Law and Politics Commons^™

International Lobbying Law, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

An idiosyncratic array of international rules allows nonstate actors to gain special access to international officials and lawmakers. Historically, many of these groups were public-interest associations like Amnesty International. For this reason, the access rules have been celebrated as a way to democratize international organizations, enhancing their legitimacy and that of the rules they produce. But a focus on the classic public-law virtues of democracy and legitimacy produces a theory at odds with the facts: The international rules rules also offer access to industry and trade associations like the World Coal Association, whose principal purpose is to lobby for their …

Decriminalization Of Prostitution: The Soros Effect, Jody Raphael

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article explores the activities of George Soros and his charitable organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF), in advocating for the full decriminalization of the sex trade industry. Research finds that OSF spends only a small amount of money on grass roots “sex worker” groups around the world advocating for full decriminalization, but the foundation awards larger amounts of funds to large human rights groups whose reports and policies have a wider reach. OSF’s rationale for full decriminalization fails to consider violence and coercion in the sex trade industry, misreads research, and does not include research from venues where full decriminalization …

Entertainment As Crime Prevention: Evidence From Chicago Sports Games., Hannah S. Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus

Faculty Works

The concern that mass media may be responsible for aggressive and criminal behavior is widespread. Comparatively little consideration has been given to its potential diversionary function. This paper contributes to the emerging body of literature on entertainment as a determinant of crime by analyzing Chicago by-the-minute crime reports during major sporting events. Sports provide an exogenous infusion of TV diversion that we leverage to test the effect of entertainment on crime. Because the scheduling of a sporting event should be random with respect to crime within a given month, day of the week, and time, we use month-time-day-of-week fixed effects …

Orphans No More: A Review Of Elizabeth Sanderson, Government Lawyering: Duties And Ethical Challenges Of Government Lawyers, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Elizabeth Sanderson’s Government Lawyering: Duties and Ethical Challenges of Government Lawyers is the first comprehensive and long-form assessment of why government lawyers are different than lawyers in private practice and why that difference matters. This book review essay begins by setting out Sanderson’s position on a few concepts key to legal ethics for government lawyers: a definition of government lawyers, an account of the duties that apply to them, and the identity of the client. It then goes on to highlight the book’s four major contributions: an emphasis on the role of the Deputy Attorney General as an interface between …

Deepfake Videos: When Seeing Isn't Believing, Holly Kathleen Hall

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Videos, known as deepfakes, use readily available software to create a work that shows people saying and doing things they may never have uttered or engaged in. The technology making the videos appear very authentic is advancing at such a rate that people may not be able to detect if the videos are fact or fiction. Given the hasty acceptance of other forms of fake news in society, deepfake videos have the ability to affect the nature of information the public receives about candidates and policies. This study examines the potential use of deepfake videos in the democratic process, analyzes …

Critique & Praxis: A Pure Theory Of Illusions, Values, And Tactics, And An Answer To The Question: "What Is To Be Done?", Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

We are going through an unprecedented period of political instability. With the rise of the alt-right and of xenophobic sentiment, and the fallout of neoliberal government policies, our political future is at stake. These times call for the type of critical theory and praxis that gave rise to the Frankfurt School in the 1920s and to the critical ferment of the 1970s. Yet, in the face of our crises today, contemporary critical theory seems disarmed.

Critical theory is in disarray because of a wave of anti-foundational challenges in the 1960s that shattered the epistemological foundations of the Frankfurt School. The …

Impeachment: A Handbook, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

Charles Black’s Impeachment: A Handbook, first published in 1974 at the height of the Watergate crisis, has become the authoritative guide on the subject of presidential impeachment. In September, the Yale University Press published a new edition of the classic handbook, incorporating a new preface and new material by constitutional theorist Philip Bobbitt. Bobbitt’s contribution to the new edition appears in the Essay that follows.

Because Professor Black’s original text had no accompanying notes, the publisher decided to continue this format in the new print edition. In this re-publication, the Journal worked with Bobbitt to present his chapters with …

Is The President A Traitor? A Legal Analysis, Noah Kupferberg

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Informal Networks Of Corruption: Assessing The Challenges For Public Sector Whistleblowing In Nigeria, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Recently, the Nigerian government adopted its first National Anti-Corruption Strategy—the first since its independence in 1960. While the strategy captures varying forms of corruption, whistleblowing is seen as one of the key strategies identified to confront anti-corruption in the public sector. The adoption of the whistleblowing policy and its on-going implementation however occurs without a legislative framework to protect whistleblowers. This article situates the whistleblower program in the wider socio-political context of anti-corruption in Nigeria, and public governance. The paper critically examines the implications of the legislative gaps for the long-term sustenance of the whistleblower protection program. This paper argues …

Courts In Federal Countries: Federalists Or Unitarists?, Hannah Steeves

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This book is the product of a comparative research project completed by the Forum of Federations and supported by the Government of Quebec. The Forum of Federations has the goal of linking academic research to real world practices and is supported and funded by international partners. Courts in Federal Countries: Federalists or Unitarists? contributes directly to this goal by providing a well-rounded, highly informed, comparative approach to the topic of the structural issues of federalism. This text is the first of a larger, forthcoming, seven volume series on federalism to be developed by the Forum of Federations.

