Law and Politics Commons^™

The Common Law Of Constitutional Conventions, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Jill Lepore’s Jorde Symposium lecture paints a rich portrait of state constitutional conventions as engines of democratization during the 1800s and issues a dire warning about the United States’ ongoing amendment drought. Citing their unfamiliarity, however, Lepore declines to consider federal constitutional conventions as a possible corrective. In this response Essay, I argue: first, that Lepore’s marginalization of Article V’s convention mechanism is in tension with her own historical and normative account; second, that while Lepore’s wariness of conventions is entirely understandable given the state of our politics — and entirely commonplace among progressives — it carries significant risks …

P*Law 2025: The Future Of The National Labor Relations Act Under Trump, Center For Public Service Law, Trader Joe's United, Julien, Mirer, Singla & Goldstein, Pllc, Working People’S Law Center

2024–2025 Flyers

A P*LAW 2025 panel on the future of the National Labor Relations Act under Trump, moderated by Jordan Pollack ’27, featuring attorneys from Goldstein & Singla PLLC and worker-organizers from Trader Joe’s United.

The Right To Truth In Transitional Justice, Nouran Hassan

Theses and Dissertations

Transitional justice is sought by nations suffering from legacies of human rights violations. The field of transitional justice stands on four main pillars: truth seeking, criminal justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence. It promotes utilizing legal and non-legal mechanisms to achieve a transition to democracy and the mechanisms employed must relate to, at least, one of its pillars. Truth is considered substantial for transitions to happen. Revealing the truth is believed to be essential for reconciliation and promoting peace. However, in various experiences the truth did not lead to reconciliation and was widely distorted. The approach of the transitional justice …

P*Law 2025: What’S Next? Reproductive Justice Under The Trump Administration, Center For Public Service Law, Shayna Medley, Jenny Ma, Chelsea Williams-Diggs, Bella Pori

2024–2025 Flyers

Hosted by Cardozo P*LAW 2025, this January 28 event explored abortion rights and reproductive justice under the Trump administration. Panelists discussed litigation, nonprofit advocacy, and policymaking at both state and federal levels, with a focus on how New York-based law students can support local efforts. Moderated by Bella Pori ’21.

How Safe Is Safe Enough? Analyzing The Incentive Structure Of The Products Liability Scheme On Commercial Aviation Manufacturers, Ethan Schwab

University of Miami Law Review

How do aviation manufacturers work to prevent tragedy? After tragedy strikes, how does the legal system’s imposition of a remedy change the operations and decision-making of these manufacturers, if at all? This Note explores whether the current products liability framework effectively achieves the goals of tort law—including whether it deters unsafe innovation in the high-risk commercial aviation manufacturing industry. The Note explores these topics through the lens of the recent Boeing 737 Max disasters of 2018 and 2019, using such disasters to exemplify the skewed incentive structure that manufacturers face in the modern products liability tort system. This Note argues …

The Forgotten Fundamental Right To Free Movement, Noah Smith-Drelich

Northwestern University Law Review

There is a powerful fundamental right hiding in plain sight: the fundamental right to free movement. This right goes beyond the consistently acknowledged—though infrequently applied—fundamental right to interstate travel. The true scope of the Constitution’s protection of movement through substantive due process safeguards local, interstate, and international travel. Though overlooked today, the fundamental right to free movement has deep roots in history and tradition, and in the decisions of numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

This Article is the first to examine freedom of movement using the history and tradition test for unenumerated fundamental rights. This Article …

Louboutin Lawfare: Exploring Conceptions Of Sanctions' Utility Through Export Controls On Luxury Goods, Vinita R. Singh

Northwestern University Law Review

There is widespread consensus amongst scholars that sanctions—the deliberate withdrawal of customary trade and financial relations—do not work. Despite this perception, states are deploying sanctions at an increasing rate. This Article explains this paradox by arguing the predominant notion of sanctions’ utility employed by scholars is unduly constrained, narrowly focusing on the ability of such measures to modify the behavior of sanctioned parties while disregarding the alternative benefits this instrument can deliver. To support this argument, this Article uses export controls on luxury goods deployed in connection with the Russo–Ukraine War as a case study. Under prevailing perceptions of sanctions’ …

Trump Should Pass On Project 2025'S Disparate Impact Plan, Susan D. Carle

Popular Media

Although President-elect Donald Trump disavowed reliance on, or even knowledge of, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda, his appointments and policy announcements have substantially tracked Project 2025 so far, suggesting that his administration will look to Project 2025 when choosing its goals.

