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Duke Law Journal

2009

Political aspects

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Fiduciary Duty In Mutual Fund Excessive Fee Cases: Ripe For Reexamination, Emily D. Johnson Oct 2009

The Fiduciary Duty In Mutual Fund Excessive Fee Cases: Ripe For Reexamination, Emily D. Johnson

Duke Law Journal

Congress imposed a fiduciary duty regarding compensation on investment advisors by adding Section 36(b) to the Investment Company Act of 1940. Legislators intended this fiduciary duty to protect mutual fund investors from excessive management fees. It has failed. Mutual fund investors continue to pay significantly higher fees than institutional investors for the same money management services. In Jones v. Harris Associates, decided in 2008, the Seventh Circuit broke with the widely followed, thirty-year-old precedent of Gartenberg v. Merrill Lynch Asset Management. Chief Judge Easterbrook authored the majority opinion and Judge Posner wrote vigorously in dissent. This disagreement between two titans …


Depoliticizing Administrative Law, Cass R. Sunstein, Thomas J. Miles May 2009

Depoliticizing Administrative Law, Cass R. Sunstein, Thomas J. Miles

Duke Law Journal

A large body of empirical evidence demonstrates that judicial review of agency action is highly politicized in the sense that Republican appointees are significantly more likely to invalidate liberal agency decisions than conservative ones, while Democratic appointees are significantly more likely to invalidate conservative agency decisions than liberal ones. These results hold for both (a) judicial review of agency interpretations of law and (b) judicial review of agency decisions for "arbitrariness" on questions of policy and fact. On the federal courts of appeals, the most highly politicized voting patterns are found on unified panels, that is, on panels consisting solely …


Political Control Of Federal Prosecutions: Looking Back And Looking Forward, Daniel Richman May 2009

Political Control Of Federal Prosecutions: Looking Back And Looking Forward, Daniel Richman

Duke Law Journal

This Essay explores the mechanisms of control over federal criminal enforcement that the administration and Congress used or failed to use during George W. Bush's presidency. It gives particular attention to Congress, not because legislators played a dominant role, but because they generally chose to play such a subordinate role. My fear is that the media focus on management inadequacies or abuses within the Justice Department during the Bush administration might lead policymakers and observers to overlook the hard questions that remain about how the federal criminal bureaucracy should be structured and guided during a period of rapidly shifting priorities …


Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer Apr 2009

Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences: The Japanese Supreme Court And The Chaos Of 1993, J. Mark Ramseyer

Duke Law Journal

Empiricists routinely explain politically sensitive decisions of the U.S. federal courts through the party of the executive or legislature appointing the judge. That they can do so reflects the fundamental independence of the courts. After all, appointment politics will predict judicial outcomes only when judges are independent of sitting politicians. Because Japanese Supreme Court justices enjoy an independence similar to that of U.S. federal judges, I use judicial outcomes to ask whether Japanese premiers from different parties have appointed justices with different political preferences. Although the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governed Japan for most of the postwar period, it temporarily …


A Response To Professor Ramseyer, Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences, Michael Boudin Apr 2009

A Response To Professor Ramseyer, Predicting Court Outcomes Through Political Preferences, Michael Boudin

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.