Digital Commons Network^™

Lawmakers As Lawbreakers, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

Dr. Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

How would Congress act in a world without judicial review? Canlawmakers be trusted to police themselves? This Article examinesCongress’s capacity and incentives to enforce upon itself “the law ofcongressional lawmaking”—a largely overlooked body of law that iscompletely insulated from judicial enforcement. The Article exploresthe political safeguards that may motivate lawmakers to engage inself-policing and rule-following behavior. It identifies the majorpolitical safeguards that can be garnered from the relevant legal,political science, political economy, and social psychology scholarship,and evaluates each safeguard by drawing on a combination oftheoretical, empirical, and descriptive studies about Congress. TheArticle’s main argument is that the political safeguards that …

Fueling The Coal War--The Courts, The Feds, And The Epa: Who Is In A Better Position To Curb Coal-Related Pollution?, Corwyn Davis

Corwyn M Davis

ABSTRACT: With the United States’ continued and growing dependence on the use of coal for energy production, it is vital that the country examines ways to eliminate coal wastes more efficiently. The courts have varying opinions on who should ultimately bear responsibility for environmental torts connected with carbon pollution. With greenhouse gases and global warming stealing the environmental spotlight, the equally hazardous nature of coal combustion waste disposal has taken a back door to national policy reform. This paper introduces the problems associated with the disposal of this hazardous by-product. By analyzing the status quo of environmental regulation, it becomes …

The Partisan Dimensions Of Federal Preemption In The United States Courts Of Appeals, Bradley Joondeph

Bradley W. Joondeph

This paper explores some of these empirical uncertainties surrounding the political dimensions of preemption in the federal courts. More concretely, it presents a statistical study of every preemption decision rendered by the United States Courts of Appeals from January 1, 2005, to December 31, 2009, a total of 560 decisions and just over 1,700 judicial votes. And these data tell a story consisting of two distinct parts. The first part is that preemption disputes seem to produce a large measure of judicial consensus. In the full universe of cases, there is only a slight difference between Republican and Democratic appointees: …

Living Without Colorblindness: Comparing The Us And Singapore's Approach To Racial Equality, Eunice Chua

Eunice Chua

The doctrine of color blindness provides, in a nutshell, that any governmental use of racial classifications will be subject to strict scrutiny by the courts, regardless of whether the purpose of such classification was to enforce or to ameliorate racial inequality. Ardent supporters of color blindness believe that it is firmly rooted in the US Constitution and is not only central to the notion racial equality, but essential to upholding human dignity. This paper seeks to examine this claim by placing the spotlight on Singapore, a country where the use of racial categorizations is an accepted legal norm. I argue …

The United Kingdom’S Human Rights Act: Using Its Past To Predict Its Future, Joanne Sweeny

JoAnne Sweeny

The results of the recent General Election in the United Kingdom have both highlighted the flexible nature of the UK’s constitution and placed the UK’s existing bill of rights (the Human Rights Act 1998) in jeopardy. In order to predict the HRA’s future, it is useful to consider how and why the HRA was enacted. Through the use of primary data, this article shows that the HRA was enacted as a result of a unique combination of historical factors and the efforts of public interest groups. These two main elements are analyzed using Rational Choice Theory and Social Movement Theory, …

Sexual Politics And Social Change, Darren L. Hutchinson

Darren L Hutchinson

The Article examines the impact of social movement activity upon the advancement of GLBT rights. It analyzes the state and local strategy that GLBT social movements utilized to alter the legal status of sexual orientation and sexuality following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick. Successful advocacy before state and local courts, human rights commissions, and legislatures fundamentally shifted public opinion and laws regarding sexual orientation and sexuality between Bowers and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. This altered landscape created the “political opportunity” for the Lawrence ruling and made the opinion relatively “safe.” Currently, GLBT rights …

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement’S Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] But the increased effectiveness of labor's political activities has not resulted in major improvements legislatively, and now there is a hostile President who opposes nearly every aspect of the union policy agenda. The promise for the future lies in the demonstrated ability to mobilize at the grassroots. But there are recent signs that national unions are breaking ranks and pursuing narrow self interest. The USWA joined with the steel industry to persuade the Bush administration to restrict imports, and even hinted at a possible endorsement for his reelection in 2004 (Murray). The UMWA has praised the president's energy policy, …

The Moral Limits Of Jurisdiction, Beau James Brock, Harold Leggett

Beau James Brock

As the states and the public face new rules on emissions under the Clean Air Act, the authors find that environmental policy devoid of economic feasibility equals ethical bankruptcy by policymakers to the detriment of all citizens and their economic liberty

