. It displays an infinite regression of procedures presupposing procedures. The paradox of dynamic indeterminacy heads off any attempt to resolve this problem through constitutional amendment. It shows that a developing constitution needs some standard to guide it towards legitimacy. Without such a standard, constitutional reform will be aimlessly indeterminate. After rejecting proposed solutions to these paradoxes based …

Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods In Chicago, Andrew V. Papachristos, Tracey L. Meares, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

This research uses a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN) initiatives on neighborhood level crime rates in Chicago. Four interventions are analyzed: (1) increased federal prosecutions for convicted felons carrying or using guns, (2) the length of sentences associated with federal prosecutions, (3) supply-side firearm policing activities, and (4) social marketing of deterrence and social norms messages through justice-style offender notification meetings. Using an individual growth curve models and propensity scores to adjust for non-random group assignment, our findings suggest that several PSN interventions are associated with greater declines of homicide in the treatment neighborhoods …