The Untenability Of Justice Clarence Thomas's Indian Law Jurisprudence: Confronting The Indian Commerce Clause To Address The Problem Of Historical Change In Federal Indian Law, Skylar Logan Wiseman

American Indian Law Journal

By viewing the Indian Commerce Clause as conferring only a modest grant of federal power over Indian affairs—a power limited solely to trade in the economic sense of the word—Justice Clarence Thomas has subjected the Court’s Indian law jurisprudence to a wide-ranging originalist critique that, if successful, would invalidate nearly all of federal Indian law. Justice Thomas’s efforts to locate plenary power within the metes and bounds of the Indian Commerce Clause are here revealed for what they really are: attempts at tenability and coherence in a field of law which simultaneously bolsters tribal sovereignty while restricting it in ways …

International Book Essay - Militarism And Law In Africa: A Governing Paradox, Rabiat Akande

Articles & Book Chapters

SAMUEL FURY CHILDS DALY. Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa after Empire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024

Introduction—Corporate And Securities Law Responses To Climate Change: Law And Political Economy Perspectives, Sarah C. Haan, Faith Stevelman

Scholarly Articles

This introductory essay has two parts. First, we address differences between the Law and Economics perspective and the Law and Political Economy (LPE) perspective on business and securities law and climate change. For example, an LPE approach—with its concern for discerning winners and losers and how power operates through law—rejects the facile separation of public and private law concerns. LPE repudiates the common notion that business law is and should solely be about maximizing shareholder wealth, with all else falling to government ex post. Indeed, elsewhere we have written about this as a misleading and harmful “separate spheres” conceit (Stevelman …

Labor And Environment Entwined: A Radical Green New Deal And Just Transition In Applachia, Anne Marie Lofaso, Nicholas F. Stump

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In this Article, Professor Lofaso and Professor Stump propose a genuinely transformative Green New Deal and Just Transition in Appalachia. The Article opens by tracing the long history of the Appalachian labor and environmental movements. Next, the Article interrogates the common contention that the Appalachian environmental and labor movements are opposed. While this contention has substantial truth, more complex forces have been at work in the region. Fossil fuel industry elites, for instance, have wielded exaggerated “jobs versus environment” rhetoric to maximize profits and quash emergent solidarities among local workers, residents, and activists.

This Article contends that a key solution …

Insurrection And Black Political Participation, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

The Reconstruction Congress envisioned a comprehensive set of rights and structural protections in the Fourteenth Amendment to establish and preserve a multiracial democracy. The Fourteenth Amendment’s third section, the Insurrection Clause, may seldom have been enforced in recent memory, but it remains a vital part of the Amendment’s framework. The Insurrection Clause bars any state or federal government official who participates in a rebellion or insurrection after taking an oath to support the Constitution from serving in such a position again. In Trump v. Anderson, the Supreme Court was given a choice to either enforce the Insurrection Clause’s protection …

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Letters From A Fragmented Democracy, Maureen Edobor

Scholarly Articles

This piece confronts the stakes of our current trajectory by looking to the future. It presents six fictional letters to illustrate where today’s ominous currents could lead. In this imagined tomorrow, contemporary voting restrictions, judicial erosion, and administrative manipulation have gradually hollowed out the franchise, transforming formal democracy into little more than an empty spectacle. Each letter voices a different facet of democratic erosion: a voter disenfranchised by bureaucratic hurdles, a candidate’s voice hijacked by deepfake technology, a neighbor ensnared by punitive voting laws, a community erased by gerrymandering, a campaign drowned in dark money, and even a corporate memo …

Quota Reform, Repression, And The Fight For Human Rights In Bangladesh, Noreen Tareque

Human Rights Brief

On June 5, 2024, the High Court of Bangladesh ruled against the government’s decision to cancel the country’s quota system, stating that the decision to cancel the system in 2018 was invalid. This meant the country would go back to using the quota system to assign government jobs to students after they had completed their higher education. The quota system established that 30% of Bangladesh’s government jobs were reserved for the children and family members of freedom fighters who lost their lives during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 against Pakistan.  Additionally, the quota system reserved 10% for women affected …

Third-Party Funding In Treaty-Based Arbitration: Towards A More Transparent And Responsible System?, Margie-Lys Jaime R.

Arbitration Brief

Third-Party Funding (“TPF”) has become the “new kid on the block” of long-established stakeholders in international arbitration. However, despite the increasing use of TPF, few countries have undertaken the task of regulating the intervention of funders. Even in countries where the practice of TPF is regulated, it is generally in codes of conduct or non-binding instruments.

