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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Supreme Court And The 117th Congress, Andrew K. Jennings, Athul K. Acharya
The Supreme Court And The 117th Congress, Andrew K. Jennings, Athul K. Acharya
Faculty Articles
If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s successor is confirmed before the 2020 presidential election or in the post-election lame-duck period, and if Democrats come to have unified control of government on January 20, 2021, how can they respond legislatively to the Court’s new 6-3 conservative ideological balance? This Essay frames a hypothetical 117th Congress’s options, discusses its four simplest legislative responses—expand the Court, limit its certiorari discretion, restrict its jurisdiction, or reroute its jurisdiction—and offers model statutory language for enacting those responses.
Partisan Voting On The California Supreme Court, Mark P. Gergen, David A. Carrillo, Benjamin M. Chen, Kevin M. Quinn
Partisan Voting On The California Supreme Court, Mark P. Gergen, David A. Carrillo, Benjamin M. Chen, Kevin M. Quinn
Faculty Articles
When did ideology become the major fault line of the California Supreme Court? To answer this question, we use a two-parameter item response theory (IRT) model to identify voting patterns in non-unanimous decisions by California Supreme Court justices from 1910 to 2011. The model shows that voting on the court became polarized on recognizably partisan lines beginning in the mid-1900s. Justices usually did not vote in a pattern that matched their political reputations and party affiliation during the first half of the century. This began to change in the 1950s. After 1959 the dominant voting pattern is partisan and closely …
Speech Inequality After Janus V. Afscme, Charlotte Garden
Speech Inequality After Janus V. Afscme, Charlotte Garden
Faculty Articles
This Article explores the growing divide between the Roberts Court’s treatment of the free speech rights of wealthy individuals and corporations in campaign finance cases as compared to its treatment of the rights of public-sector labor unions and their members. First, it highlights some internal contradictions in the Janus Court’s analysis. Then, it discusses the growing—yet mostly ignored—divergence in the Court’s treatment of corporate and labor speakers with respect to the use of market influence to achieve political influence.The Article has two Parts. In Part I, I explain how the Court reached its decision in Janus before critiquing the decision’s …