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Full-Text Articles in Law and Politics
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …
Doctrinal Reasoning As A Disruptive Practice, Jessie Allen
Doctrinal Reasoning As A Disruptive Practice, Jessie Allen
Articles
Legal doctrine is generally thought to contribute to legal decision making only to the extent it determines substantive results. Yet in many cases, the available authorities are indeterminate. I propose a different model for how doctrinal reasoning might contribute to judicial decisions. Drawing on performance theory and psychological studies of readers, I argue that judges’ engagement with formal legal doctrine might have self-disrupting effects like those performers experience when they adopt uncharacteristic behaviors. Such disruptive effects would not explain how judges ultimately select, or should select, legal results. But they might help legal decision makers to set aside subjective biases.
Administrative Law: The U.S. And Beyond, Cary Coglianese
Administrative Law: The U.S. And Beyond, Cary Coglianese
All Faculty Scholarship
Administrative law constrains and directs the behavior of officials in the many governmental bodies responsible for implementing legislation and handling governance responsibilities on a daily basis. This field of law consists of procedures for decision making by these administrative bodies, including rules about transparency and public participation. It also encompasses oversight practices provided by legislatures, courts, and elected executives. The way that administrative law affects the behavior of government officials holds important implications for the fulfillment of democratic principles as well as effective governance in society. This paper highlights salient political theory and legal issues fundamental to the U.S. administrative …
Comparison Excluding Commitments: Incommensurability, Adjudication, And The Unnoticed Example Of Trade Disputes, Sungjoon Cho, Richard Warner
Comparison Excluding Commitments: Incommensurability, Adjudication, And The Unnoticed Example Of Trade Disputes, Sungjoon Cho, Richard Warner
All Faculty Scholarship
We claim that there are important cases of “incommensurability” in public policymaking, in which all relevant reasons are not always comparable on a common scale as better, worse, or equally good. Courts often fail to confront this. We are by no means the first to contend that incommensurability exists. Yet incommensurability’s proponents have failed to sway the courts mainly because they overlook the fact that there are two types of incommensurability. The first (“incompleteness incommensurability”) consists of the lack of any appropriate metric for making the comparison. We argue that this type of incommensurability is relatively unproblematic in that courts …
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
The program of regulation through private litigation that Democratic Congresses purposefully created starting in the late 1960s soon met opposition emanating primarily from the Republican party. In the long campaign for retrenchment that began in the Reagan administration, consequential reform proved difficult and ultimately failed in Congress. Litigation reformers turned to the courts and, in marked contrast to their legislative failure, were well-rewarded, achieving growing rates of voting support from an increasingly conservative Supreme Court on issues curtailing private enforcement under individual statutes. We also demonstrate that the judiciary’s control of procedure has been central to the campaign to retrench …
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
On The Study Of Judicial Behaviors: Of Law, Politics, Science And Humility, Stephen B. Burbank
All Faculty Scholarship
In this paper, which was prepared to help set the stage at an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Indiana (Bloomington) in March, I first briefly review what I take to be the key events and developments in the history of the study of judicial behavior in legal scholarship, with attention to corresponding developments in political science. I identify obstacles to cooperation in the past – such as indifference, professional self-interest and methodological imperialism -- as well as precedents for cross-fertilization in the future. Second, drawing on extensive reading in the political science and legal literatures concerning judicial behavior, …
Judicial Citation To Legislative History: Contextual Theory And Empirical Analysis, Michael B. Abramowicz, Emerson H. Tiller
Judicial Citation To Legislative History: Contextual Theory And Empirical Analysis, Michael B. Abramowicz, Emerson H. Tiller
Law and Economics Papers
Judge Leventhal famously described the invocation of legislative history as "the equivalent of entering a crowded cocktail party and looking over the heads of the guests for one's friends." The volume of legislative history is so great and varied, some contend, that judges cite it selectively to advance their policy agendas. In this article, we employ positive political and contextual theories of judicial behavior to examine how judges use legislative history. We consider whether opinion-writing judges, as Judge Leventhal might suggest, cite legislative history from legislators who share the same political-ideological perspective as the opinion-writing judge? Or do judges make …
Foreseeing Greatness? Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices, James J. Brudney
Foreseeing Greatness? Measurable Performance Criteria And The Selection Of Supreme Court Justices, James J. Brudney
The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series
This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the feasibility and desireability of measuring the "merit" of appellate judges--and their consequent Supreme Court potential--by using objective performance variables. Relying on the provocative and controversial "tournament criteria" proposed by Professors Stephen Choi and Mitu Gulati in two recent articles, Brudney assesses the "Supreme Court potential" of Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun based on their appellate court records. He finds that Burger's appellate performance appears more promising under the Choi and Gulati criteria, but then demonstrates how little guidance these quantitative assessments actually provide when reviewing the two men's careers on the …
Peoples Union For Civil Liberties V Union Of India: Is Indian Democracy Dependent On A Statute?, Shubhankar Dam
Peoples Union For Civil Liberties V Union Of India: Is Indian Democracy Dependent On A Statute?, Shubhankar Dam
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
What is the status of a right to vote in the Indian legal system? Is the right a constitutional/fundamental right? Or is it simply a statutory right? Contrary to the decisions of the Supreme Court in the last five decades, this paper argues that the right to vote is a constitutional right: its textual foundation may be located in Article 326. And, in this sense, the Supreme Court has erred in construing the right to vote as a statutory right under the Representation of Peoples Act, 1951. Interpreting the right to vote as a statutory right has larger implications for …