Forced Arbitration In Tesla’S Consumer Contracts, Abigail Hug

Arbitration Brief

The Supreme Court has supported the FAA’s preference for enforcing arbitration clauses and has extended it to forced arbitration provisions. In DirecTV v. Imburgia, the Supreme Court upheld a mandatory arbitration clause in a consumer service agreement, which additionally prohibited class arbitration. The Court reasoned that the FAA clearly states that written provisions in contracts that mandate arbitration are enforceable as all other contracts are enforceable. Companies throughout the United States use forced arbitration for employment and consumer contracts, including those for car leases. Forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts ensure that customers settle their disputes with a company through …

For Whom Is International Law?, E. Tendayi Achiume

American University International Law Review

Grotius Lecturer E. Tendayi Achiume and Distinguished Discussant Jamil Dakwar provided the Twenty-Seventh Annual Grotius Lecture on Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 5:00 p.m.

The Tightrope Walk Of Ftas: Balancing The Relationship Between Foreign Investments And Public Interests, Savannah Kelly

Arbitration Brief

Investors have the right to protect their investments just as host states have the right to protect public interests, otherwise recognized as public interest regulation. Arbitration can disrupt the balance between state and investor rights when it whittles away or strips entirely the state’s regulatory autonomy. Public interest regulation, such as environmental protection, remains critical as it holds states simultaneously accountable to, inter alia, their constituents as well as international norms and conventions. A trade agreement provision that infringes upon a state’s regulatory liberty may force it to navigate a complex legal landscape in which commitments to domestic and international …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Asian Pacific Investments In Latin America: A Corporate And Tax Perspective, Nicolás Muñiz

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Unraveling The Ties That Bind: How Dobbs And Loper Bright Might Reconfigure American Party Politics, Gregory A. Elinson

College of Law Faculty Publications

What happens to partisan politics when long-standing doctrinal equilibria are upended? In search of answers, this essay engages in an extended comparison of two recent landmark Supreme Court rulings: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overruled Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

It begins with the observation that opposition to abortion and judicial deference on the right, and support for abortion and judicial deference on the left, helped unite the major party coalitions, forging durable alliances among elected officials, organized interests, donors, activists, …

Kobaliya V. Russia: Curtailing Civil Society Through Labels Of Foreign Influence., Alida Blendonohy

Human Rights Brief

In a January 2025 judgment, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) held in the case of Kobaliya and Others v. Russia that the application of Russia’s foreign agent legislation violated Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the European Con­vention on Human Rights (“ECHR”) which pro­tect the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and respect for private and family life.

In Kobaliya, the ECtHR assessed Russia’s foreign agent legislation, its evolution since 2012, and its increasing restrictiveness. In its initial 2012 enactment, the law applied to nongovernmental organizations (“NGOs”) that participated in political activity with foreign funding, …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

The Ideational Dimension Of Judicial Power, Allen C. Sumrall

Marquette Law Review

The judiciary dominates contemporary American politics. In the United States, courts have overcome their humble origins to act as central figures in nearly every major policy dispute and separation of powers dispute. To explain this development, scholars have documented the increase in the federal judiciary’s institutional capacity and resources. Most accounts of the judiciary’s changing role in American constitutional politics focus on the courts’ expanded jurisdiction, the statutes that channel judicial review, the courts’ material resources, or changes to how politicians harness or respond to the judiciary. But focusing on these more formal institutional changes only gets us so far. …

Gender, Race, And Interruptions At Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Lori A. Ringhand, Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr.

Scholarly Works

In this research letter, we examine whether gender and racial bias affect interruption rates at one of the most visible events in American politics: US Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Using original data from 1939 to 2022, we find that male and white participants are more likely to interrupt women and person of color speakers, respectively, relative to male and white speakers. This finding holds for both senators and nominees as interrupters. Our results provide evidence that biased interruptive behavior occurs in even the most public and salient of political settings and that it can be mitigated (or intensified) by shared …

Dignitatis Humanae, Francis J. Beckwith

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Sixty years ago the Second Vatican Council issued the document Dignitatis Humanae, a declaration on religious freedom. At the time it was considered to be the Catholic Church's most significant concession to the modern world, though the Council argued that the declaration was, given the political and religious realities at the time, a legitimate doctrinal development rooted in the Church's most ancient teachings. Its defense of religious liberty relied on widely held and uncontroversial beliefs about human nature, the common good, and the meaning of religion. But since the beginning of the 21st century those beliefs have been challenged …

Developing Human-Centric Informational Security, Jonathon W. Penney

Articles & Book Chapters

Disinformation and information manipulation are widely seen as an urgent threat to democracy, but less often as a cybersecurity threat. Historically, disinformation has rarely been included in lists of recognized threats in cybersecurity manuals and appendices of global standards organizations and only recently has disinformation been approached as a cybersecurity threat, with only a handful of works offering a more focused and systematic discussion on this point. This chapter aims to help fill this void by arguing not only that disinformation and information manipulation is a cybersecurity threat, but that the present predominant cybersecurity paradigm is largely inadequate to address …