Law Commons^™

The Role Of Case Complexity In Judicial Decision Making., Laura P. Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

The literature on ideology and decision making offers conflicting expectations about how judges’ ideology should affect their votes in cases that raise many legal issues. Using cases from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, I examine the strength of ideology as a predictor of sincere voting in single and multi-issue cases and test whether the same effect for ideology can be seen for liberal and conservative judges. For all judges, ideology yields a larger effect as the number of issues increases; however, conservative judges are much more likely than liberal judges to cast sincere votes at all levels of complexity.

Midnight Rules: A Reform Agenda, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

There is a documented increase in the volume of regulatory activity during the last 90 days of presidential administrations. The phenomenon of late-term regulatory activity has been called “Midnight Regulation” based on a comparison to the Cinderella story in which the magic wears off at the stroke of midnight. This Report, prepared for the Administrative Conference of the United States, looks closely at one species of Midnight Regulation, namely Midnight Rules, promulgated in the last 90 days of an administration. The Report examines the phenomenon and concludes with recommendations adopted by the Administrative Conference of the United States at its …

Introduction To "Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?", George Bisharat

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Defining Corruption And Constitutionalizing Democracy, Deborah Hellman

Faculty Scholarship

The central front in the battle over campaign finance laws is the definition of corruption. The Supreme Court has allowed restrictions on giving and spending money in connection with elections only when they serve to avoid corruption or its appearance. The constitutionality of such laws, therefore, depends on how the Court defines corruption. Over the years, campaign finance cases have conceived of corruption in both broad and narrow terms, with the most recent cases defining it especially narrowly. While supporters and critics of campaign finance laws have argued for and against these different formulations, both sides have missed the more …

"Becker On Ewald On Foucault On Becker": American Neoliberalism And Michel Foucault's 1979 Birth Of Biopolitics Lectures, Gary S. Becker, Francois Ewald, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In a series of lectures delivered in 1979 at the Collège de France under the title The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault conducted a close reading of Gary Becker’s writings on human capital and on crime and punishment, within the context of an elaboration and critique of American neoliberalism. Foucault was assisted at the time, at the Collège de France, by François Ewald. Since then, there has been ongoing debate over Foucault’s views about neoliberalism. In this historic meeting at the University of Chicago between Professors Becker and Ewald, Professor Ewald presents a framework to understand Foucault’s writings on Becker; …

The Micro And Macro Causes Of Prison Growth, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Super Pacs, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

The most striking campaign finance development since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 has not been an upsurge in corporate and union spending, as might have been expected from a decision invalidating the decades-old laws barring such expenditures. Instead, federal election campaigns have been marked by the emergence of an entirely new campaign vehicle, which uses – but is not primarily dependent on – corporate or union funds, and which threatens to upend the federal campaign regulatory regime in place since 1974.

The 2010 election cycle witnessed the birth of the "Super PAC" – …

Why Party Democrats Need Popular Democracy And Popular Democrats Need Parties , Ethan J. Leib, Christopher S. Elmendorf

Faculty Scholarship

Too often, popular political power-whether it is in the form of direct democracy or other more innovative forays in participatory or deliberative democracy-presents itself principally as a counterweight to the political power parties wield. Yet setting up "popular democracy" and '"party democracy" in opposition to one another in the American political landscape is not only unnecessary but also pathological: this oppositional posture risks the ossification of party democracy and keeps popular democrats insulated from the substantial improvements the power of parties could bring to the polity. This Article, accordingly, seeks to enrich both party democracy and popular democracy by showing …

Fundamental Forces Driving United States And International Financial Regulations Reform, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Multiple forces create a systemic crisis of the proportions of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Global and domestic financial reform is a difficult and perplexing task, one that is likely to take many years, and one that will surely continue to be shaped by a diverse range of forces. Recent measures remain incomplete and in some cases are even proving to be misdirected. This article considers seven fundamental forces shaping actions on future reform, specifically the (1) long term impact of the Crisis (and all financial crises); (2) increase in the “financialization” of the global economy, seemingly disproportionate to …

