Law and Politics Commons^™

The Supreme Constitutional Court Of Egypt: The Limits Of Liberal Political Science And Cls Analysis Of Law Elsewhere, Lama Abu-Odeh

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On January 25th 2011, following a popular uprising, president Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was forced to relinquish power after thirty years of continuous rule. The popular uprising came to be known as the Egyptian revolution of January 25th marking the first time in the modern history of Egypt an authoritarian ruler is forced out of power through the mobilization of Egyptian masses. The popular mobilization came at the heels of several years of “wildcat” workers' strikes affecting various sectors of the economy, public and private, as well as recurring demonstrations spearheaded by the youth of the Egyptian middle class demanding …

The Post-Citizens United Fantasy-Land, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

First, a bouquet for the illuminating facts presented by Professors Wert, Gaddie, and Bullock. They make dramatically clear how minuscule independent spending by corporate PACs has been (that is, those PACs’ direct spending as distinct from support by those PACs or their corporate sponsors for spending by intermediaries like the Chamber of Commerce). Their showing is borne out by experience this year: corporate support for campaigns is almost all hidden, flowing through intermediaries, which is why getting effective disclosure is more important than ever, as the Court clearly recognizes (We probably owe much to Justice Kennedy for the fact that …

Iowa’S 2010 Judicial Election: Appropriate Accountability Or Rampant Passion?, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Although 89% of state judges (appellate and general-jurisdiction trial judges) face some type of election, judicial elections are rarely thought of even by academics interested in elections. Iowa’s 2010 election, in which three Justices were defeated, is one of the most significant judicial elections ever. The Justices lost their seats because they participated in a unanimous 2009 decision upholding gay marriage. That decision stirred intense opposition among “social conservatives”, in Iowa a substantial proportion of the population and actively led by more than 100 ministers.

That active opposition was one of eight elements that created a perfect storm against the …

H. L. A. Hart’S Moderate Indeterminacy Thesis Reconsidered: In Between Scylla And Charybdis?, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this article, in the context of the fiftieth anniversary of H. L. A. Hart’s The Concept of Law, The author reconsiders the moderate indeterminacy of law thesis, which derives from the open texture of language. For that purpose, the author intends: first, to analyze Hart’s moderate indeterminacy thesis, i.e. determinacy in “easy cases” and indeterminacy in “hard cases,” which resembles Aristotle’s “doctrine of the mean”; second, to criticize his thesis as failing to embody the virtues of a center in between the vices of the extremes, by insisting that the exercise of discretion required constitutes an “interstitial” legislation; …

Should We Have A Liberal Constitution?, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this brief essay, I attempt to accomplish two things. In Part I, I defend my proposed constitution against its putative liberal critics. In Part II, I argue that given contingent but highly plausible empirical assumptions, the differences between my constitution and a liberal constitution are less dramatic than one might suppose. There are often sound, nonliberal grounds for supporting institutional arrangements that appear liberal. It turns out, then, that liberalism is both less attractive (Part I) and less necessary (Part II) than its defenders suppose.

The Tea Party, The Constitution, And The Repeal Amendment, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Given that the Tea Party is a right-of-center movement, it does not take an empiricist to know that most Tea Partiers hold right-of-center views on a variety of issues. This does not mean, however, that the Tea Party movement is about immigration policy or social issues like abortion, any more than the gun-rights movement is about any other beliefs that may be held by a majority of gun-rights advocates. Instead, the Tea Party movement is about two big subjects: first, the undeniable recent surge in national government spending and debt, and second, what Tea Partiers perceive as a federal government …

Misunderstanding Congress: Statutory Interpretation, The Supermajoritarian Difficulty, And The Separation Of Powers, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Every lawyer's theory of statutory interpretation carries with it an idea of Congress, and every idea of Congress, in turn, carries with it an idea of the separation of powers. In this article, the author critiques three dominant academic theories of statutory interpretation--textualism, purposivism, and game theory--for their assumptions about Congress and the separation of powers. She argues that each academic theory fails to account for Congress's dominant institutional features: "the electoral connection," the "supermajoritarian difficulty," and the "principle of structure-induced ambiguity." This critique yields surprising conclusions, rejecting both standard liberal and conservative views on statutory interpretation.

