Law and Politics Commons^™

In Defense Of Birthright Citizenship, Shannon Auvil

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Fear Factor: Exploring The Impact Of The Vulnerability To Deportation On Immigrants' Lives, Shirley P. Leyro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative study explores the impact that the fear of deportation has on the lives of noncitizen immigrants. More broadly, it explores the role that immigration enforcement, specifically deportation, plays in disrupting the process of integration, and the possible implications of this interruption for immigrants and their communities. The study aims to answer: (1) how vulnerability to deportation specifically impacts an immigrant’s life, and (2) how the vulnerability to deportation, and the fear associated with it, impacts an immigrant’s degree of integration. Data were gathered through a combination of six open-ended focus group interviews of 10 persons each, and 33 …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: Jared A. Goldstein's Blog: Trump's Order Violates Bedrock Principles Of Roger Williams And Ri 01-30-2017, Jared A. Goldstein

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

A Taxonomy Of Independent Electoral Reapportionment Systems, James Ruley

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

This paper addresses a means of checking legislative gerrymandering, which I have called the Independent Electoral Reapportionment Commission (IERC). Its purpose is to prevent self-interested politicians from drawing biased constituency lines. While scholars have researched gerrymandering, few scholars have researched commissions designed to limit such gerrymandering, and no comprehensive work details the global means of accomplishing this goal.

Thus, the purpose of this paper is not to normatively prescribe the best practices for composing and empowering an IERC, but rather to descriptively show how different countries conduct this process. While Part II makes some determinations about which commissions may conceptually …

Emerging Constitutional Conflicts And The Role Of Courts, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "When a court exercises judicial review, it tells Congress, the executive branch or a state to refrain from action that is under way or to take some action that is not being taken. Either way, a democratically accountable institution is told that it cannot do what the people (presumably) want it to do, or that it must do what the people (presumably) do not want it to do."

The Absence Of Lack And The Relevance Of Relationship, Tracy Maxwell Heard

Leadership Hour at Otterbein University

Tracy Maxwell Heard, a former Democratic Leader of the Ohio House of Representatives is the President of Millennium Solutions, Inc., a public policy, business and non-profit development firm with a specialization in social enterprise development.

Tears In Heaven: Religiously And Culturally Sensitive Laws For Preventing The Next Pandemic, Eloisa C. Rodriguez-Dod, Aileen Maria Marty, Elena Maria Marty-Nelson

Catholic University Law Review

This Article argues that laws created to curtail the spread of deadly contagious diseases need to be drafted and implemented in ways that maximize acceptance of an affected communities’ cultural and religious beliefs. When laws are put in place that are inconsistent with community mores, the overall goal of stopping an epidemic is threatened. Communities often distrust government and other relief organizations who mandate rules and regulations that impinge their religious and cultural beliefs; thus, these regulations geared at helping communities can paradoxically undermine the goal of preventing the spread of infectious disease.

This Article focuses on the need for …

Poverty, The Great Unequalizer: Improving The Delivery System For Civil Legal Aid, Latonia Haney Keith

Catholic University Law Review

When individuals in the United States face civil justice issues, they are not entitled to legal counsel and therefore must secure paid counsel, proceed pro se or qualify for free legal assistance. As a result of the economic downturn, the number of Americans who are unable to afford legal counsel is now at an all-time high. In response to this ever-widening justice gap, the public interest community has launched multiple initiatives to supplement the underfunded legal aid system. Though valiant, this article argues that this approach has unfortunately created a complex, fragmented and overlapping delivery system for legal aid. This …

Has Nihilism Politicized The Supreme Court Nomination Process?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals

Quacking Like A Duck? Functional Parenthood Doctrine And Same-Sex Parents, Katharine Baker

All Faculty Scholarship

Part I of this article introduces the tension between constitutionally protected parental autonomy rights and functional parent doctrine by examining the constitutional rights of parents. This examination demonstrates how the marital status of a parent has a substantial impact on the strength of that parent's constitutional rights. In cases in which there are two unmarried (never married or divorced) parents, neither parent has particularly robust constitutionally protected autonomy rights because both parents have competing constitutional rights that must be balanced against each other. Each parent has the right to invoke a court's jurisdiction in vindication of his or her own …

The International Criminal Court In Africa: Impartiality, Politics, Complementarity And Brexit, Bartram Brown

All Faculty Scholarship

I have known and been inspired by Henry J. Richardson III and his scholarship for many years. A hallmark of his work has been his focus upon African-American interests in international law and also upon the rights and interests of African states. In acknowledgement of that intellectual debt, it is my honor to dedicate the following article to this festschrift celebrating his life and work.

The Role Of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools In The Renewal Of American Democracy, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

Political Gerrymandering: Was Elbridge Gerry Right, C. Daniel Chill

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enemy Construction And The Press, Ronnell Anderson Jones, Lisa Grow Sun

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

When the president of the United States declared recently that the press is “the enemy,” it set off a firestorm of criticism from defenders of the institutional media and champions of the press’s role in the democracy. But even these Trump critics have mostly failed to appreciate the wider ramifications of the president’s narrative choice. Our earlier work describes the process of governmental “enemy construction,” by which officials use war rhetoric and other signaling behaviors to convey that a person or institution is not merely an institution that, although wholly legitimate, has engaged in behaviors that are disappointing or disapproved, …

The President's Role In Advancing Criminal Justice Reform, Barack Obama

United States Department of Justice: Publications

Criminal justice is a complex system, administered at all levels of government and shaped by a range of actors. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of so many in my Administration, the bipartisan push for reform from federal, state, and local officials, and the work of so many committed citizens outside government, America has made important strides. We have reduced overlong sentences for offenders and removed barriers for those with criminal records. We have made progress in helping people, especially young people, avoid getting entangled in the justice system in the first place. This Commentary talks about those achievements — and …

Gridlock, Lobbying, And Democracy, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

With the refusal to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Antonin Scalia, the Senate adds another layer of gridlock in Washington. In the recent past, congressional gridlock has threatened to shut down the legislative process by such maneuvers as creating a faux debt crisis and by regularly assailing the president and the executive branch over so-called job-killing regulations. Through these efforts, obstructionist Republicans have attempted a gridlock hat-trick by trying to shut down each of the three branches of government-at least as far as the headlines go. The political reality, however, is more nuanced, and gridlock is more complicated …

Is Religion A Non-Negotiable Aspect Of Liberal Constitutionalism?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.

