Law and Politics Commons^™

Making Appointment The Means Of Presidential Removal Of Officers Of The United States, David M. Driesen

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Article examines the relationship between appointment and removal of officers of the United States, focusing on the administrations of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump. These administrations’ use of appointment and removal underlines the potential tension between political removal accomplished without Senate approval of a successor and the Constitution’s goal of securing the rule of law.

To remedy these issues, this Article proposes that Congress pass a statute forbidding presidential removal of an agency head (and other Senate-approved appointees) until the President nominates a qualified successor or until the Senate confirms a successor. Integrating Appointments Clause …

The Intersection Of Judicial Interpretive Methods And Politics In Supreme Court Justices’ Due Process Opinions, Julie Castle

Capstone Showcase

The Supreme Court, a nine seat bench of unelected and lifetime tenured Justices, determines the constitutionality of dozens of cases each year. In this thesis, I research to what extent the political affiliation of the Justices affect the judicial decision making process and, ultimately, outcomes. Using pattern matching, I evaluate due process opinions from Justice Breyer, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Scalia, all of whom have established constitutional analysis methods, in order to determine if they reasonably adhere to their established method. Due to the highly political nature of due process cases, variance between the expected (adherence to the Justices’ established …

A Culture Of Institutional Racism: Housing Policies During The New Deal, Breyonna J. Bowen

Capstone Showcase

There currently exists a distressed relationship between African Americans and housing due to previously enacted policies. In looking at this issue, I aim to use the theory of institutional racism to explain how past housing policies that enforce and perpetuate discrimination have impacted this current relationship. Through the method of policy analysis, I attempt to pinpoint where past housing policies have failed to provide housing to many African Americans. I find that there are several policies that were enacted during 1930s and 40s, specifically the New Deal Era, that inflicted discriminatory housing policies on African Americans. The findings indicate that …

#Metoo: Music Industry Edition, Nazarene Anderson

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Weathering The Storm: Is California’S Anti-Harassment Education Training The Life Preserver Lgbtq Youth Have Been Hoping For?, Natalie Purcell O'Dwyer

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Restating The "F" Word: The Cursing Cheerleader, The First Amendment, And Proximate Cause, Don Corbett

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Special Issue On Racial Capitalism And Law, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Countering Gerrymandered Courts, Jed H. Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

The key insight in Professor Miriam Seifter’s outstanding article Countermajoritarian Legislatures is that state legislatures are usually antidemocratic due to partisan gerrymandering, whereas state governors and judiciaries are insulated from gerrymandering by statewide elections (or selection), and thus they should have a more prominent role in framing election law and in enforcing the separation of powers.

This Piece offers a friendly amendment: These observations are true, so long as states do not gerrymander their state supreme courts into antidemocratic districts. The problem is that historically, judicial elections emerged generally as districted elections, and often with regional and partisan politics shaping …

The "End" Of Neutrality: Tumultuous Times Require A Deeper Value, Carol Pauli

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

American political talk has grown so fragmented and polarized that some observers say that "[w]e are no longer in any 'public conversation." Accusations of "fake news" are followed by disheartening discoveries that providing people with accurate information may only serve to further entrench their erroneous beliefs. One longtime journalism professor worries aloud that "what's at risk is the idea of a public that is even 'inform-able."' Putting the problem in terms familiar to mediation, can we get the parties back to the table? This essay will focus on journalists, whose ideal has been to maintain a neutral position from which …

How To Resolve Capital Cases Through Pretrial Mediation, Clare Haugh

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Adam Lawson sat in shackles, cradling his head in his hands, rocking back and forth. He was waiting in the State Attorney's Office in Jacksonville, Florida, preparing to meet the Liles family, whose matriarch had been the victim of a home invasion and homicide he committed over a year earlier. Mr. Lawson was charged with capital murder, and his case was the third in a series of attempted mediations in death-eligible criminal cases by the State Attorney for Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit.

Speaking Arabic In Israel: "He Whose Hand Is In The Water Is Not Like Whose Hand Is In The Fire", Yael Efron, Mohammed S. Wattad

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Collective Policy Design: An Inclusive Approach To Legislative Negotiation, Joseph Crupi

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Members of legislatures often do not have equal opportunities to participate in legislative negotiations. The lack of inclusiveness in legislative negotiations may result in suboptimal policy outcomes and undermine representative democracy. Legislatures face two categories of barriers to conducting inclusive negotiations: (1) the scope and complexity of legislative negotiations and (2) members' lack of incentives and capacity to engage in inclusive negotiations. Legislatures may be able to overcome these barriers by synthesizing and applying insights from agile project management, design thinking, collective intelligence, social choice theory, and interest-based negotiation. Specifically, legislatures may be able to conduct negotiations that are both …

Reclamation: Managing Water In The West; An Overview Of The Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program, United States Bureau Of Reclamation, Roger S. Otstot

US Government Documents Related to Indigenous Nations

This undated summary released by the Bureau of Reclamation offers a concise overview of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin flood control plan which was enacted when Congressed passed the Flood Control Act of 1944. This plan led to the construction of several dams in the Missouri River basin, including the Garrison Dam. The completion of the Garrison Dam displaced the majority of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people living on the Fort Berthold Reservation. This document contains tables, graphs, maps, and a photograph.

