Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Deregulation Deception, Cary Coglianese, Natasha Sarin, Stuart Shapiro

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President Donald Trump and members of his Administration repeatedly asserted that they had delivered substantial deregulation that fueled positive trends in the U.S. economy prior to the COVID pandemic. Drawing on an original analysis of data on federal regulation from across the Trump Administration’s four years, we show that the Trump Administration actually accomplished much less by way of deregulation than it repeatedly claimed—and much less than many commentators and scholars have believed. In addition, and also contrary to the Administration’s claims, overall economic trends in the pre-pandemic Trump years tended simply to follow economic trends that began years earlier. …

Pandemic Response As Border Politics, Michael R. Kenwick, Beth A. Simmons

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Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally …

The Ecology Of Transparency Reloaded, Seth F. Kreimer

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As Justice Stewart famously observed, "[t]he Constitution itself is neither a Freedom of Information Act nor an Official Secrets Act." What the Constitution's text omits, the last two generations have embedded in "small c" constitutional law and practice in the form of the Freedom of Information Act and a series of overlapping governance reforms including Inspectors General, disclosure of political contributions, the State Department’s “Dissent Channel,” the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office, and the publication rights guaranteed by New York Times v. United States. These institutions constitute an ecology of transparency.

The late Justice Scalia argued that the …

Crimes That Changed Our World: Tragedy, Outrage, And Reform: Chapter One: 1911 Triangle Factory Fire: Building Safety Codes, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

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This first chapter of the recently published book Crimes That Changed Our World: Tragedy, Outrage, and Reform, examines the process by which the tragic 1911 Triangle Factory Fire provoked enormous outrage that in turn created a local then national movement for workplace and building safety that ultimately became the foundation for today’s building safety codes. What is particularly interesting, however, is that the Triangle Fire was not the worst such tragedy in its day. Why should it be the one that ultimately triggers social progress?

The book has 21 chapters, each of which traces the tragedy-outrage-reform dynamic in a …

Strict Liability's Criminogenic Effect, Paul H. Robinson

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It is easy to understand the apparent appeal of strict liability to policymakers and legal reformers seeking to reduce crime: if the criminal law can do away with its traditional culpability requirement, it can increase the likelihood of conviction and punishment of those who engage in prohibited conduct or bring about prohibited harm or evil. And such an increase in punishment rate can enhance the crime-control effectiveness of a system built upon general deterrence or incapacitation of the dangerous. Similar arguments support the use of criminal liability for regulatory offenses. Greater punishment rates suggest greater compliance.

But this analysis fails …

1911 Triangle Factory Fire — Building Safety Codes, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

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Can a crime make our world better? Crimes are the worst of humanity’s wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes do more than anything else to improve our lives. As it turns out, it is often the outrageousness itself that does the work. Ordinary crimes are accepted as the background noise of our everyday existence but some crimes make people stop and take notice – because they are so outrageous, or so curious, or so heart-wrenching. These “trigger crimes” are the cases that this book is about.

They offer some incredible stories about how people, good and bad, change the world around …

Defending A Mixed Economy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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This essay reviews Jacob S. Hacker's and Paul Pierson's very engaging book, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget what Made America Prosper (2016).

Corporate Governance And Social Welfare In The Common Law World, David A. Skeel Jr.

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The newest addition to the spate of recent theories of comparative corporate governance is Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power, an important new book by Christopher Bruner. Focusing on the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia, Bruner argues that the robustness of the country’s social welfare system is the key determinant of the extent to which its corporate governance is shareholder-centered. This explains why corporate governance is so shareholder-oriented in the United Kingdom, which has universal healthcare and generous unemployment benefits, while shareholders’ powers are more attenuated in the United States, with its …

Private Enforcement Of Statutory And Administrative Law In The United States (And Other Common Law Countries), Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang, Herbert M. Kritzer

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Our aim in this paper, which was prepared for an international conference on comparative procedural law to be held in July 2011, is to advance understanding of private enforcement of statutory and administrative law in the United States, and, to the extent supported by the information that colleagues abroad have provided, of comparable phenomena in other common law countries. Seeking to raise questions that will be useful to those who are concerned with regulatory design, we briefly discuss aspects of American culture, history, and political institutions that reasonably can be thought to have contributed to the growth and subsequent development …

Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

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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 …

Book Review (Paul Frymer's Black And Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, And The Decline Of The Democratic Party)., Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Presidential Control Of Administrative Agencies: A Debate Over Law Or Politics?, Cary Coglianese

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Recent controversy over the unitary executive may be part of what Steven Calabresi and Christopher Yoo have called the “oldest debate in constitutional law.” Yet in this essay, I ask whether this debate is as much legal as it is political. Focusing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to grant California a waiver from national automobile emissions standards, I contrast the divergent reactions to presidential influence under President Bush and President Obama. In both administrations the EPA faced clear presidential pressure, but critics of President Bush’s involvement generally applauded the actions taken by President Obama. The main difference appears to …

Citizenship, In The Immigration Context, Matthew J. Lister

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Many international law scholars have begun to argue that the modern world is experiencing a “decline of citizenship,” and that citizenship is no longer an important normative category. On the contrary, this paper argues that citizenship remains an important category and, consequently, one that implicates considerations of justice. I articulate and defend a “civic” notion of citizenship, one based explicitly on political values rather than shared demographic features like nationality, race, or culture. I use this premise to argue that a just citizenship policy requires some form of both the jus soli (citizenship based on location of birth) and the …

Policing Politics At Sentencing, Stephanos Bibas, Max M. Schanzenbach, Emerson H. Tiller

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No abstract provided.

A New E.R.A. Or A New Era? Amendment Advocacy And The Reconstitution Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri

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Scholars have largely treated the reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) after its ratification failure in 1982 as a mere postscript to a long, hard-fought, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enshrine women’s legal equality in the federal constitution. This Article argues that “ERA II” was instead an important turning point in the history of legal feminism and of constitutional amendment advocacy. Whereas ERA I had once attracted broad bipartisan support, ERA II was a partisan political weapon exploited by advocates at both ends of the ideological spectrum. But ERA II also became a vehicle for feminist reinvention. Congressional consideration …

Shareholder Primacy's Corporatist Origins: Adolf Berle And The Modern Corporation, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

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No abstract provided.

The Role Of Politics And Policy In Television Regulation, Christopher S. Yoo

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This article is a reply to Thomas Hazlett’s commentary on my article entitled, “Rethinking the Commitment to Free, Local Television.” Although politics and public choice theory represent an important approach for analyzing government actions, economic policy still exercises some influence over the regulation of television. On the one hand, we agree that the regulatory preference of free television and local programming is more a reflection of political considerations than economic policy and that the importance of promoting communities of interest over geographic communities, and the potential for new services such as Digital Audio Radio Services to benefit consumers. On the …

Atypical Pneumonia And Ambivalent Law And Politics: Sars And The Response To Sars In China, Jacques Delisle

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No abstract provided.

Assessing The Advocacy Of Negotiated Rulemaking: A Response To Philip Harter, Cary Coglianese

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For many years, advocates of negotiated rulemaking have advanced enthusiastic claims about how negotiated rulemaking would reduce litigation and shorten the rulemaking process. In an earlier study, I tested these claims systematically by assessing the effectiveness of negotiated rulemaking against existing rulemaking processes. I found that negotiated rulemaking neither saves time nor reduces litigation. Recently, Philip Harter, a longtime advocate of negotiated rulemaking, has criticized my study and asserted that negotiated rulemaking has succeeded remarkably in achieving its goals. Harter criticized the way I measured the length of the rulemaking process, claimed that I failed to appreciate differences in litigation, …

Immigration Policy, Liberal Principles, And The Republican Tradition, Howard F. Chang

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No abstract provided.

Disquiet On The Eastern Front: Liberal Agendas, Domestic Legal Orders, And The Role Of International Law After The Cold War And Amid Resurgent Cultural Identities, Jacques Delisle

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No abstract provided.

Controlling Congress: Presidential Influence In Domestic Fiscal Policy, Michael A. Fitts, Robert Inman

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No abstract provided.