Law and Politics Commons^™

Finding A Voice: Using The Internet For Free Speech And Expression In Iran, Chelsea Zimmerman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In July 2009, many Iranians took to the streets to protest the results of the presidential election in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won with a reported 62% of the vote. The protests, stemming from allegations of electoral fraud, quickly exposed the government's limited tolerance for dissent. In addition to street demonstrations, protestors utilized social networking websites to express their opposition to the election results. The world, following Internet feeds, witnessed the restrictive mechanisms Iran’s government placed on expression and speech. People throughout the world admonished Iran for the government's interference with cell phone and Internet networks. Iran’s free speech and expression …

Good But Not Great: Improving Access To Public Records Under The D.C. Freedom Of Information Act, 13 D.C. L. Rev. 359 (2010), Margaret B. Kwoka, Melissa Davenport

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Volume 6 Issue 2

The Modern American

No abstract provided.

Canadian Parliament Must Act On Assisted Human Reproduction, Jocelyn Downie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In the past three months, three members of the Board of Directors of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada (AHRC) have resigned. Their resignation letters include the following statements: '[that following requests for information about the Agency's spending and budget] there was much reluctance and procrastination in providing information, and that when the information was provided, there were inconsistencies in what I received and what was originally presented. This raises concerns in my mind about the prudence and diligence in managing public funds'; 'I have encountered difficulties as a board member in receiving satisfactory replies to concerns and questions I have raised …

The Process Is The Problem: Lessons Learned From United States Drug Sentencing Reform, Erik S. Siebert

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Governing Gambling In The United States, Maria E. Garcia

CMC Senior Theses

The role risk taking has played in American history has helped shape current legislation concerning gambling. This thesis attempts to explain the discrepancies in legislation regarding distinct forms of gambling. While casinos are heavily regulated by state and federal laws, most statutes dealing with lotteries strive to regulate the activities of other parties instead of those of the lottery institutions. Incidentally, lotteries are the only form of gambling completely managed by the government. It can be inferred that the United States government is more concerned with people exploiting gambling than with the actual practice of wagering.

In an effort to …

Disability In America: A Minority Group For Everyone, Nicholas W. Ostreim

CMC Senior Theses

July 26, 2010 marked the twentieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act; the greater implications of comprehensive disability policy are yet to be seen. Nearly twenty percent of Americans have a disability. With such a significant portion of Americans affected, is equal access to employment opportunities, transportation, and communication available? The history of disability in America tells a story of isolation and institutionalization. The civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s opened up an opportunity for America’s most versatile minority group. A survey conducted by the International Center for the Disabled in 1986 showed sixty-six percent of non-institutionalized …

A Tale Of Two Paradigms: Judicial Review And Judicial Duty, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

What is the role of judges in holding government acts unconstitutional? The conventional paradigm is "judicial review." From this perspective, judges have a distinct power to review statutes and other government acts for their constitutionality. The historical evidence, however, reveals another paradigm, that of judicial duty. From this point of view, presented in my book Law and Judicial Duty, a judge has an office or duty, in all decisions, to exercise judgment in accord with the law of the land. On this understanding, there is no distinct power to review acts for their constitutionality, and what is called "judicial review" …

The Struggling Class: Replacing An Insider White Female Middle Class Dream With A Struggling Black Female Reality, Angela Mae Kupenda

Journal Articles

“What is the appropriate role of former outsiders who are now on the inside?” I propose that the appropriate role for an outsider who is now an insider, is not to sprawl out on plush, white, crushed velvet sofas, sipping vintage wines or imported teas and nibbling at aged cheese and delicate crackers while enjoying being one among a quota or token few that made it to the inside. Rather, the role of a former outsider is to go to work from the inside to dismantle the house, shrewdly using available tools to remove the nails from the walls, loosening …

A Bridge Too Far? Directive 1344.10 And The Military's Inroads On Core Political Speech In Campaign Media, Andrew A. Pinson