The Twin Demons Of The Trump-Bannon Assault On Democracy, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

On January 30, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs." Then, on February 24, he signed an executive order on “Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda.” Together these two executive orders constitute a severe threat to American society and the American economy. In the words of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, they represent a plan for “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”

The purpose of the administrative state can be most simply stated this way: Unless otherwise stated in the enabling legislation, government regulation makes sense when the benefits of regulation outweigh the costs …

A Us Clean Energy Transition And The Trump Administration, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The Obama administration undertook several steps giving the US federal government a leadership role in a clean energy transition. Among other actions, the administration develop a Climate Action Plan, successfully negotiated higher fuel vehicle standards with car manufacturers, passed the Clean Power Plan, and signed the Paris Climate Agreement. Although the United States had been party to other international climate agreements and was a signatory to the Rio Declaration, other federal efforts were lax at best.

During his election campaign, Donald Trump promised his supporters to eliminate the Clean Power Plan, withdraw from the Paris Agreement, curtail the Environmental Protection …

Marriage Equality: The Paralleled Progress Between Public Approval And Supreme Court Decisionmaking, Riley Erin Fredrick

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why Environmental Policies Fail, Jan G. Laitos, Juliana Okulski

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Proposing environmental policy which is consistent with the laws of nature, this book is for those who are not just interested in the ways humans have harmfully altered their environment, but instead wish to learn why the many governmental policies in place to curb such behaviour have been unsuccessful. Since humans began to exploit natural resources for their own economic ends, we have ignored a central principle - nature and humans are not separate but are a unified interconnected system, where neither is superior to the other. Policy must reflect this reality. We failed to follow this principle in exploiting …

How The Constitution Become Christian, Jared Goldstein

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Texas Supreme Court Retreats From Protecting Texas Students, Albert Kauffman

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This Article criticizes the 2016 Texas Supreme Court school finance decision, the latest of seven decisions starting in 1989, for its disregard of both the record in the case and the realities of the Texas Constitution and Texas politics. The Article also focuses on how standards for reviewing legislation have changed and the Texas Supreme Court's irrational and unfounded retreat to the "money doesn't make a difference" theory of school finance. Finally, the Article recommends a return to an objective, comprehensible, enforceable and constitutional system of review, and concludes with a prayer for holdings that recognize the inequities of the …

Wait, Who Are We Talking About Here? Searching For A Consistent Approach To Applying Rfra To Corporations, Steven J. Harrison

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

There is perhaps no idea in contemporary American law that is more publicly contentious than that of “corporate personhood.” Of all of the Supreme Court cases dealing with corporations and the corporate entity, few probably thought that a decision could surpass Citizens United in public controversy and divisiveness produced by the decision, which brought the legal fiction of the “corporate person” to the forefront of popular debate and discussion. Then came Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which not only addressed whether corporations could “act” in a manner that seemed only a possibility for “real” or “natural” persons, which recalled …

The "Tunisian" Spring: Women's Rights In Tunisia And Broader Implications For Feminism In North Africa And The Middle East, John Hursh

University of Baltimore Law Review

More than six years have passed since the tumultuous weeks that comprised the key moments of the Arab Spring. Although initially greeted with great optimism, most results of these remarkable events ultimately have been discouraging. In Egypt, a “democratic coup d’état” paved the way for the resignation of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak and, eventually, democratic elections. However, this moment of hope and reform proved to be short-lived. The elected president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi proved to be so divisive and consolidated executive authority to such an alarming extent that General Abdel Sisi replaced him in a military, …

The Supreme Court Of Canada And Federalism: Does / Should Anyone Care Anymore?, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Federalism is still a relevant and vital aspect of Canadian Constitutional Law. Although a lower profile aspect than the Charter of Rights and Aboriginal rights (and in common parlance less "sexy"), the division of powers continues to an important part of the work of the Supreme Court of Canada and part of what defines us as a nation. The author argues that the Supreme Court has pursued an increasingly contextualized approach to division of powers issues - one that abandons the arid legalism of earlier days, in favour of a broad social analysis of issues based on extensive use of …

Navigating The Post-Shelby Landscape: Using Universalism To Augment The Remaining Power Of The Voting Rights Act, Jesús N. Joslin

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Blue Lives Have Always Mattered: The Usurping Of Hate Crime Laws For An Unintended And Unnecessary Purpose, Lisa M. Olson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Online Dispute Resolution: Stinky, Repugnant, Or Drab, Robert J. Condlin

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In Part II, I provide a brief overview of ODR systems, describing the largest, most well-known, and most sophisticated platforms now in place, to give the reader a sense of the- richness, variety, and benefits of online disputing, and a hint of developments still to come. In Part III, I describe certain legal, political, and moral concerns that have yet to be addressed in the ODR literature, and identify some of the unintended consequences the widespread adoption of ODR systems might produce. And in Part IV, I describe ODR's unfinished agenda, the questions proponents of the process must answer, and …