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Articles 61 - 90 of 90

Full-Text Articles in Law

Constitution-Making: A Process Filled With Constraint, Donald L. Horowitz Jan 2006

Constitution-Making: A Process Filled With Constraint, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

Constitutions are generally made by people with no previous experience in constitution making. The assistance they receive from outsiders is often less useful than it may appear. The most pertinent foreign experience may reside in distant countries, whose lessons are unknown or inaccessible. Moreover, although constitutions are intended to endure, they are often products of the particular crisis that forced their creation. Drafters are usually heavily affected by a desire to avoid repeating unpleasant historical experiences or to emulate what seem to be successful constitutional models. Theirs is a heavily constrained environment, made even more so by distrust and dissensus …


Just Blowing Smoke? Politics, Doctrine, And The Federalist Revival After Gonzales V. Raich, Ernest A. Young Jan 2005

Just Blowing Smoke? Politics, Doctrine, And The Federalist Revival After Gonzales V. Raich, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Statutory Interpretation And The Intentional(Ist) Stance, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez Jan 2005

Statutory Interpretation And The Intentional(Ist) Stance, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Canonical Construction And Statutory Revisionism: The Strange Case Of The Appropriations Canon, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez Jan 2005

Canonical Construction And Statutory Revisionism: The Strange Case Of The Appropriations Canon, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Social Choice, Crypto-Initiaives, And Policymaking By Direct Democracy, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2005

Social Choice, Crypto-Initiaives, And Policymaking By Direct Democracy, Thad Kousser, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Lost In Translation: Social Choice Theory Is Misapplied Against Legislative Intent, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2005

Lost In Translation: Social Choice Theory Is Misapplied Against Legislative Intent, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Several prominent scholars use results from social choice theory to conclude that legislative intent is meaningless. We disagree. We support our argument by showing that the conclusions in question are based on misapplications of the theory. Some of the conclusions in question are based on Arrow's famous General Possibility Theorem. We identify a substantial chasm between what Arrow proves and what others claim in his name. Other conclusions come from a failure to realize that applying social choice theory to questions of legislative intent entails accepting assumptions such as "legislators are omniscient" and "legislators have infinite resources for changing law …


The Domestic Origins Of International Agreements, Rachel Brewster Jan 2004

The Domestic Origins Of International Agreements, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how international agreements are substitutes for statutes. The statutory law-making system and international agreement negotiations are separate, but sometimes rival, processes for setting national-level policy. International agreements have several advantages over domestic statutes. Under United States law, international agreements can entrench policies that might otherwise be subject to change; they can transfer agenda-setting power from the Congress to the President; and they can delegate authority to international organizations. Each of these effects can lead domestic interest groups to seek international negotiations rather than domestic legislation. Little difference exists between the politics of international and domestic law: Interest …


A Tournament Of Judges?, Stephen Choi, Mitu Gulati Jan 2004

A Tournament Of Judges?, Stephen Choi, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

We suggest a Tournament of Judges where the reward to the winner is elevation to the Supreme Court. Politics (and ideology) surely has a role to play in the selection of justices. However, the present level of partisan bickering has resulted in delays in judicial appointments as well as undermined the public's confidence in the objectivity of justices selected through such a process. More significantly, much of the politicking is not transparent, often obscured with statements on a particular candidate's "merit"- casting a taint on all those who make their way through the judicial nomination process. We argue that the …


Congressional Representation Of Black Interests: Recognizing The Importance Of Stability, Guy-Uriel Charles, Vincent L. Hutchins, Harwood K. Mcclerking Jan 2004

Congressional Representation Of Black Interests: Recognizing The Importance Of Stability, Guy-Uriel Charles, Vincent L. Hutchins, Harwood K. Mcclerking

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between black constituency size and congressional support for black interests has two important attributes: magnitude and stability. Although previous research has examined the first characteristic, scant attention has been directed at the second. This article examines the relationship between district racial composition and congressional voting patterns with a particular emphasis on the stability of support across different types of votes and different types of districts. We hypothesize that, among white Democrats, the influence of black constituency size will be less stable in the South, owing in part to this region’s more racially divided constituencies. Examining LCCR scores from …


The Cracked Foundations Of The Right To Secede, Donald L. Horowitz Jan 2003

The Cracked Foundations Of The Right To Secede, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Agenda Power In Brazil’S Camara Dos Deputados, 1989-98, Octavio Amorim Neto, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2003

Agenda Power In Brazil’S Camara Dos Deputados, 1989-98, Octavio Amorim Neto, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Political (Science) Context Of Judging, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin Jan 2003

The Political (Science) Context Of Judging, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, And The First Amendment Right Of Association, Guy-Uriel Charles Jan 2003

Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, And The First Amendment Right Of Association, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles Jan 2002

Constitutional Pluralism And Democratic Politics: Reflections On The Interpretive Approach Of Baker V. Carr, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

