Law Commons^™

Visualizing Politics In Indonesia: The Design And Distribution Of Election Posters, Colm A. Fox

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Where studies have shown that visuals are the primary means of political communication, research continues to focus largely on text-based information. To add to our understanding of visual-political communications, this article analyses Indonesian election posters since the 1950s. Drawing on historical materials and on a content analysis of 4,000 election posters, it asks why election posters have been designed and distributed in particular ways. Findings indicate that in the past, posters used singular, though powerful, social symbols to mobilize demographic groups behind political parties. However, contemporary posters are more visually complex and more candidate-centered, making arguments as to what the …

Pursuit Of The Vote: Factors Utilized In Resisting Discrimination In Democratic Elections, Matthew Nicholson

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Suffrage movements make use of various social and political factors to pressure their governments to expand the scope of voting rights. Using McAdam’s political process model, I will analyze how disenfranchised groups’ use of nonviolent demonstration, appeals to international pressure, and appeals to religion, affects their success. This will also highlight patterns that emerge when groups are willing to instigate violence in pursuit of their goals. Most studies examine these variables in the context of the pursuit of independence or revolution, whereas this study focuses on groups wishing to remain within a system given their desired reforms. I will analyze …

Truth Commissions And Reparations: A Framework For Post-Conflict Justice In Argentina, Chile Guatemala, And Peru, Anthony Chen

Honors Theses (PPE)

This paper seeks to gauge the effectiveness of truth commissions and their links to creating material reparations programs through two central questions. First, are truth commissions an effective way to achieve justice after periods of conflict marked by mass or systemic human rights abuses by the government or guerilla groups? Second, do truth commissions provide a pathway to material reparations programs for victims of these abuses? It will outline the conceptual basis behind truth commissions, material reparations, and transitional justice. It will then engage in case studies and a comparative analysis of truth commissions and material reparations programs in four …

Gambian And Senegalese Refugee Policies As A Potential Means Towards Regional Stability, Amy Armata

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Military Service And Offending Behaviors Of Emerging Adults: A Conceptual Review, Christopher Salvatore, Travis Taniguchi

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Focusing on the United States, this paper examines the impact of military service for the cohort of individuals that have experienced the social factors that characterize emerging adulthood as a unique stage in the life course. We argue that military service, as a turning point, may act differently in contemporary times compared to findings from past research. This difference is driven by changes in military service, the draft versus volunteer military service, and the prevalence of emerging adulthood. As a background, we describe emerging adulthood, examine how emerging adulthood relates to crime and deviance, explore the impact of military life …

The Role Of Opposition In A Democracy: A Bibliometric Analysis, Abhinav Shrivastava Mr., Richa Dwivedi Ms.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Globally, democracy is under threat with the prevalence of authoritarian regime all over the world and the role of opposition in a democracy is an under studied subject and has not received adequate importance by researchers all over the world. The present study focuses on the bibliometrics analysis of the role of opposition in democratic system in order to understand the research status of the subject globally using SCOPUS and Web of Science databases.

The analysis shows that research has been undertaken by various organisations and researchers however, the present time demands more attention on the role of opposition so …

Governance By Other Means: Rankings As Regulatory Systems, Judith G. Kelley, Beth A. Simmons

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This article takes the challenges of global governance and legitimacy seriously and looks at new ways in which international organizations (IOs) have attempted to ‘govern’ without explicit legal or regulatory directives. Specifically, we explore the growth of global performance indicators as a form of social control that appears to have certain advantages even as states and civil society actors push back against international regulatory authority. This article discusses the ways in which Michael Zürn's diagnosis of governance dilemmas helps to explain the rise of such ranking systems. These play into favored paradigms that give information and market performance greater social …

Testing For Negative Spillovers: Is Promoting Human Rights Really Part Of The “Problem”?, Anton Strezhnev, Judith G. Kelley, Beth A. Simmons

