Law and Politics Commons^™

What About The Morality Of Torture, Results Aside?, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Modeling The Congressional End-Run Constraint, Luke M. Milligan

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Incredible Shrinking Free Exercise Clause, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

An Essay Concerning Judicial Resignation And Non-Cooperation In The Presence Of Evil, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Aryans, Gender, And American Politics, Robert Tsai

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This short essay discusses some of the ways in which the Aryan movement in America activates gendered beliefs for the goal of legal, political, and cultural transformation. In recent years, the community has moved from common law theories of white sovereignty to more robust forms of racial constitutionalism. The piece is drawn from "America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions of Power and Community"

Beyond Formalist Sovereignty: Who Can Represent "We The People Of The United States" Today?, David Chang

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawmakers As Lawbreakers, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov

William & Mary Law Review

How would Congress act in a world without judicial review? Can
lawmakers be trusted to police themselves? This Article examines
Congress’s capacity and incentives to enforce upon itself “the law of
congressional lawmaking”—a largely overlooked body of law that is
completely insulated from judicial enforcement. The Article explores
the political safeguards that may motivate lawmakers to engage in
self-policing and rule-following behavior. It identifies the major
political safeguards that can be garnered from the relevant legal,
political science, political economy, and social psychology scholarship,
and evaluates each safeguard by drawing on a combination of
theoretical, empirical, and descriptive studies about …

Barack Obama And Congress: How The Rules Of The Caucus Hinder The President’S Legislative Agenda, Jordan Acker

Legislation and Policy Brief

In order to fix the Democratic caucus, strong leadership, combined with effective rules, are needed. First, the overall leadership needs to be restructured according to the ideology of the caucus. While strong leadership may come from the center or the left, it is important that leadership tend toward the center of the caucus, not the national political center. A moderate member of the caucus who is under no threat of removal, such as Senator Schumer, Senator Stabenow, or Senator Durbin, would make effective leaders. Part of the problem with the current leadership is, at times, it has failed to “pull …

Why The Honest Leadership And Open Government Act Of 2007 Falls Short, And How It Could Be Improved, Rand Robins

Legislation and Policy Brief

This paper will examine the track record of federal and state lobbying and campaign finance laws, as well as related First Amendment litigation, and propose alternative regulatory regimes accounting for the concerns raised when lobbying and campaign finance intersect. The scope of this paper will be limited in large measure by focusing on the HLOGA registration and disclosure provisions, and addressing campaign finance law tangentially where appropriate. Intended to bring greater transparency to the inner-workings of government, some of these provisions actually facilitate the potential of a small number of lobbyists to distort the political process.

Tax Relief In The American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009, Steven Gassert

Legislation and Policy Brief

On February 17, 2009, less than thirty days after his inauguration, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This new law was one of many measures from the new administration designed to quickly stimulate the ailing American economy. The $789 billion package was divided between direct government spending, tax reductions and financial relief to states and individuals. The bill contains $285.6 billion in tax reductions, which is about 36.3% of the legislation. In this article, I will analyze some of the tax provisions that were written into ARRA, and attempt to assess their …

Breathing New Life Into Old Technological Infrastructure: Broadband Internet As A Means Of Jump-Starting The Economy And Connecting The Country, Elizabeth Chernow

Legislation and Policy Brief

This paper examines the current structure of universal service and the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, recent pushes to expand the definition of and funding for universal service to include broadband access, and how broadband internet can contribute to saving the ailing economy. This paper concludes by calling for the inclusion of broadband internet in the Universal Service Fund.

The Model Rules Of Professional Conduct And Political Campaign Activities, Lauren Gilius

Legislation and Policy Brief

This article will examine whether the American Bar Association’s (“ABA”) Model Rules of Professional Conduct (“Model Rules”) should apply to lawyers in situations where a lawyer-candidate or a lawyer involved in a disingenuous political campaign activity, particularly when the lawyer was not convicted on criminal charges. Though the American Bar Association said that the Model Rules apply to dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation by lawyers, even when acting in a non-professional capacity, the support for applying the Rules in this context is lacking.

