Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Boston University School of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Series

Legitimacy

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Future Of Facts: The Politics Of Public Health And Medicine In Abortion Law, Aziza Ahmed, Jason Jackson Jan 2021

The Future Of Facts: The Politics Of Public Health And Medicine In Abortion Law, Aziza Ahmed, Jason Jackson

Faculty Scholarship

While a great deal of public scrutiny has focused on how information circulates through online outlets including Twitter and Facebook, less attention has been devoted to how more traditional institutions traffic in factual assertions for the sake of setting a particular distributional agenda into motion.[1] Of these more traditional institutions, courts play a central role in legitimating legal and factual claims in the process of applying and clarifying legal rules. In public health-related adjudication, courts play at least two important roles: first, judges and juries make decisions between competing sets of public health and medical claims and second, courts …


Hardball Vs. Beanball: Identifying Fundamentally Antidemocratic Tactics, Jed Handelsman Shugerman Apr 2019

Hardball Vs. Beanball: Identifying Fundamentally Antidemocratic Tactics, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The “constitutional hardball” metaphor used by legal scholars and political scientists illuminates an important phenomenon in American politics, but it obscures a crisis in American democracy. In baseball, hardball encompasses legitimate tactics: pitching inside to brush a batter back but not injure, hard slides, hard tags. Baseball fans celebrate hardball. Many of the constitutional hardball maneuvers previously identified by scholars have been legitimate, if aggressive, constitutional political moves. But the label “hardball” has been interpreted too broadly to include illegitimate, fundamentally undemocratic tactics. I suggest a different baseball metaphor for such tactics: beanball, pitches meant to injure and knock out …