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The international community often seeks to promote political reforms in recalcitrant states. Recently, some scholars have argued that, rather than helping, international law and advocacy create new problems because they have negative spillovers that increase rights violations. We review three mechanisms for such spillovers: backlash, trade-offs, and counteraction and concentrate on the last of these. Some researchers assert that governments sometimes “counteract” international human rights pressures by strategically substituting violations in adjacent areas that are either not targeted or are harder to monitor. However, most such research shows only that both outcomes correlate with an intervention—the targeted positively and the …

Rulers Or Rules? International Law, Elite Cues And Public Opinion, Anton Strezhnev, Beth A. Simmons, Matthew D. Kim

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

One of the mechanisms by which international law can shape domestic politics is through its effects on public opinion. However, a growing number of national leaders have begun to advocate policies that ignore or even deny international law constraints. This article investigates whether international law messages can still shift public opinion even in the face of countervailing elite cues. It reports results from survey experiments conducted in three countries, the United States, Australia and India, which examined attitudes on a highly salient domestic political issue: restrictions on refugee admissions. In each experimental vignette, respondents were asked about their opinion on …

The Power Of Ranking: The Ease Of Doing Business Indicator And Global Regulatory Behavior, Rush Doshi, Judith G. Kelley, Beth A. Simmons

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The proliferation of Global Performance Indicators (GPIs), especially those that rate and rank states against one another, shapes decisions of states, investors, bureaucrats, and voters. This power has not been lost on the World Bank, which has marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) index to amass surprising influence over global regulatory policies – a domain over which it has no explicit mandate and for which there is ideological contestation. This paper demonstrates how the World Bank’s EDB ranking system affects policy through bureaucratic, transnational, and domestic-political channels. We use observational and experimental data to show that states respond to …

The New Oral Argument: Justices As Advocates, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

This Article conducts a comprehensive empirical inquiry of fifty-five years of Supreme Court oral argument, showing that judicial activity has increased dramatically, in terms of words used, duration of speech, interruptions made, and comments proffered. The Court is asking no more questions of advocates; instead, the justices are providing conclusions and rebutting their colleagues. In addition, the justices direct more of their comments and questions to the side with whom they ultimately disagree. Furthermore, “losing” justices, be it ideological camps that are outnumbered on the Court or dissenters in specific cases, use oral arguments to push back against the dominant …

Taking Laughter Seriously At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Laughter in Supreme Court oral arguments has been misunderstood, treated as either a lighthearted distraction from the Court’s serious work, or interpreted as an equalizing force in an otherwise hierarchical environment. Examining the more than nine thousand instances of laughter witnessed at the Court since 1955, this Article shows that the Justices of the Supreme Court use courtroom humor as a tool of advocacy and a signal of their power and status. As the Justices have taken on a greater advocacy role in the modern era, they have also provoked more laughter.

The performative nature of courtroom humor is apparent …

Judicial Choice Among Cases For Certiorari, Tonja Jacobi, Álvaro Bustos

Faculty Articles

How does the Supreme Court choose among cases to grant cert? In a model with a strategic Supreme Court, a continuum of rule-following lower courts, a set of potential cases for revision, and a distribution of future lower court cases, we show that the Court takes the case that will most significantly shape future lower court case outcomes in the direction that the Court prefers. That is, the Court grants cert to the case with maximum salience. If the Court is rather liberal (or conservative), then the most salient case is that which moves the discretionary range of the legal …

A General Approach For Predicting The Behavior Of The Supreme Court Of The United States, Daniel Katz

All Faculty Scholarship

Building on developments in machine learning and prior work in the science of judicial prediction, we construct a model designed to predict the behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States in a generalized, out-of-sample context. To do so, we develop a time-evolving random forest classifier that leverages unique feature engineering to predict more than 240,000 justice votes and 28,000 cases outcomes over nearly two centuries (1816-2015). Using only data available prior to decision, our model outperforms null (baseline) models at both the justice and case level under both parametric and non-parametric tests. Over nearly two centuries, we achieve …