This article will first briefly discuss the development of applying the Model Rules to the non-professional conduct, …

Help America Vote Act Enforcement, Tiana Butcher

Legislation and Policy Brief

Although the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) features extensive mandates, its enforcement provisions of are weaker than those found in previous federal election reform laws, including the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Activists argue this limited enforcement power is a failing of the Act. Congress may have chosen to adopt weak enforcement mechanisms due to political posturing, lack of funding, faulty technology, or lobbying by the states. Regardless of the reason behind this choice, stronger enforcement mechanisms in HAVA would, paradoxically, fail to encourage election reform or deter election reform altogether.

A Turbulent Debate In The Ocean State, Dylan D. Lynch

Senior Honors Projects

Rhode Island has in many ways become the last battleground in a national state-by-state battle over the legalization of gay marriage. It is the last state in the country to not have a definitive stance on whether or not same-sex marriages should be legal and can be performed within the state’s borders, or should be banned and marriage defined solely as the union of a man and a woman. The state is currently undergoing a substantial swing in public support on gay marriage, moving from just 34% in 2004, to 60% in 2009. This rise in support for legalizing gay …

Improving Federal Judicial Selection, Carl Tobias

University of Richmond Law Review

Part I descriptively analyzes the volume. Part II evaluates the many insights Wittes contributes to readers' appreciation of contemporary federal judicial selection. Part III details numerous recommendations.

Constitutional Caution, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

The Future Of God—And Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

The Future Of God—And Secularism, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

John Yoo And Jay Bybee Dodge Disciplinary Action But Recall Nuremberg, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Seeking Common Ground: A Secular Statement, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

The New New Secularism And The End Of The Law Of The Separation Of Church And State, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Purple Haze (Book Review), Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

This is a review of Red Families v Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture. By Naomi Cahn & June Carbone. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010

Edzia Carvalho On Human Rights: Politics And Practice. Edited By Michael Goodhart. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 455pp., Edzia Carvalho

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights: Politics and Practice. Edited by Michael Goodhart. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 455pp.

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" …

Review Essay: Religion And Politics 2008-2009: Sometimes You Get What You Pray For, Leslie C. Griffin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Melancholy Citizenship, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

As a body of work, the poetry of Langston Hughes presents a vision of how members of a political community ought to comport themselves, particularly when politics yield few tangible solutions to their problems. Confronted with human degradation and bitter disappointment, the best course of action may be to abide by the ethics of melancholy citizenship. A mournful disposition is associated with four democratic virtues: candor, pensiveness, fortitude, and self-abnegation. Together, these four characteristics lead us away from democratic heartbreak and toward political renewal. Hughes’s war-themed poems offer a richly layered example of melancholy ethics in action. They reveal how …

“God” Is Just Another Word, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Rebuilding The Wall Of Separation: A Progressive Discussion On Church & State, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

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

Human Rights Law On Trial In The Drc, William Paul Simmons

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The ongoing tragedy in Eastern Congo contains so many tragic lessons that it should shake to their very foundations all comfortable ideologies about human rights and politics. The atrocities in the DRC should implicate all but have so far resulted in almost limitless impunity. Here, I briefly put human rights law on trial for its role in perpetuating this tragedy.

Federal And State Judicial Selection In An Interest Group Perspective, Rafael Gely, Michael E. Solimine

Faculty Publications

The literature on judicial selection systems has given considerable attention to the role that politicians and their parties - through their legislative roles - have played in the adoption and operation of these judicial selection systems. Less attention, however, has been given to both the effect that interest groups, broadly defined, have in the creation and implementation of judicial selection systems and the effect that these systems have on the strategies adopted by interest groups to accomplish their goals. This Article seeks to fill this gap. Using the framework advanced by William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner in their …