"Plain" meaning, it …

The Torture Memos: The Case Against The Lawyers, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Is The Constitution Libertarian?, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Ever since Justice Holmes famously asserted that “the Constitution does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics,” academics have denied that the Constitution is libertarian. In this essay, I explain that the Constitution is libertarian to the extent that its original meaning respects and protects the five fundamental rights that are at the core of both classical liberalism and modern libertarianism. These rights can be protected both directly by judicial decisions and indirectly by structural constraints. While the original Constitution and Bill of Rights provided both forms of constraints, primarily on federal power, it left states free to violate the …

The Politics Of Administrative Law: New York's Anti-Bureaucracy Clause And The O'Brian-Wagner Campaign Of 1938, Daniel R. Ernst

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The controversy over administrative law in New York in 1938 was a decisive moment in the emergence of procedural Diceyism in the United States. On a stage crowded with partisan and legal performers, the politics of administrative law played out in two acts. In the first, the state's trial lawyers mounted a campaign to heighten judicial review of the state's administrative agencies. Their efforts culminated in the adoption of the anti-bureaucracy clause at the state constitutional convention when regular factions in the state's two major parties decided it would serve their purposes. New Yorkers rejected the measure after liberal politicians …

Federal Grants, State Decisions, Brian Galle

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The authority to raise and spend money is one of the most expansive and fundamental of all Congress' enumerated powers, particularly when Congress chooses to impose conditions on those who wish to receive its cash. The consensus modern view of this conditional spending is that its unfettered use threatens the diversity and accountability goals of our federalism. As a result, nearly all commentators support either direct or indirect judge-made limits on conditional spending. These claims, I argue, rest on a set of largely unexamined assumptions about the political motivations, budgetary situation, and incentives of the state officials who must decide …

Impacts Of White, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Changes in judicial elections stem from four identifiable causes. First, court decisions involve increasingly higher stakes and more serious consequences. The U.S. Senate confirmation battles also reflect this cause. Second, non-candidate groups, many from out of state, bring in enormous sums of money which often leads to ugly, even damaging, campaigns. Third, the first two causes are making judicial campaigns more like non-judicial campaigns, bringing new elements to judicial campaigns: campaign consultants and a win-at-any-cost approach.

The Constitution's Political Deficit, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Levinson has wisely called for an extended conversation regarding the possibility and desirability of a new Constitutional Convention, which might be called so as to correct some of the more glaring failings of our current governing document. Chief among those, in his view, are a handful of doctrines that belie our commitment to democratic self-government, such as the two-senators-per-state makeup of the United States Senate and the Electoral College. Perhaps these provisions once had some rhyme or reason to them, but, as Levinson suggests, it is not at all clear that they do now. They assure that our legislative …

Political Power And Judicial Power: Some Observations On Their Relation, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay summarizes and perhaps extends slightly some important recent work, mostly by political scientists, on the structural relation between the array of political power in a nation's nonjudicial branch or branches and the way in which judicial review is exercised in relatively stable democracies. Robert Dahl's classic article identified one such relation. According to Dahl, "[e]xcept for short-lived transitional periods when the old alliance is disintegrating and the new one is struggling to take control of political institutions, the Supreme Court is inevitably a part of the dominant national alliance." What, though, if there is no "dominant" national political …

A Response To Goodwin Liu, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Liu's article convincingly shows that the Fourteenth Amendment can be read, and has been read in the past, to confer a positive right on all citizens to a high-quality public education and to place a correlative duty on the legislative branches of both state and federal government to provide for that education. Specifically, the United States Congress has an obligation under the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, Liu argues, to ensure that the public education provided by states meets minimal standards so that citizens possess the competencies requisite to meaningful participation in civic life. Liu's argument is not simply that …

We The People's Executive, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, a recent survey found that most Americans know far more about television hits than they know about the United States Constitution. For instance, 52% of Americans surveyed could name at least two characters from The Simpsons, and 41% could name at least two judges from American Idol. Meanwhile, a mere 28% could identify more than one of the rights protected by the First Amendment.

