Law Commons^™

Deliberative, Independent Technocracy V. Democratic Politics: Will The Globe Echo The E.U, Martin Shapiro

Martin Shapiro

The article discusses the issue of technocracy and democracy as the structure of transnational administrative law. This article defines the building blocks of administrative law namely regulation, the tension between democratic control of public policy and the delegated legislation. When all of these building blocks are taken into account, future transnational regulatory regimes are likely to arise in relatively high-technology or otherwise complex spheres of activity.

The European Court Of Justice: Of Institutions And Democracy, Martin Shapiro

Martin Shapiro

No abstract provided.

Catholicism, Liberalism And Communitarianism: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition And The Moral Foundations Of Democracy, Gerry Bradley, Kenneth Grasso, Robert Hunt

Gerard V. Bradley

No abstract provided.

Democracy's Handmaid, Robert Tsai

Robert L. Tsai

Democratic theory presupposes open channels of dialogue, but focuses almost exclusively on matters of institutional design writ large. The philosophy of language explicates linguistic infrastructure, but often avoids exploring the political significance of its findings. In this Article, Tsai draws from the two disciplines to reach new insights about the democracy enhancing qualities of popular constitutional language. Employing examples from the founding era, the struggle for black civil rights, the religious awakening of the last two decades, and the search for gay equality, he presents a model of constitutional dialogue that emphasizes common modalities and mobilized vernacular. According to this …

Democracy In The Private Sector: The Rights Of Shareholders And Union Members, Michael Goldberg

Michael J Goldberg

In the years since Enron, there has been a lively debate over the value of shareholder democracy as a means to improve corporate performance and reduce the likelihood of future Enrons or Lehman Brothers. That debate has been enriched by comparative scholarship looking at corporate governance abroad, and comparing corporate governance with public government. This Article explores a different comparison, between corporations and their sometime adversaries across bargaining tables and picket lines – labor unions. More specifically, this article compares the regulation of corporate governance and the regulation of the internal affairs of unions, and the rights of shareholders and …

State Practice As Metaphor: A Reconciliation Approach, Patrick Kelly

Patrick Kelly

State practice as metaphor is a broader idea than the empirical role of state practice in the formation of custom. State practice as used in this journal is a metaphor for all the methods and processes to increase the democratic legitimacy of international norms including not only the practices of states, but also other forms of representation by which citizens express their views. Increasingly norms are articulated and influenced by non-governmental organizations, private standard setting groups, quasi-public entities such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and transgovernmental organizations such as the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision. With the advent of the internet, …

Selective Vetting’ As A Factor In The Taipei Mayoral Election, Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Ed Hsu looks at the legal aspects of the 'selective vetting' of candidates in the Taipei mayoral election. It may be wrong, it's borderline illegal, but under current laws, there's very little candidates can do if their image is tarnished by unsubstantiated allegations.

Friends, Associates And Associations: Theoretically And Empirically Grounding The Freedom Of Association, Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

This Article argues that while the freedom of association is back at the center of the First Amendment, it suffers from the fact that it has been both theoretically and doctrinally subsumed by the freedom of speech. The First Amendment’s self-governance interest is necessarily broader than an interest in political debate and a vibrant marketplace of political ideas.

Association and associations enable the political participation that can turn ideas and debate into the action required to create democratic accountability. Free association doctrine is, therefore, uniquely positioned to promote representative government by protecting conditions necessary for an active citizenry.

A reoriented …

Re-Emerging Equality Traditions Of Justice In The Cultural Roots Of The Egyptian Revolution, Giancarlo Anello, Khaled Qatam

giancarlo anello

For years, modern Egyptian Islamic thinkers have been attempting to define Islamic ideals of social justice and the way in which they have been ignored in the post-colonial period. This paper will discuss and critique the mid-20th century works of theorists of the Muslim Revolution like Abbas Mahmud ‘Aqqad (author of al-dymuqratyah fy al-islam, Democracy in Islam) and Sayyid Qutb (author of al-‘adalah al-ijtima‘iyya fy al-islam, Social Justice in Islam) in order to shape the discourse about the relevance of their theories of democracy, justice and equality for today’s political movements

Op-Ed: Banning Protesters An Attack On Democracy, Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

A defence of academic freedom at Western U.

Die Zukunft Ist Transnational, Richard Falk, Andrew Strauss

Andrew L. Strauss

No abstract provided.

Democracy Will Live As Long As Citizens Maintain Respect, Randy Lee

Randy Lee

No abstract provided.

An Excuse-Centered Approach To Transitional Justice, David Gray

David C. Gray

Transitional justice asks what successor regimes, committed to human rights and the rule of law, can and should do to seek justice for atrocities perpetrated by and under their predecessors. The normal instinct is to prosecute criminally everyone implicated in past wrongs; but practical conditions in transitions make this impossible. As a result, most transitions pursue hybrid approaches, featuring prosecutions of those most responsible, amnesties, truth commissions, and reparations. This approach is often condemned as a compromise against justice. This article advances a transitional jurisprudence that justifies the hybrid approach by taking normative account of the unique conditions that define …

Balancing Competing Individual Constitutional Rights: Raising Some Questions, Taunya Banks

Taunya Lovell Banks

Despite increasing support for global human rights ..., some scholars and constitutional democracies, like the United States, continue to resist constitutionalizing socio-economic rights. Socio-economic rights, unlike political and civil constitutional rights that usually prohibit government actions, are thought to impose positive obligations on government. As a result, constitutionalizing socio-economic rights raises questions about separation of powers and the competence of courts to decide traditionally legislative and executive matters. ... [W]hen transitional democracies, like South Africa, choose to constitutionalize socio-economic rights, courts inevitably must grapple with their role in the realization of those rights.... Two questions immediately come to mind: (1) …

Sovereignty As Discourse, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

This is a review of Howard Schweber's book, "The Language of Liberal Constitutionalism" (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Schweber argues that "the creation of a legitimate constitutional regime depends on a prior commitment to employ constitutional language, and that such a commitment is both the necessary and sufficient condition for constitution making." I critique the power and limits of this reformulated Lockean thesis, as well as Schweber's secondary claims that, for constitutional language to remain legitimate, it must increasingly become autonomous, specialized, and secular.

In The Cause Of Union Democracy, Michael J. Goldberg

Michael J Goldberg

This article is part of a symposium entitled "The Employment and Labor Law Professor as Public Intellectual: Sharing our Work with the World," based on presentations at the 2008 meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. The article describes the cause to which I have devoted a good part of my career, both inside and outside the halls of academia: the struggle to make the labor movement more democratic and more responsive to its members. While this piece briefly describes how I became involved in this cause, and how my work on its behalf has contributed to both my …

Derailing Union Democracy: Why Deregulation Would Be A Mistake, Michael J. Goldberg

Michael J Goldberg

This article is a response to Prof. Samuel Estreicher’s article, Deregulating Union Democracy, 21 J. LAB. RES. 247 (2000). It argues against Estreicher’s call for the deregulation of internal union affairs by repealing the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 on several grounds. First, it disputes some of Estreicher’s basic assumptions about the nature and effectiveness of union democracy legislation, in part because Estreicher views unions strictly as economic entities and overlooks their important political and social functions, and in part because he is mistaken when he dismisses the current scheme of regulating internal union affairs as completely ineffectual. …