A Current Assessment Of Some Extraterritorial Impacts Of The Dodd-Frank Act With Special Focus On The Volcker Rule And Derivatives Regulation, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

As the world struggles to emerge from the Global Financial Crisis the vision of a harmonious framework of global financial regulation seems as distant as ever. Important progress made by international committees such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board notwithstanding, there seem to be increasing signs of unilateral, extraterritorial action by major jurisdictions, including the United States. This paper reviews the framework created by the US financial reforms, in particular anti money laundering provisions, the Volcker Rule and the proposed OTC derivatives margin requirements, and considers some of the dilemmas presented by modern global …

Updating Disclosure For The New Era Of Independent Spending, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most striking developments in recent elections has been the upsurge in spending by independent committees, particularly Super PACs and 501(c) nonprofit corporations, that are not technically affiliated with specific candidates or parties but that frequently work to promote or oppose specific candidates or parties. In many elections, these committees are de facto surrogates for the candidates they are aiding. Although our disclosure laws are reasonably effective at obtaining the disclosure of the identities of donors to candidates and parties, they fail to provide effective disclosure of the identities of the donors to independent committees. The Citizens United …

"Deference" Is Too Confusing – Let's Call Them "Chevron Space" And "Skidmore Weight", Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests an underappreciated, appropriate, and conceptually coherent structure to the Chevron relationship of courts to agencies, grounded in the concept of "allocation." Because the term "deference" muddles rather than clarifies the structure's operation, this Essay avoids speaking of "Chevron deference" and "Skidmore deference." Rather, it argues, one could more profitably think in terms of "Chevron space" and "Skidmore weight." "Chevron space" denotes the area within which an administrative agency has been statutorily empowered to act in a manner that creates legal obligations or constraints – that is, its allocated authority. "Skidmore weight" …

Political Disobedience, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The political phenomenon that was born in Zuccotti Park in the fall of 2011 and spread rapidly across the nation and abroad immediately challenged our vocabulary, our grammar, our political categories – in short, our very language of politics. Although it was quickly apparent that a political paradigm shift had taken place before our eyes, it was hard to discern what Occupy Wall Street really represented, politically. It is time to begin to name this phenomenon and in naming to better understand it. So let me propose a term: political disobedience.

Experimentalist Governance, Charles F. Sabel, Jonathan Zeitlin

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the concept of the so-called experimentalist governance. It explains that the experimentalist architecture in regulation is well illustrated by the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its Common Implementation Strategy. The article suggests that experimentalism appears particularly well suited to transnational domains, where there is no overarching sovereign with the authority to set common goals even in theory, and where the diversity of local conditions and practices makes the adoption and enforcement of uniform fixed rules even less feasible than in domestic settings.

The Politics Of Incivility, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

The Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel, portrayed in his artwork men relieving themselves, cripples begging, and peasants toiling – as well as butchery and the gallows. In his masterful work, The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias showed how the "late medieval upper class" had not yet demanded, as later generations would, that "everything vulgar should be suppressed from life and therefore from pictures."

For centuries now, defining incivility has been intimately connected with social rank, class status, political hierarchy, and relations of power. The ability to identify and sanction incivility has been associated with positions of political privilege – and simultaneously …

The Law And Economics Of Fluctuating Criminal Tendencies And Incapacitation, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analyses of criminal law are frequently and heavily criticized for being unable to explain many criminal law rules and doctrines that people find intuitively just. Existing economic models cannot properly explain, for instance, why criminal law distinguishes between (i) repeat offenders and first-time offenders, (ii) murder and voluntary manslaughter, and (iii) remorseful and non-remorseful offenders.

In this Article, I propose a new and richer economic theory of crime that captures the rationales behind these practices, and potentially behind many other important criminal law principles and doctrines. Unlike an overwhelming majority of previous economic analyses, my theory accounts not only …

Introduction, Paul Finkelman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.