American Politics Commons^™

Power Transitions In A Troubled Democracy, Peter L. Strauss, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

Written as our contribution to a festschrift for the noted Italian administrative law scholar Marco D’Alberti, this essay addresses transition between Presidents Trump and Biden, in the context of political power transitions in the United States more generally. Although the Trump-Biden transition was marked by extraordinary behaviors and events, we thought even the transition’s mundane elements might prove interesting to those for whom transitions occur in a parliamentary context. There, succession can happen quickly once an election’s results are known, and happens with the new political government immediately formed and in office. The layer of a new administration’s political leadership …

What Went Wrong With Economics?: Milton Friedman, Alexander Meiklejon, And The Reorientation Of Freedom, Aria Mia Loberti

Senior Honors Projects

Economics went wrong in the midst of the Cold War, specifically the time of the terror of communism in the 1950s. It went wrong in Chicago economics in particular—exacerbated by a reorientation in how to understand and conceptualize freedom. Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom trumpets the virtues of economic freedom, or the freedom of choice within the competitive market. It represents the Chicago neoliberal position. In contrast, the luminary Alexander Meiklejohn advocates a radically different conception of freedom, and his ideas echo the voices pre-1950 Chicago economics. Meiklejohn promotes political freedom over economic freedom: championing absolute protection for free speech, …

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Bruce Ledewitz

Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember The American Revolution, Andrew Schocket

Andrew M Schocket

The American Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards and as small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns, relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation’s founding moment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths, and remains the most accessible and most contested event in U.S. history: more than any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation’s aspirations. Americans’ increased fascination with the Revolution over the past two decades represents more than interest in the past. It’s also …

Dog Whistling, The Color-Blind Jurisprudential Regime And The Constitutional Politics Of Race, Calvin J. Terbeek

Calvin J TerBeek

Ian Haney Lopez’s new book, "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class", has a provocative thesis. Lopez contends that dog-whistling, that is, coded racial rhetoric, “explains how politicians backed by concentrated wealth manipulate racial appeals to win elections and also to win support for regressive policies that help corporations and the super-rich, and in the process wreck the middle class." Though this may seem plausible enough, the thesis cannot stand up to scrutiny; the relevant political science literature provides no support for this. What is more, Lopez's treatment of the Supreme Court's …

America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines …

Neoliberalism And The Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental And Judicial Decision Making, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this …

Blaine It On Politics: The (Non-) Effect Of Anti-Aid Amendments On Private School Choice Programs In The U.S. States, Patrick J. Wolf, Richard D. Komer, Michael Q. Mcshane

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

James G. Blaine was a prominent American politician of the late 19th Century. Although Blaine was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for President in 1884, U.S. Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, and a Senator from Maine, his primary legacy was the enshrinement of "anti-aid" amendments in the constitutions of 39 U.S. states. These so-called "Blaine Amendments" were designed to prohibit government funds from supporting "sectarian" religious organizations such as schools and charities. In Blaine's day, "sectarian" was widely understood to be a euphemism for "Catholic". Nondenominationally Protestant organizations such as the public schools of the day were considered to …

Open Secret: Why The Supreme Court Has Nothing To Fear From The Internet, Keith J. Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

The United States Supreme Court has an uneasy relationship with openness: it complies with some calls for transparency, drags its feet in response to others, and sometimes simply refuses to go along. I argue that the Court’s position is understandable given that the internet age of fluid information and openness has often been heralded in terms that are antithetical to the Court’s operations. Even so, I also argue the Court actually has little to fear from greater transparency. The understanding of the Court with the greatest delegitimizing potential is the understanding that the justices render decisions on the basis of …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

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

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judicial Confirmation Wars: Ideology And The Battle For The Federal Courts, Sheldon Goldman

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Selection As . . . Talk Radio, Michael J. Gerhardt

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, And Justice, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into …

Frankenstein's Monster Hits The Campaign Trail: An Approach To Regulation Of Corporate Political Expenditures, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Democracy And Its Critics, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Charge Of Chief Justice Durfee, Job Durfee

Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion

No abstract provided.

To The Members Of The General Assembly Of Rhode Island, John Pitman

Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion

No abstract provided.

Address On The Right Of Suffrage, Seth Luther

Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion

No abstract provided.

Extension Of Suffrage, B. Hazard

Pamphlets: Contemporary Assessments of the Dorr Rebellion

No abstract provided.