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Is Government Really Broken?, Cary Coglianese
Is Government Really Broken?, Cary Coglianese
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Public Affairs
The widespread public angst that surfaced around the 2016 presidential election in the United States revealed that many Americans believe their government has become badly broken. Given the serious problems that continue to persist in society—crime, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, and more—these beliefs in a government breakdown are understandable. Yet a breakdown is actually far from self-evident. In this paper, I explain how diagnoses of governmental performance depend on the perspective from which current conditions in the country are viewed. Certainly when judged against a standard of perfection, America has a long way to go. But perfection is no meaningful …
The Freedom Of Information Act And The Ecology Of Transparency, Seth F. Kreimer
The Freedom Of Information Act And The Ecology Of Transparency, Seth F. Kreimer
University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law
The Framers’ approbation of a unitary executive rested in important part on the belief that the unitary executive’s actions were apt to be more “narrowly watched and readily suspected” by an informed public opinion than those of a plural executive. Yet the body of the Constitution provides no right to public information. What the Constitutional text omits, the last generation has embedded as a part of modern constitutional practice in the Freedom of Information Act. Some critics have deplored FOIA as a “romantic” effort at “self help oversight”, superfluous in light of the checks and balances of divided government. Others …