Disproportionate Realities: The Climate Justice Implications Of Mitigation Policies Across Scales, Tinuviel Carlson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Global climate change will have disproportionate effects on low-income and minority communities around the world producing important justice challenges. As national governments increasingly rely on local governments, civil society, and private transnational actors to establish and implement climate actions policies, it is important to assess whether and how these newly emergent actors can address these justice challenges. First this thesis examines concepts of justice in relation to climate change across different scales in order to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework of climate justice. This conceptual framework expands the scale of the international climate justice movement address local concerns. Further, the …

The Next Reapportionment Revolution, Ashira Ostrow

Indiana Law Journal

In the 1960s, the Supreme Court famously imposed the one-person, one-vote requirement on federal, state, and local legislatures. The doctrine rapidly resolved the problem of malapportioned districts. Within just a few years, legislatures across the nation were reapportioned to equalize the population between districts. Sadly, however, the national commitment to equal-population districts has led directly to the current crisis of political gerrymandering. The boundaries of equal-population districts must be redrawn every ten years to maintain population equality. Even with rigid adherence to population requirements, district boundaries are easily manipulated to secure incumbent seats and advance partisan interests. Redistricting is rightly …

The Fortification Of Inequality: Constitutional Doctrine And The Political Economy, Kate Andrias

Indiana Law Journal

As Parts I and II of this Essay elaborate, the examination yields three observations of relevance to constitutional law more generally: First, judge-made constitutional doctrine, though by no means the primary cause of rising inequality, has played an important role in reinforcing and exacerbating it. Judges have acquiesced to legislatively structured economic inequality, while also restricting the ability of legislatures to remedy it. Second, while economic inequality has become a cause célèbre only in the last few years, much of the constitutional doctrine that has contributed to its flourishing is longstanding. Moreover, for several decades, even the Court’s more liberal …

Political Norms, Constitutional Conventions, And President Donald Trump, Neil S. Siegel

Indiana Law Journal

I will argue that what is most troubling about the conduct of President Trump during and since the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign is not any potential violations of the U.S. Constitution or federal law. There likely have been some such violations, and there may be more. But what is most troubling about President Trump is his disregard of political norms that had previously constrained presidential candidates and Presidents, and his flouting of nonlegal but obligatory “constitutional conventions” that had previously guided and disciplined occupants of the White House. These norms and conventions, although not “in” the Constitution, play a pivotal …

Keynote Speech: Walking The Line: Modern Gerrymandering And Partisanship, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos

Georgia Law Review

INTRODUCTION I am going to be discussing an ongoing project of mine that I call hyperpartisan election law. I make three main arguments in this project. The first is that almost all of election law was created during an unusually nonpartisan period in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Consistent with this period's very low level of partisanship, election law originally did not intend to, and did not actually have the effect, of addressing partisan cleavages. The second claim is that as the country's voters and politicians have become ever more partisan over the last generation, election law has adapted in …

The First Amendment Case Against Partisan Gerrymandering, Emmet J. Bondurant Ii, Ben W. Thorpe

Georgia Law Review

The Supreme Court recognizes that "[p]artisan
gerrymanders... [are incompatible] with democratic
principles."I This makes good sense. The fundamental
objective of redistrictingis to "establish 'fairand effective
representation for all citizens. '2 And partisan
gerrymandering-whichthe Supreme Court defines as
"drawing... district lines to subordinate adherents of
one political party and entrench a rival party in
power'--runs counter to that fundamental objective.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has yet to invalidate
a redistricting plan solely as an unconstitutional
partisan gerrymander. This Symposium issue of the
Georgia Law Review, however, comes at a crucial
moment in the Court's treatment of that question. A case
now …

The History Of Redistricting In Georgia, Charles S. Bullock Iii

Georgia Law Review

In his memoirs, Chief Justice Earl Warren singled out
the redistrictingcases as the most significant decisions of
his tenure on the Court., A review of the changes
redistricting introduced in Georgia supports Warren's
assessment. Not only have the obligations to equalize
populations across districts and to do so in a racially fair
manner transformed the makeup of the state's collegial
bodies, Georgia has provided the setting for multiple cases
that have defined the requirements to be met when
designing districts.
Other than the very first adjustments that occurred in
the 1960s, changes in Georgia plans had to secure
approval from …

Constitutional Preservation And The Judicial Review Of Partisan Gerrymanders, Edward B. Foley