Surveys such as this help clear up one of the apparent mysteries of the last five years: How did we change so quickly from a nation in which the …

Peace In The Valley: For Chris Iijima, Mari J. Matsuda

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The first time I saw Chris, he was speaking at a meeting of the East Coast Asian American Student Union, a semi-political but largely social gathering of college kids. I have learned over the years that law schools are adept at finding faculty of color who are smart and ineffectual. So, frankly, I was not expecting much when this Professor Iijima got up to talk. I was concentrating on preparing my own remarks, when I was hit by the whirlwind that is the public Chris Iijima. He got up and assumed the posture of a pugilistic grizzly bear. He actually …

The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 And Coalition Politics, Sheryll Cashin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Professor Days began his Childress Lecture by recounting his personal experience with Jim Crow segregation. I too have such a story. I was born and raised in Hunstville, Alabama, a city that is notable, among other things, for having desegregated its public accommodations in 1962, two full years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The turning point in the non-violent sit-in movement in Hunstville was when a young, African- American woman was arrested with a four-month-old baby in her arms, along with a friend who was eight months pregnant. This caused some outrage and widespread press …

The Very Idea Of A First Amendment Right Against Compelled Subsidization, Gregory Klass

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At present, it is difficult to discern what rules govern compelled subsidization and where the constitutional limits lie. The root cause of the current confusion is the Supreme Court's failure to provide a coherent account of the First Amendment harm of compelled subsidization. Part I of this Article describes the present state of the doctrine. It identifies a number of practical problems, especially the imprecisions in and conflicts between the Court's holdings that leave it unclear how lower courts should decide novel cases. Part II is a critical discussion of the two most common arguments for a First Amendment right …

American Medicine And The Politics Of Race, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Straw men play a major role in the debate over racial disparity in American medicine. Most have been deployed by the disparities-denying right, but progressives intent on “outing” racism have sent forth their share. This essay flushes out the straw men while attempting to understand the competing moral premises that drive the politics of health care disparity. At bottom, arguments about the scope of disparity and discrimination in medical care are disputes about the appropriate scope of personal responsibility for life circumstances. Further research into the factors that correlate with racial differences in health care can shed light on the …

Constitutional Hardball, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For the past several years I have been noticing a phenomenon that seems to me new in my lifetime as a scholar of constitutional law. I call the phenomenon constitutional hardball. This Essay develops the idea that there is such a practice, that there is a sense in which it is new, and that its emergence (or re-emergence) is interesting because it signals that political actors understand that they are in a position to put in place a new set of deep institutional arrangements of a sort I call a constitutional order. A shorthand sketch of constitutional hardball is this: …

The Moral Foundations Of Modern Libertarianism, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Libertarians no longer argue, as they once did in the 1970s, about whether libertarianism must be grounded on moral rights or on consequences; they no longer act as though they must choose between these two moral views. In this paper, the author contends that libertarians need not choose between moral rights and consequences because theirs is a political, not a moral, philosophy, one that can be shown to be compatible with various moral theories, which is one source of its appeal.