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …

Book Review Of The Quiet Power Of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, And The Rule Of Law, Sital Kalantry

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Can The International Criminal Court Deter Atrocity?, Hyeran Jo, Beth A. Simmons

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Whether and how violence can be controlled to spare innocent lives is a central issue in international relations. The most ambitious effort to date has been the International Criminal Court (ICC), designed to enhance security and safety by preventing egregious human rights abuses and deterring international crimes. We offer the first systematic assessment of the ICC's deterrent effects for both state and nonstate actors. Although no institution can deter all actors, the ICC can deter some governments and those rebel groups that seek legitimacy. We find support for this conditional impact of the ICC cross-nationally. Our work has implications for …

The Subterranean Counterrevolution: The Supreme Court, The Media, And Litigation Retrenchment, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

This article is part of a larger project to study the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we show how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for private enforcement. An institutional perspective helps to explain the outcome we document: the long-term erosion of the infrastructure of private enforcement as a result of …

Marriage On The Ballot: An Analysis Of Same-Sex Marriage Referendums In North Carolina, Minnesota, And Washington During The 2012 Elections, Craig M. Burnett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Separation Of Powers Legitimacy: An Empirical Inquiry Into Norms About Executive Power, Cary Coglianese, Kristin Firth

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The continuing debate over the President’s directive authority is but one of the many separation-of-powers issues that have confronted courts, scholars, government officials, and the public in recent years. The Supreme Court, for instance, has considered whether the President possesses the power to make appointments of agency heads without Senate confirmation during certain congressional recesses. The Court has passed judgment recently, but has yet to resolve fully, questions about Congress’s authority to constrain the President’s power to remove the heads of administrative agencies. And the Court has considered the limits on Congress’s ability to delegate legislative authority to other rulemaking …

Unintended Consequences Of Cigarette Prohibition, Regulation, And Taxation, Jonathan D. Kulick, James E. Prieger, Mark A. R. Kleiman

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Abstract Laws that prohibit, regulate, or tax cigarettes can generate illicit markets for tobacco products. Illicit markets both reduce the efficacy of policies intended to improve public health and create harms of their own. Enforcement can reduce evasion but creates additional harms, including incarceration and violence. There is strong evidence that more enforcement in illicit drug markets can spur violence. The presence of licit substitutes, such as electronic cigarettes, has the potential to greatly reduce the size of illicit markets. We present a model demonstrating why enforcement can increase violence, show that states with higher tobacco taxes have larger illicit …

Impact Of The “Nirbhaya” Rape Case: Isolated Phenomenon Or Social Change?, Tina P. Lapsia

Honors Scholar Theses

In December 2012, a twenty-three year old college student, who was given the pseudonym “Nirbhaya” (“fearless”), was fatally gang-raped on a private bus in Delhi, India, galvanizing the country to swiftly adopt new legislative measures and catapulting the issue of violence against women in India into the international spotlight. Although assault and rape cases have made India infamous for its high volume of crimes against women, the reaction to this particular incident was much different from before. This paper investigates whether the governmental and societal responses represent social change, as indicated by changing attitudes towards violence against women in India. …

Improving Rhode Island’S Health Care System: Lessons From The Cuban Model, Sarah R. Moffitt

Senior Honors Projects

Improving Rhode Island’s health care system: lessons from the Cuban model

Cuba is world renowned for its health care system. In regards to international health crises, Cuba is a leader in sending workers abroad and training doctors from all over the world. Within its own borders, the Cuban model provides free access to all citizens in which every individual has a primary care provider. Cuba boasts high vaccination rates, a long life expectancy, low infant mortality rate, and a population that is one of the healthiest in the western hemisphere.

