Law and Politics Commons^™

Book Review: The Pimping Of Prostitution: Abolishing The Sex Work Myth By Julie Bindel, Roger Matthews

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball, Joseph Fishkin, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Many have argued that the United States' two major political parties have experienced "asymmetric polarization" in recent decades: The Republican Party has moved significantly further to the right than the Democratic Party has moved to the left. The practice of constitutional hardball, this Essay argues, has followed a similar – and causally related – trajectory. Since at least the mid-1990s, Republican officeholders have been more likely than their Democratic counterparts to push the constitutional envelope, straining unwritten norms of governance or disrupting established constitutional understandings. Both sides have done these things. But contrary to the apparent assumption of some legal …

The Search For An Egalitarian First Amendment, Jeremy K. Kessler, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, the Roberts Court has handed down a series of rulings that demonstrate the degree to which the First Amendment can be used to thwart economic and social welfare regulation – generating widespread accusations that the Court has created a "new Lochner." This introduction to the Columbia Law Review's Symposium on Free Expression in an Age of Inequality takes up three questions raised by these developments: Why has First Amendment law become such a prominent site for struggles over socioeconomic inequality? Does the First Amendment tradition contain egalitarian elements that could be recovered? And what might a …

Beyond The Bosses' Constitution: The First Amendment And Class Entrenchment, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s “weaponized” First Amendment has been its strongest antiregulatory tool in recent decades, slashing campaign-finance regulation, public-sector union financing, and pharmaceutical regulation, and threatening a broader remit. Along with others, I have previously criticized these developments as a “new Lochnerism.” In this Essay, part of a Columbia Law Review Symposium, I press beyond these criticisms to diagnose the ideological outlook of these opinions and to propose an alternative. The leading decisions of the antiregulatory First Amendment often associate free speech with a vision of market efficiency; but, I argue, closer to their heart is antistatist fear of entrenchment …

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 …

Judicial Intervention As Judicial Restraint, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the Court's decision in Gil v. Whitford. It advances two claims. First, it provides a comprehensive account of the Court's skepticism of judicial supervision of democratic politics, an account that we call the narrative of nonintervention. It situates Gill within that account and argues that the Court's reluctance to intervene is a function of the Court's institutional calculus that it ought to protect its legitimacy and institutional capital when it engages in what look like political fights. Second, the paper provides an instrumentalist account for judicial intervention. It argues that the Court should intervene to prevent partisan …

State Public-Law Litigation In An Age Of Polarization, Margaret H. Lemos, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Public-law litigation by state governments plays an increasingly prominent role in American governance. Although public lawsuits by state governments designed to challenge the validity or shape the content of national policy are not new, such suits have increased in number and salience over the last few decades — especially since the tobacco litigation of the late 1990s. Under the Obama and Trump Administrations, such suits have taken on a particularly partisan cast; “red” states have challenged the Affordable Care Act and President Obama’s immigration orders, for example, and “blue” states have challenged President Trump’s travel bans and attempts to roll …

The United States As An Idea: Constitutional Reflections, H. Jefferson Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Original Theory Of Constitutionalism, David Singh Grewal, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution embodies a conception of democratic sovereignty that has been substantially forgotten and obscured in today’s commentary. Recovering this original idea of constitution-making shows that today’s originalism is, ironically, unfaithful to its origins in an idea of self-rule that prized both the initial ratification of fundamental law and the political community’s ongoing power to reaffirm or change it. This does not mean, however, that living constitutionalism better fits the original conception of democratic self-rule. Rather, because the Constitution itself makes amendment practically impossible, it all but shuts down the very form of democratic sovereignty that authorizes it. No …

How Constitutional Norms Break Down, Josh Chafetz, David E. Pozen

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

From the moment Donald Trump was elected President, critics have anguished over a breakdown in constitutional norms. History demonstrates, however, that constitutional norms are perpetually in flux. The principal source of instability is not that these unwritten rules can be destroyed by politicians who deny their legitimacy, their validity, or their value. Rather, the principal source of instability is that constitutional norms can be decomposed—dynamically interpreted and applied in ways that are held out as compliant but end up limiting their capacity to constrain the conduct of government officials.

This Article calls attention to that latent instability and, in so …

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, …

Faith-Based Emergency Powers, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores an expanding phenomenon that it calls Faith-Based Emergency Powers. In the twenty-first century, conservatives have come to rely heavily on Faith-Based Emergency Powers as a legal strategy in the culture wars. This typically involves carving faith-based exceptions to rights of women and LGBT people. The novel concept of Faith-Based Emergency Powers is developed in this Article through an analogy to “traditional” emergency powers. In the war-on-terror, conservatives have argued that judges, legislators and the public must defer to the President and the executive branch in matters involving national security. As scholars have shown, this position has three …

Justice As Fair Division, Ian C. Bartrum

Scholarly Works

The current hyperpoliticization of the Court grows out of a feedback loop between politicized appointments and politicized decision-making. This Article suggests a change in the internal procedures by which the Court hears and decides particular cases. A three-Justice panel hears and decides each case. Appeal to an en banc sitting of the entire Court would require a unanimous vote of all non-recused Justices. This Article explores several possible approaches in selecting the three-Justice panel. This Article proposes that applying a fair division scheme to the Court's decision-making process might act to reverse this loop and work to depoliticize the Court …

Chasing Shadows: The Economic And Noneconomic Thrust Of Bds, Harry G. Hutchison

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Proponents of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in combination with left-wing activists and progressive theorists, sustain themselves through perceived adversity with the mantra that the universe evolves toward justice, which, in turn, allows for a focused indignation on Israel for alleged abuses of the Palestinian people. In this account, Israel's conduct thwarts desirable human progress and deserves reproof Alternatively, ire erupts because Israeli Jews are being, well, Jews. Despite persuasive evidence showing the contention that the Arabs of Palestine and the Land of Israel possess the same legal rights as the Jewish people contradicts principles of international law, …

The Language Of Neutrality In Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, Carolyn Shapiro

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

At Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing, then-Judge Gorsuch repeatedly insisted that judging involves no more than examining the legal materials—like statutes and precedents— and applying them to the facts of the case. There is, he emphasized, no room for a Justice’s “personal views,” and he refused even to state his agreement (or disagreement) with such iconic cases as Loving v. Virginia and Griswold v. Connecticut. Instead, then Judge Gorsuch reiterated only that they were precedents of the Court and thus entitled to respect. Frustrating as his answers may have been to some senators, however, they differed from answers given …

Separate But (Un)Equal: Why Institutionalized Anti-Racism Is The Answer To The Never-Ending Cycle Of Plessy V. Ferguson, Maureen Johnson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is It Bad Law To Believe A Politician? Campaign Speech And Discriminatory Intent, Shawn E. Fields

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can The President Control The Department Of Justice?, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Criminal Procedure In Winter, Daniel Epps

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.