Baker v. Carr is one of the Supreme Court's most important opinions, not least because its advent signaled the constitutionalization of democracy. Unfortunately, as is typical of the Court's numerous forays into democratic politics, the decision is not accompanied by an apparent vision of the relationship among democratic practice, constitutional law, and democratic theory. In this Article, Professor Charles revisits Baker and provides several democratic principles that he argues justifies the Court's decision to engage the democratic process. He examines the decision from the perspective of one of its chief contemporary critics, Justice Frankfurter. He sketches an approach, described as …


Book Review, Donald L. Horowitz Jan 2002

Book Review, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Positive Political Theory Of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Comment On Johnston, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2002

The Positive Political Theory Of Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Comment On Johnston, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Constitutional Design: Proposals Versus Processes, Donald L. Horowitz Jan 2002

Constitutional Design: Proposals Versus Processes, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Challenges To Racial Redistricting In The New Millennium: Hunt V. Cromartie As A Case Study, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2001

Challenges To Racial Redistricting In The New Millennium: Hunt V. Cromartie As A Case Study, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Electoral College, The Right To Vote, And Our Federalism: A Comment On A Lasting Institution, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles Jan 2001

The Electoral College, The Right To Vote, And Our Federalism: A Comment On A Lasting Institution, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Supreme Court As A Strategic National Policymaker, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin Jan 2001

The Supreme Court As A Strategic National Policymaker, Lee Epstein, Jack Knight, Andrew D. Martin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Constitutional Design: An Oxymoron?, Donald L. Horowitz Jan 2000

Constitutional Design: An Oxymoron?, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Abdication Or Delegation? Congress, The Bureaucracy, And The Delegation Dilemma, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 1999

Abdication Or Delegation? Congress, The Bureaucracy, And The Delegation Dilemma, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


As A Matter Of Factions: The Budgetary Implications Of Shifting Factional Control In Japan’S Ldp, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies Jan 1997

As A Matter Of Factions: The Budgetary Implications Of Shifting Factional Control In Japan’S Ldp, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies

Faculty Scholarship

For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of agenda-setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions “control” the LDP affect the party’s decisions over spending priorities systematically. This runs contrary to the received wisdom in the voluminous literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison d’être, do …


Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies Jan 1996

Rationality And The Foundations Of Positive Political Theory, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Michael F. Thies

Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we discuss and debunk the four most common critiques of the rational choice research program (which we prefer to call Positive Political Theory) by explaining and advocating its foundations: the rationality assumption, component analysis (abstraction), strategic behavior, and theory building, in turn. We argue that the rationality assumption and component analysis, properly understood, can be seen to underlie all social science, despite the protestations of critics. We then discuss the two ways that PPT most clearly contributes to political science (i.e., what distinguishes it from other research programs), namely the introduction of strategic behavior (people do not …


Bonding, Structure And The Stability Of Political Parties: Party Government In The House, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 1994

Bonding, Structure And The Stability Of Political Parties: Party Government In The House, Gary W. Cox, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

The public policy benefits that parties-deliver are allocated by democratic procedures that devolve ultimately to majority rule. Majority-rule decision making, however, does not lead to consistent policy choices; it is "unstable." In this paper, we argue that institutions - and thereby policy coalitions -- can be stabilized by extra-legislative organization. The rules of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives dictate that a requirement for continued membership is support on the floor of Caucus decisions for a variety of key structural matters. Because membership in the majority party’s caucus is valuable, it constitutes a bond, the posting of …


Positive Canons: The Role Of Legislative Bargains In Statutory Interpretation, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast Jan 1992

Positive Canons: The Role Of Legislative Bargains In Statutory Interpretation, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Roger G. Noll, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


A Theory Of Political Control And Agency Discretion, Randall L. Calvert, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast Jan 1989

A Theory Of Political Control And Agency Discretion, Randall L. Calvert, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Barry R. Weingast

Faculty Scholarship

A major issue in the study of American politics is the extent to which electoral discipline also constrains bureaucrats. In practice, executive agencies operate with considerable independence from elected officials. However,the entire process of policy execution is a game among legislators.the chief executive. and bureaucratic agents. It includes the initial delegation of authority, the choice of policy alternatives,and opportunities for oversight and control. A simple model of this process demonstrates an important distinction between bureaucratic authority and bureaucratic discretion. Indeed.in its simplest form, the model predicts a world in which bureaucrats are the sole active participants in policymaking, but in …


Presidential Influence On Congressional Appropriations Decisions, D.Roderick Kiewiet, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 1988

Presidential Influence On Congressional Appropriations Decisions, D.Roderick Kiewiet, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

We investigate the extent to which possession of the veto allows the president to influence congressional decisions regarding regular annual appropriations legislation. The most important implication of our analysis is that the influence the veto conveys is asymmetrical: it allows the president to restrain Congress when he prefers to appropriate less to an agency than Congress does; it does not provide him an effective means of extracting higher appropriations from Congress when he prefers to spend more than it does. This asymmetry derives from constitutional limitations on the veto, in combination with the presence of a de facto reversionary expenditure …


The Regime Of Diplomacy And The Tehran Hostages, Kazimierz Grzybowski Jan 1981

The Regime Of Diplomacy And The Tehran Hostages, Kazimierz Grzybowski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Book Review, Michael E. Tigar Jan 1968

Book Review, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.