Georgia Law Review

This Essay makes three contributions to the debate
over whether the Constitution contains a judicially
enforceable constrain on gerrymanders. First,it directly
tackles the Chief Justice'sfear of thejudiciaryappearing
partisan,observing that the same fear would exist if the
Constitution explicitly banned gerrymanders and
explaining why an implicit ban should be no less
judicially enforceable than an explicit ban under
Marbury v. Madison. Second, invoking the idea of
"institutional forbearance" in the important new book
How Democracies Die, the Essay shows how the
Elections Clause can be construed to protect
congressional districting from abuses of legislative
discretion committed by state legislatures. Together,
these …

Developing Communities Of Dialogue, Jonathan R. Cohen

UF Law Faculty Publications

We live in an age where American political discourse has become highly antagonistic. Such hostile discourse may influence not just our politics but also our private lives, for the abrasiveness that we witness in political life can readily spill over into our homes, our schools, and the other realms that we inhabit. How can we resist the spread of such antagonism? This Essay makes two basic claims. First, it is important that we consider dialogue as both an individual phenomenon and as a community-based phenomenon. How we speak with one another is a function of both our individual proclivities and …

Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, And Settler Prerogative In The United States, Natsu Taylor Saito

Faculty Publications By Year

The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States' greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout U.S. history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction inevitably …

A First Amendment Right To Corrupt Your Politician, Eugene Temchenko

Cornell Law Review

Are you dealing with state or federal agencies, to no avail? Do you need someone on top to advocate for you? You may have a right to buy your Governor’s help. It is well-established that the Constitution protects the right of political association, which includes contributions to candidates in return for ingratiation and access. Nonetheless, courts and scholars have generally limited this right to contributions to campaigns for public office. After McDonnell v. United States, that may change. Reading the McDonnell opinion in light of McCutcheon, this Note and other commentators conclude that the Supreme Court may have inadvertently created …

The United States, Mexico, And The War On Drugs In The Trump Administration, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the war on drugs as persecuted by the United States and how it has been exported to Mexico. It also explores the increased efforts in the drugs war that the Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice, is pursuing at a domestic level. Part I of this Article provides an outline of the dynamics in the quickly evolving and highly tense relationship between the United States and Mexico. Part II of this Article details the historical background of the U.S.-Mexico border region and demonstrates that the border has long been a contested site. Part III provides …

Prochoicelife: Asking Who Protects Life And How -- And Why It Matters In Law And Politics, Reva Siegel

Indiana Law Journal

In this Essay I reason from a “prochoicelife” perspective that asks whether government protects new life by means that respect women’s reproductive decisions. I develop a framework that allows us to compare the policies for protecting new life that governments choose and the values they demonstrate. This Essay’s critical framework connects policies on sexual education, contraception, abortion, health care, income assistance, and the accommodation of pregnancy and parenting in the workplace. It shows that some jurisdictions protect new life selectively, favoring policies for protecting new life that restrict women’s reproductive decisions over policies that respect women’s reproductive decisions.

This Essay …

There’S Nowhere To Hide: Artificial Intelligence And Privacy In The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Sarah Denton, Eleonore Pauwels, Yujia He, Walter G. Johnson

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

At its core, artificial intelligence (AI) optimizes data. Machine-learning algorithms, one component of AI, are trained using massive datasets curated by humans to predict various aspects of our daily lives. Such predictive intelligence could be a positive force amplified by continued decentralization of the technology. Or, ubiquitous cognition and surveillance could be a disruptive force amplified by the unregulated proliferation of AI technologies. Yet, though we will certainly see more and more AI systems being integrated into every facet of our infrastructures, homes, and bodies, the proliferation of AI technology isn’t the problem. A privacy-security quagmire arises from the interconnectivity …

Book Review: Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation By Renate Klein, Kate Rose

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Christians And Pagans, Abner S. Greene

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lobbying As A Strategy For Tribal Resilience, Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

Delegation Enforcement By State Attorneys General, Jonathan Shaub

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

State attorneys general have taken on an increasingly active role in challenging the actions of the federal government, and, in particular, the actions of the President. During the Obama Administration, state attorneys general began suing the federal government at an increasing rate, and these actions resulted in some of the most consequential judicial decisions of the time period—as both a matter of judicial precedent and a matter of policy impact. State-initiated action against the Obama Administration resulted in a new doctrine preventing state coercion, the implications of which are only starting to be recognized. It also resulted in court-ordered cessation …

Twitter And The #So-Calledjudge, Elizabeth G. Thornburg

SMU Law Review

Two-hundred-eighty characters may be insufficient to deliver a treatise on the judiciary, but it is more than enough to deliver criticism of the third branch of government. Today, these tweeted critiques sometimes come not from the general public but from the President himself. Attacks such as these come at a challenging time for court systems. We live in a highly politicized, polarized society. This polarization is reflected in attitudes toward the courts, particularly the federal courts. Unfortunately, public doubts about the court system come at a time when public understanding of the structure of government, and especially the court system, …

Bank Of America V. City Of Miami: Standing And Causation Under The Fair Housing Act, Alan M. White

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.