Lumpy Social Goods In Energy Decarbonization: Why We Need More Than Just Markets For The Clean Energy Transition, Daniel E. Walters

University of Colorado Law Review

To avoid the worst consequences of global climate change, the United States must achieve daunting targets for decarbonizing its electric power sector on a very short timescale. Policy experts largely agree that achieving these goals will require massive investment in new infrastructure to facilitate the deep integration of renewable fuels into the electric grid, including a new national high-voltage electric transmission network and grid-scale electricity storage, such as batteries. However, spurring investment in these needed infrastructures has proven to be challenging, despite numerous attempts by regulators and policymakers to clear a path for market-driven investment. Unchecked, this problem threatens to …

Tightwire Of National Interests And Publicity In The Evolved Process Of Democratization And Constitutional Transformation: Lessons From Taiwan, Hsin-Hsuan Lin

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Achieving an optimal balance between government secrecy and democratic accountability has led to long-standing questions in the discussion of contemporary constitutionalism. To address the complex contemporary phenomenon of government secrecy within a democratic society, a more in-depth understanding of its tension with democratic accountability and transparency is essential. This article provides a descriptive overview of Taiwan's legal system, its legal implications in relation to government secrecy, and its normative implications. The article begins with a historical background of Taiwan's legal system, focusing on legal reform as it relates to government secrecy. The article investigates the complex interactions between the administrative, …

Corporate Capital & Legal Personality: A Marxist Account Of Citizens United Ten Years Later, Hayden E. Pendergrass

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article presents a Marxist critique of the Citizens United decision, arguing that it embodies the dominant capitalist ideology by granting corporations extensive First Amendment rights. This decision reflects the legal system's role in reinforcing corporate power and control over the political process, aligning with Marxist theories of law as a tool of class domination.

Filling Lower Court Vacancies In Congress' Lame Duck Session, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In this midterm election year of 2022, the nation’s divided political parties are in a battle royale to win the exceedingly close Senate majority. One important explanation for the fight is that the party which assumes the next Senate majority will necessarily have considerable power to affect the confirmation of federal judges. For example, during Donald Trump’s presidency, Republicans controlled the Senate; therefore, the chief executive and the upper chamber proposed and confirmed fifty-four accomplished,
extremely conservative, young appeals court, and 174 district court, jurists. The Republican White House and Senate majority confirmed judges by rejecting or deemphasizing the rules …

Defending The Defenders: Why Bureaucratic Independence Is A Necessary Supplement To Judicial Defense Of Democracy The Specter Of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling Of Presidential Power, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

A familiar story is being observed in countries ranging from Brazil to Australia, the United States, and Poland, as elected executives deploy a populist threat narrative to politicize the rule of law and entrench themselves in power. Out of the academy, a growing literature on democratic “backsliding” or “decline” proposes a menu of “guardrails” for shoring up democracy from gradual collapse. Broadly, these guardrails fall under two headings: I call one judicial, the other bureaucratic. The former looks to the power of judicial review, under which courts may invalidate enactments that threaten, not just the Constitution, but the very democratic …

Political Ideology And Judicial Administration: Evidence From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Kyle Rozema, Adam Chilton, Christopher Anthony Cotropia, David L. Schwartz

Scholarship@WashULaw

We study the effect of political ideology on the administration of the judiciary by investigating how the chief judges of federal district courts set courthouse policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, we use novel data on the geographic boundaries of federal courts and on the contents of pandemic orders. We account for state and local conditions and policies by leveraging district courts in states that have multiple judicial districts and that have courthouses in multiple counties, and we isolate the effect of chief ideology by using simulations that difference out unobserved district-level effects. We find no …

Revisiting America's Guardrails The Constitution And Democratic Erosion Symposium, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

A familiar story is being observed in countries ranging from Brazil to Australia, the United States, and Poland as elected executives deploy a populist threat narrative to politicize the rule of law and entrench themselves in power. Out of the academy, a growing literature proposes a menu of “guardrails” for shoring up democracy from backsliding or decline. Some see guardrails in society and culture, calling for rebuilding civic norms of tolerance. Others call for stricter rules in administering elections, to prevent undue influence. Others call for greater judicial intervention, tasking courts with striking down enactments that threaten the constitution or …