Georgia Law Review

In early 2008, the Department of Defense issued Directive 1344.10. Paragraph4.3.2.1 of the Directive prohibits non- active-duty military members who are nominees or candidates for political office from using images of themselves in uniform as the "primary graphic representation"in any campaign media. With the stroke of a pen, the Department of Defense effectively barred a powerful symbol of many a candidate's character, experience, and knowledge from use while on the campaign trail. This new regulation sets the stage for an epic clash between two entrenched doctrines: the strong First Amendment protection the Supreme Court has long afforded political campaign expression …

Prosecuting Political Defendants, Anthony S. Barkow, Beth George

Georgia Law Review

Prosecutors are obligated to enforce the law without bias or prejudice. Prosecutors will face cases, however, where a prosecution has political overtones due to the substance of the underlying crime or the identity of the defendant. Maintaining public confidence in the impartiality of such prosecutions is vital to protecting the public's trust in the criminal justice system. This Article explores three recent federal cases where the defendant's identity added a political element to the prosecution. It then examines how the Department of Justice regulates prosecutors' release of information to the public, including its charging policy and its interactions with the …

Should A Statement Of Interest Matter?: Judging Executive Branch Foreign Policy Concerns, Catherine H. Curlet

Georgia Law Review

Since the enactment of the Constitution, scholars have fiercely debated the question of the appropriate balance between the branches of the federal government in matters of foreign affairs. Recently, the Supreme Court set forth some guidelines for striking this balance between the Executive and the Judicial Branches in litigation implicating foreign affairs,yet the guidelines leave much of this debate unresolved. A cross-section of recent appellate court decisions illustrates how lower courts have filled in these gaps when assessing how much deference to give an Executive's Statement of Interest filed in cases concerning foreign affairs. This Note extracts from these cases …

Congressional End-Run: The Ignored Constraint On Judicial Review, Luke M. Milligan

Georgia Law Review

This Article identifies an untended connection between
the research of legal academics and political scientists. It
explains how recent developments in constitutional theory,
when read in good light, expose a gap in the judicial
politics literature on Supreme Court decision making. The
gap is the "congressional end-run."
End-runs occur when Congress mitigates the policy cost
of adverse judicial review through neither formal limits on
the Court's autonomy nor substitution of its constitutional

interpretationfor that of the Court, but through a different
decision which cannot, as a practical if not legal matter,
be invalidated by the Court. End-runs come in several …

A Distributive Theory Of Criminal Law, Aya Gruber

Publications

In criminal law circles, the accepted wisdom is that there are two and only two true justifications of punishment-retributivism and utilitarianism. The multitude of moral claims about punishment may thus be reduced to two propositions: (1) punishment should be imposed because defendants deserve it, and (2) punishment should be imposed because it makes society safer. At the same time, most penal scholars notice the trend in criminal law to de-emphasize intent, centralize harm, and focus on victims, but they largely write off this trend as an irrational return to antiquated notions of vengeance. This Article asserts that there is in …

East Asian Order Formation And Sino-Japanese Relations, Men Honghua

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

Introduction: Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, And Global Governance, David Fidler

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

Eastphalia As The Perfection Of Westphalia, Tom Ginsburg

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

Pursuing Health As Foreign Policy: The Case Of China, Yanzhong Huang

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

India And Eastphalia, David Fidler, Sumit Ganguly

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

Human Security With An Asian Face?, Sung Won Kim

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Eastphalia Emerging?: Asia, International Law, and Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, 2009

Elena Kagan Can't Say That: The Sorry State Of Political Discourse Regarding Constitutional Interpretation, Neil J. Kinkopf

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

What Elena Kagan Could Have & Should Have Said (& Still Have Been Confirmed), Eric J. Segall

Faculty Publications By Year

During her confirmation hearings, Justice Kagan backed away from numerous critical comments she had previously made about the nomination process. No one knows why she changed her mind but it is likely that the shift resulted more from a political calculation than a change of heart about the nature of the process. This Commentary suggests that Justice Kagan could have testified consistently with her previously expressed views and still have been confirmed.