Moral theories based on either moral rights or on consequentialism purport to be comprehensive, insofar as they apply to …

The Politics Of Embryonic Discourse, Kevin P. Quinn

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In our brave new world of stem cells, clones, and parthenotes,l how should we talk about early human embryos? In fashioning a response to this very thorny question, Ann Kiessling has a core message. It is: (1) that new science produces "new" conceptuses; (2) that science and scientists have failed to differentiate (with appropriate clarity) these new ex vivo conceptuses from those created in vivo; (3) that new, more appropriate and scientifically-informed, terms are necessary; and (4) that this new language should transform the public discourse about human embryos. No one would deny that the subtleties of human embryology are …

Analyzing The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Of 2002, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA") is the laboratory in campaign finance law. When analyzing BCRA, it is important to look at the Missouri state law that led to the Supreme Court case, Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC. In Shrink Missouri, five justices upheld Missouri's relatively low simple limit on contributions to candidates. The law in Missouri limited contributions by anyone to candidates, but there was no limit as to how much a person or entity could give to a political party committee or to a political action committee (PAC). Further, there was no limit on how …

The Secret Life Of The Political Question Doctrine, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

"Questions, in their nature political, or which are, by the constitution and laws, submitted to the executive, can never be made in this court."

The irony, of course, is that Marbury v. Madison, itself, "made" a political question, and the answer the Court gave was deeply political as well. As everyone reading this essay knows, the case arose out of a bitter political controversy, and the opinion for the Court was a carefully crafted political document - "a masterwork of indirection," according to Robert McCloskey's well-known characterization, "a brilliant example of Chief Justice Marshall's capacity to sidestep danger while seeming …

Leaders, Followers, And Free Riders: The Community Lawyer’S Dilemma When Representing Non-Democratic Client Organizations, Michael R. Diamond, Aaron O'Toole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article will explore various aspects of the dissonance between the democratic ideal and the reality of groups in disenfranchised and disempowered communities. We will discuss the intersection of democracy and community action by examining the sociology of groups and the social psychology of leaders and followers. We will also examine the role of, and choices presented to, an attorney working in a community and for local community groups.

A Different Kind Of "Republican Moment" In Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this Essay is to propose and discuss the possibility that the nation currently faces another, albeit very different, "republican moment" that may well test the future of environmental protection laws in the United States. This new "moment" has as its modifier an uppercase "Republican" rather than a lowercase "republican." While the latter "republican" invokes the political tradition referred to as "civic republicanism," the former "Republican" refers instead to the current National Republican Party. The "moment" facing environmental law is the virtually unprecedented ascendancy of the Republican Party in all three branches of the federal government.

Proposed Legislation On Judicial Election Campaign Finance, Roy A. Schotland

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In light of the recent extraordinary rise in judicial campaign spending, illustrated in Ohio's 2000 judicial elections (and elsewhere, and in Ohio again in 2002), we must consider improving the Model Code of Judicial Conduct. The 1999 amendments to the Code addressed campaign finance, but did not address two major problems. The first one is the absence of limits on aggregate contributions from law firms; only Texas has such limits. This gap allows large contributions from law firms to go to judges presiding in cases in which those firms participate, circumventing the recusal and disqualification triggers. The second problem is …

Alarmism Versus Moderation In Responding To The Rehnquist Court, Mark V. Tushnet

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I begin in Part I by offering a description of the Supreme Court's recent decisions as a less substantial repudiation of prior principles than many think them to be, and as leaving Congress with the means to achieve a quite substantial proportion of the policy goals it pursued in the statutes the Court invalidated. Part II explains why Congress is unlikely to do so, in light of our apparent commitment to divided government, and parties that are organized around distinctive ideologies because of divided government. Part III turns to the prospect for continued policy transformation, identifying the conditions under which …

The Politics Of Public Health: A Response To Epstein, Lawrence O. Gostin, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Conservatives are taking aim at the field of public health, targeting its efforts to understand and control environmental and social causes of disease. Richard Epstein and others contend that these efforts in fact undermine people’s health and well-being by eroding people’s incentives to create economic value. Public health, they argue, should stick to its traditional task—the struggle against infectious diseases. Because markets are not up to the task of controlling the transmission of infectious disease, Epstein says, coercive government action is required. But market incentives, not state action, he asserts, represent our best hope for controlling the chronic illnesses that …