Legislation Commons^™

Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing The Fundamentals, And Organizing For Collective Actions, Francisco Valdes

Seattle University Law Review

The information we gathered during 2021–2023 shows that critical faculty and other academic resources are present throughout most of U.S. legal academia. Counting only full-time faculty, our limited research identified 778 contacts in 200 schools equating to nearly four contacts on average per school. But no organized critical “core” had coalesced within legal academia or, more broadly, throughout higher education expressly dedicated to defending and advancing critical knowledge and its production up to now. And yet, as the 2021–2022 formation of the Critical (Legal) Collective (“CLC”) outlined below demonstrates, many academics sense or acknowledge the need for greater cohesion among …

Rightsizing Local Legislatures, Brenner M. Fissell

Utah Law Review

Local councils, boards, and commissions have all the lawmaking powers of a legislature—including the power to criminalize conduct—but they are far too small to deserve them. With an average size of only four members, local legislatures depart from the norm observable at all other levels of government. Only in the past few years have legal scholars turned their attention to the institutional design of these bodies, but this developing literature has yet to address their most striking feature—their small size.

This Article takes up this project. It claims that local microlegislatures are comparatively unrepresentative and undemocratic, and that their size …

Challenges Of Leadership In The Twenty-First Century, Leon Panetta

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Laboratory Of Democracy: How The District Of Columbia Is Using The Home Rule Act To Achieve Elements Of Statehood, Walter A. Smith Jr., Kevin M. Hilgers

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

On January 3, 2019, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's (the "District') nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, reintroduced the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which would make much of the District the 51st state. While Norton had made a tradition of opening each new Congress by introducing D.C. democracy bills, the context this time gave District advocates more reason to be optimistic. With the Democrats gaining control of the House, the bill gained a record 155 original cosponsors, and Representative Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, committed to holding a hearing on …

Democracy In America At Work: The History Of Labor’S Vote In Corporate Governance, Ewan Mcgaughey

Seattle University Law Review

Can there be democracy in America at work? The historical division between democracy in politics and hierarchy in the economy is under strain. Hierarchical interests in the economy are shifting their model of power into politics, and yet a commitment to revive the law is resurgent. Central examples are the proposed Accountable Capitalism Act, Reward Work Act, Workplace Democracy Acts, and Employees’ Pension Security Acts. They would create a right for employees to elect 40% of directors on $1 billion company boards, a right for employees to elect one-third of directors on other listed company boards and require one-half employee …

English Labor Law - The 1984 Trade Union Immunities Act And Its Effect On Unions' Legal Status, Bret J. Pangborn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Statutes And Democratic Self-Authorship, Paul W. Kahn, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

William & Mary Law Review

In this Article, we argue that both sides of the usual debate over statutory interpretation—text versus purpose—rest on a common, but flawed, premise. Judges and scholars have assumed that legislative bodies are the authors of statutes. We disagree; instead, we argue that the people are the authors of statutes. Legislative bodies play an indispensable role in the process: they draft statutes. And courts play a similarly indispensable role: they interpret statutes. But ultimately, it is the polity—we, the people—that is responsible, as authors, for the content of the law.

This shift yields dramatic consequences. To date, no theory of statutory …

Legal Framework For Soviet Privatization, Olga Floroff, Susan Tiefenbrun

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is The Ban On Participation In Political Campaigns By Charities Essential To Their Vitality And Democracy? A Reply To Professor Tobin, Johnny Rex Buckles

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Qui Tam Actions Could Fight Public Corruption, Aaron R. Petty

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that public corruption at the state and local levels is a serious problem throughout the United States. Because public corruption decreases confidence in the democratic system at all levels of government, a strong response is necessary. Due to difficulties inherent in the deterrence, detection, and prosecution of state and local corruption, innovative methods to respond to this problem are needed. The author argues that amending the federal criminal statutes most commonly used to prosecute state and local public corruption, to allow a private citizen to bring a qui tam civil action against the public official for violations …

Anti-Terrorist Finance In The United Kingdom And United States, Laura K. Donohue

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article adopts a two-tiered approach: it provides a detailed, historical account of anti-terrorist finance initiatives in the United Kingdom and United States-two states driving global norms in this area. It then proceeds to a critique of these laws. The analysis assumes-and accepts-the goals of the two states in adopting these provisions. It questions how well the measures achieve their aim. Specifically, it highlights how the transfer of money laundering tools undermines the effectiveness of the states' counterterrorist efforts-flooding the systems with suspicious activity reports, driving money out of the regulated sector, and using inappropriate metrics to gauge success. This …

Law, Markets And Democracy: A Role For Law In The Neo-Liberal State, Alfred C. Aman, Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Re-Examining The Role Of Private Property In Market Democracies:Problematic Ideological Issues Raised By Land Registration, Joel M. Ngugi

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the post-1989 world, the primacy of private property is taken for granted. The final fall of communism, it would seem, is an adequate commentary of the supremacy of private property arrangements in facilitating economic development. Debates pitting plan (with its associated appetite for communal or collective property) against market (with its avowed belief in private property) are now considered superfluous. As far as the "Western world" was concerned, it seemed that the task of persuading the rest of the world that private property is the key to efficient market performance and economic development had finally been accomplished. The only …

Golden V. New York City Council, Sarah Kroll-Rosenbaum

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sovereignty And Democracy: The States' Obligations To Their Citizens Under Federal Statutory Law, Lauren K. Robel

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Congressional Power in the Shadow of the Rehnquist Court: Strategies for the Future held at Indiana University Law School, February 1-2, 2002.

Growing Media Consolidation Must Be Examined To Preserve Our Democracy, Paul Wellstone

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Origins Of American Democracy, Or How The People Became Judges In Their Own Causes, The Sixty-Ninth Cleveland-Marshall Fund Lecture , Gordon S. Wood

Cleveland State Law Review

The awesome power of this democratic polity, with people becoming judges in their own causes, was such that our political leaders over the past two centuries have struggled to constrain and mitigate its effects. In fact, that is what our current concern with campaign financing is all about. From the very beginning of our national history we Americans have used a variety of devices and institutions to immunize ourselves from the harmful consequences of too much democracy, too much factious promotion of private interests in the name of the people. No doubt the most important of these devices has been …

Review Essay: Sunstein, Statutes, And The Common Law--Reconciling Markets, The Communal Impulse, And The Mammoth State, Peter L. Strauss

Michigan Law Review

The following pages principally address Professor Sunstein's basic argument for building on, rather than defending against, legislative judgments, and so virtually ignore the details of his proposals for statutory interpretation. Part I outlines Sunstein's case for some regulation - the necessary failures of market ordering and the consequent need for a mixed economy in which government regulation intervenes in important ways. Part II addresses Sunstein's decision to tie his analysis to the public law innovations of the New Deal, and suggests ways in which the analysis might be strengthened by attention to earlier struggles and changes - changes in common …