Law Commons^™

Legitimacy, Legality, Legacy, And The Life Of Democracy, Joshua Ulan Galperin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Trump Administration challenged notions of good governance. It challenged our expectation of majoritarian legitimacy to the extent only a minority of voters elected President Donald Trump in 2016. It challenged our demands for reasoned decision-making insofar as the President sought to dismantle the administrative state and govern by fiat. It challenged our expectation of checks and balances in the way it approached appointments and removals to accumulate power at the expense of congressional design. These challenges sound in different legal theories, but they all reflect shattered expectations of good governance. And yet, the most lasting legacy of the Trump …

Eating Is Not Political Action, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Graham Downey, D. Lee Miller

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Food and environment are cultural stalwarts. Picture the red barn and solitary farmer toiling over fruited plains; or purple mountains majesty reflected in pristine waters. Agriculture and environment are core, distinct, American mythologies that we know are more intertwined than our stories reveal.

To create policy at the interface of such centrally important and overlapping American ideals, there are two options. Passive governance fosters markets in which participants make individual choices that aggregate into inadvertent collective action. In contrast, assertive governance allows the public, mediated through elected officials, to enact intentional, goal oriented policy.

American mythologies of food and environment …