Colonial Cartographies And Postcolonial Borders: The Unending War In And Around Afghanistan, Tayyab Mahmud

Tayyab Mahmud

Many of today’s pervasive and intractable security and nation-building dilemmas issue from the dissonance between the prescribed model of territorially bounded nation-states and the imprisonment of postcolonial polities in territorial straitjackets bequeathed by colonial cartographies. With a focus on the Durand Line, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the epicenter of the prolonged war in the region, this article explores the enduring ramifications of the mutually constitutive role of colonialism and modern law. The global reach of colonial rule reordered subjects and reconfigured space. Fixed territorial demarcations of colonial possessions played a pivotal role in this process. Nineteenth century …

Public Funding Of Judicial Campaigns: The North Carolina Experience, Paul D. Carrington

Paul D. Carrington

This addresses the constitutional crises created in numerous states by Supreme Court decisions bearing on campaign finance and professional ethics of judges. North Carolina was the first state to employ public financing of judicial campaigns. This is an account of how that came to be and an evaluation of the North Carolina experience that may be especially instructive to those states that have recently enacted similar laws, most recently Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Insurance As A Mitigation Mechanism: Managing International Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Nationwide Mandatory Climate Change Catastrophe Insurance, Anastasia M. Telesetsky

Anastasia M Telesetsky

This paper proposes mandatory climate change catastrophe insurance as a risk-sharing mechanism to distribute future climate change disaster relief costs between major greenhouse gas emitting industries and the government. This article argues that mandatory catastrophe risk insurance for major greenhouse gas emitters will deliver necessary financial coverage for future climate disasters as well as compel timely climate change mitigation on the part of major emitters. The first part of this paper offers mandatory climate change catastrophe insurance as an additional market tool to the existing proposals for emission trading schemes and carbon taxes. This part begins with a summary of …

Getting Foothold In Politics, Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

The 73rd and 74th Amendments in the Constitution of India made one million Indian women “elected representatives” in the rural and urban local self government bodies by granting 33% reserved seats in Panchayati Raj Institutions in 1992. During last 16 years, many grassroots activists of the women’s movement have plunged in electoral politics for empowerment of women in their constituency. But when it comes to women’s reservation in legislature and parliament of India, we witness tremendous resistance from the patriarchs. For the first time, the Bill providing 33% reservation to women was introduced on 4 September 1996 known as 81st …

The Political Consequences Of Legal Victories: Ballast Regulation And The Clean Water Act, Zdravka Tzankova

Zdravka Tzankova

Federal conservation policy has seen a new development recently: the use of the Clean Water Act (CWA) as a tool for regulating ballast water discharges from ships and, thereby, for preventing biological invasions caused by the discharge of nonindigenous organisms in ballast. Some outcomes of this new method for regulating ballast water discharge are obvious, others are much less so. Superimposing CWA regulatory authority on an already existing system of U.S. ballast law and regulation is likely to change the politics of ballast regulation. What do such changes in regulatory politics spell for the future of regulatory protections against biological …

'Rally Round The Flag’ Events For Presidential Approval Research, Brian Newman, Andrew Forcehimes

Brian Newman

Since Mueller's [Mueller, J., 1970. Presidential popularity from Truman to Johnson. The American Political Science Review 64 (1), 18-34.] pioneering study, students of presidential approval ratings have agreed that major events affect these ratings. Despite this consensus, there is wide divergence in the ways that scholars have selected events for inclusion in models of approval ratings. This inconsistency inhibits direct comparisons across studies and raises the possibility that results are contingent on those selection criteria. Thus, what we have learned about the impact of various factors that may affect approval may depend on the details of selection criteria. Practically, scholars …

Putting The World Back Together? Recovering Faithful Citizenship In A Postmodern Age, Harry G. Hutchison

Harry G. Hutchison

Archbishop Chaput’s book, Render Unto Caesar, signifies the continuation of an impressive and persistent debate about what is means to be Catholic and how Catholics should live out the teachings of the Church in political life in our postmodern society. Render Unto Caesar provides evidence that the America’s identity and future are endangered by trends reifying radical human autonomy and choice. New threats surface in the form of legislation and judicial interpretations permitting choices that were once considered criminal to be accepted. This trend has been accompanied, if not facilitated, by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have contributed greatly to …

Seeing The State: Transparency As Metaphor, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Sulle Basi Motivazionali Delle Lotte Sociali. Honneth Versus Fraser, In "Iride", Xxiii, N. 60 (2010), Pp. 448-452., Marco Solinas

Marco Solinas

No abstract provided.