Judicial Compliance In District Courts, Jens Frankenreiter, Daniel L. Chen

Scholarship@WashULaw

Public enforcement of law relies on the use of public agents, such as judges, to follow the law. Are judges motivated only by strategic interests and ideology, as many models posit, rather than a duty to follow the law? We use the random assignment of U.S. Federal judges setting geographically-local precedent to document the causal impact of court decisions in a hierarchical legal system. We examine lower court cases filed before and resolved after higher court decisions and find that lower courts are 29-37% points more likely to rule in the manner of the higher court. The results obtain when …

The Intergenerational Equity Case For A Wealth Tax, Daniel Schaffa

Law Faculty Publications

Intergenerational equity is commonly set aside in favor of other policy objectives, perhaps because of the extreme challenges inherent in adopting and applying an intergenerational equity normative framework. Even when there is a near consensus that the choices of today will have substantial costs in the future, these costs are often downplayed or disregarded. This Article asks whether there are measures that might offer redress to a generation for the costs imposed on it by its predecessors and finds that a one-time wealth tax is a promising option. Although its analysis applies more generally, this Article focuses on the widely …

A Human Rights Approach To Cultural Property: Repatriating The Yaqui Maaso Kova, Kristen A. Carpenter

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The article argues that current legal frameworks for repatriating cultural property, such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention, are insufficient because they are state-centric and fail to address the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples. It advocates for a human rights approach, emphasizing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to remedy past injustices and ensure the repatriation of sacred objects like the Yaqui Maaso Kova. This approach prioritizes Indigenous Peoples' rights to religion, culture, and self-determination over state interests.

How Biden Could Keep Filling The Federal Circuit Court Vacancies, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

In October 2020, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speculated that the fifty-four talented, extremely conservative, and exceptionally young, appellate court judges whom then-President Donald Trump and two relatively similar Grand Old Party (GOP) Senate majorities appointed had left the federal appeals courts “out of whack.” Problematic were the many deleterious ways in which Trump and both of the upper chamber majorities in the 115th and 116th Senate undermined the courts of appeals, which are the courts of last resort for practically all lawsuits, because the United States Supreme Court hears so few appeals. The nomination and confirmation processes which Trump …

Criminal “Justice” As Racial Justice?, Aya Gruber

Publications

No abstract provided.

Study On The Implementation Of Indigenous Rights Based Fisheries, Constance Macintosh

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Thank you once again for inviting me to speak with you on March 22, 2022. It was an honour. I really appreciated the questions that members posed, and the dialogue. As per your request, I am providing my core recommendations for you to consider as you develop your report on implementing the Indigenous rights-based fishery.

The Complex Dualisms Of Corporations And Democracy, Franklin A. Gevurtz

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

These are perilous times for American democracy. Among the threats, many point to the power of corporations. This article examines that threat by considering a series of dualisms characterizing the relationship between corporations and democracy. This begins with a look at the anti- as well as the pro-democratic impacts of the earliest corporations and the paradoxes with respect to democracy created during the evolution of corporate law. The article then looks at internal corporate governance (so-called “corporate” or “shareholder democracy”) to show how, on the one hand, it contains features addressing some of the greatest current threats to American democracy, …

Litigating The Separation Of Powers, Elizabeth Earle Beske

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of The Federalist Society On Judical Politics And Law In The United States, Peter S. K. Lynch

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation examines the Federalist Society, which is a network of conservative and libertarian attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. The organization was founded by law students at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School in 1982, and has, over the last four decades, come to play a central role in law and politics in the United States. Individuals affiliated with the Federalist Society influence the law through a variety of avenues.

Federalist Society-members advance the goals of the conservative legal movement in a variety of capacities—by writing amicus curiae briefs providing the …

'The Perfect Shouldn't Be The Enemy Of The Good' — What Canada Can Do Today, Tomorrow & Next Week To Enhance Equitable Access To Covid-19 Biopharmaceutical Interventions, Matthew Herder

Reports & Public Policy Documents

There is overwhelming evidence of inequitable access to a range of COVID-19 targeting biopharmaceutical interventions, including not only vaccines but also anti-viral drug therapies, diagnostic tests, and various materials that are incorporated into these products. As recently explained by Yamey et al. in the British Medical Journal, inequitable access is baked into every phase of the biopharmaceutical system—from production and allocation to affordability and deployment. Yet, it is still possible to improve access to these critically important biopharmaceutical interventions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Intellectual property (IP) rights are one crucial site where policy intervention can make an immediate …