What Elena Kagan Could Have & Should Have Said (& Still Have Been Confirmed): A Reply, Eric J. Segall

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

The Unfinished Project Of Roncarelli V. Duplessis: Justiciability, Discretion And The Limits Of The Rule Of Law, Lorne Sossin

Articles & Book Chapters

Roncarelli is remembered fifty years later particularly because of Justice Rand's now iconic statement that "there is no such thing as absolute and untrammelled discretion." Justice Rand defined "untrammelled discretion" as circumstances where action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the decision maker. This statement has been understood to mean that all public regulation exercised through discretionary decision-making by executive officials has legal boundaries, and that the role of the courts is to ensure that decisions do not exceed those boundaries.In this paper, the author explores several areas …

Clinton, Ginsburg, And Centrist Federalism, Russell A. Miller

Indiana Law Journal

This Article examines Justice Ginsburg's overlooked federalism jurisprudence and concludes that it almost perfectly complements President Bill Clinton's New Democratic centrism, especially his pro-state federalism agenda. The Article concludes that their nuanced, "centrist" approach to federalism has two characteristics. First,t hey value the states 'governing autonomy and show respect for the state agents that realize that autonomy. Second, they credit the states as intersubjective actors engaged in the pursuit of their interests, albeit in political processes usually carried out at the federal level.

Legislatures, Judges, And Parole Boards: The Allocations Of Discretion Under Determinate Sentencing, Dhammika Dharmapala, Nuno Garoupa, Joanna Shepherd

Faculty Articles

The most significant development in criminal sentencing in recent decades has been the shift from indeterminate to determinate sentencing. Yet no study has systematically explored the factors leading to this shift. In this Article, we provide the first analysis to explain why state legislatures enact reforms that significantly reduce both judges’ and parole boards’ discretion over criminal sentencing. First, we develop a political economy model that explains why legislatures acting in their own self-interest may be motivated to enact these laws. Our model predicts that legislatures are more likely to enact determinate sentencing reforms when there is tension among the …

Did A Switch In Time Save Nine?, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s court-packing plan of 1937 and the “switch in time that saved nine” animate central questions of law, politics, and history. Did Supreme Court Justice Roberts abruptly switch votes in 1937 to avert a showdown with Roosevelt? Scholars disagree vigorously about whether Roberts’s transformation was gradual and anticipated or abrupt and unexpected. Using newly collected data of votes from the 1931–1940 terms, we contribute to the historical understanding of this episode by providing the first quantitative evidence of Roberts’s transformation. Applying modern measurement methods, we show that Roberts shifted sharply to the left in the 1936 term. The …

How Not To Lie With Judicial Votes: Misconceptions, Measurement, And Models, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

In Part I, we describe the formal spatial theory often invoked to justify the statistical approach. While spatial theory has the nice feature of synthesizing theory and empirics, legal scholars may remain skeptical of its strong assumptions. Fortunately, measurement models can be illuminating even if the spatial theory is questionable.

To illustrate this, Part II provides a nontechnical overview of the intuition behind measurement models that take merits votes as an input and return a summary score of Justice-specific behavior as an output. Such scores provide clear and intuitive descriptive summaries of differences in judicial voting.

Confusion abounds, however, and …

The General Assembly's Structural Conflicts Of Interest, Waldo Jaquith

Richmond Public Interest Law Review

Virginia is not a state saddled with a reputation of ethically challenged legislators, but our part-time citizen legislature is structurally conducive to conflicts of interest. This reality was brought to the forefront in November 2009 when Delegate Phillip Hamilton resigned from the House of Delegates following revelations that he directed state appropriations into his own pocket. There is little doubt that the majority of legislators are scrupulous in their efforts to avoid such conflicts, but they must navigate treacherous waters to do so. Significant modifications to the structure and ethical standards of the General Assembly are necessary to correct this …

Saving America's Automobile Industry: The Bailouts Of 1979 And 2009, An Overview Of The Economic Conditions, Factors For Failure, Government Interventions And Public Reactions, Taylor A. Wall

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will discuss the bankruptcies experienced by U.S. automakers in both 1979 and 2009. The main factors which led the automakers into financial ruin was the uncontrolled power of labor unions, the severe financial impact of oil embargos, the aggressive imposition of federal regulations and the increasing dominance of Japanese imports. After discussing these important factors, the paper will describe the specifics of Chrysler’s bailout experience in 1979 with the positive public acceptance of the government loans, largely due to the character of Lee Iacocca. After delving into Chrysler, this paper will explain the specifics of the government’s bailout …