The purpose of this research project is to evaluate the …

Courtroom To Classroom: Judicial Policymaking And Affirmative Action, Dylan Britton Saul

Political Science Honors Projects

The judicial branch, by exercising judicial review, can replace public policies with ones of their own creation. To test the hypothesis that judicial policymaking is desirable only when courts possess high capacity and necessity, I propose an original model incorporating six variables: generalism, bi-polarity, minimalism, legitimization, structural impediments, and public support. Applying the model to a comparative case study of court-sanctioned affirmative action policies in higher education and K-12 public schools, I find that a lack of structural impediments and bi-polarity limits the desirability of judicial race-based remedies in education. Courts must restrain themselves when engaging in such policymaking.

Central Government And Secession, Tyler Zuch

Political Science Capstone Research Papers

Governments and countries throughout history have risen and fallen while some have carried on through the years. However, some countries look very different from when they existed in previous times. Rulers and leaders have utilized many responses to rebellions and secessionist movements. These responses range from bloody and/or political repression, devolution, simply declaring secession unconstitutional or illegal, economic concessions/incentives, or even simply ignoring the problem. There is not only the debate as to what is the best way to put down a rebellion or secessionist movement, but also what is the right/moral response that the government should do to keep …

Life And Death In The Mental-Health Blogosphere: An Analysis Of Blog Content And Survival, Edward Alan Miller, Antoinette Pole, Bukola Usidame

Department of Political Science and Law Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this study was to describe a sample of mental-health blogs, to determine the proportion of sampled blogs still posting several years after identification, and to identify the correlates of survival. One hundred eighty-eight mental-health blogs were identified in 2007–08 and revisited in 2014. Eligible blogs were U.S.-based, in English, and active. Baseline characteristics and survival status were described and variation based on blog focus and survival examined. Mental health bloggers tended to be females blogging as patients and caregivers focusing on specific mental illnesses/conditions. The proportion of blogs still active at follow-up ranged from 25.5 percent to …

Federal Court Rulemaking And Litigation Reform: An Institutional Approach, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

The purpose of this article is to advance understanding of the role that federal court rulemaking has played in litigation reform. For that purpose, we created original data sets that include (1) information about every member of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules who served from 1960 to 2013, and (2) every proposal for amending the Federal Rules that the Advisory Committee approved for consideration by the Standing Committee during the same period and that had implications for private enforcement. We show that, beginning in 1971, when a succession of Chief Justices appointed by Republican Presidents have chosen committee members, …

East Asia, Investment, And International Law: Distinctive Or Convergent?, Beth A. Simmons

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

International investment agreements (IIAs) are the primary legal instruments designed to protect and encourage foreign direct investment world-wide. This article argues that Asia has used IIAs just as much as have other regions of the world to attract foreign direct investment, but that Asia’s pattern of agreement provisions is somewhat distinctive. States in East and Southeast Asia have tended to enter into agreements that strike a balance somewhat more favorable to host states than to foreign firms, at least when compared to the rest of the world. This may be due to high growth in the region, which tends to …

On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law and former Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan noted that with just 23 months left in the 12th Parliament's five-year term, the next polls, which will have to be held by Jan 9, 2017, promise to be the watershed general election. He also commented that it will almost certainly be a straight fight between the ruling People's Action Party and the Workers' Party, providing some indication of whether Singapore is evolving from a one-party dominant to a two-party political system.

The Effect Of The Syrian Crisis On Jordanian Internal Security, Andrew E. Szparaga

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Jordan has a refugee crisis; between 620,000 and 1.3 million Syrian refugees are seeking refuge in Jordan. This report aims to answer which aspect of Jordanian security the refugees have the biggest effect on. It also aims to answer whether the refugees based in camps, like Za’atari, or those integrated into the Jordanian communities are more threatening to internal security. Because many argue that Syrian refugees have a negative effect on the economic, environmental, military, political, and social securities of Jordan, many believe that they might pose a possible threat to the country’s internal security factors. The Syrian refugees have …