Law and Politics Commons^™

Change The Rules And You Change The Game: At’S Why Charter Revisions Matter In New York City, John Avlon

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can Government Work?, Edward Skyler

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Discussion On New York City And Its Future: A Conversation With New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Christine C, Quinn

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Learning From Washington: A New Approach To Analyzing The Structure Of New York City’S Government, David S. Yassky

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The 1989 Charter Revisions, Michael A. Cardozo

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Twenty-Five Years Later: Re Ections On New York City’S 1989 Charter Revision Commission And On Charter Commissions In General, Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Twenty-Five Years Of The Council-Mayor Governance Of New York City: A History Of The Council’S Powers, The Separation Of Powers, And Issues For Future Resolution, Elizabeth Fine, James Caras

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Promoting An E Ective And Responsive City Government By Retaining And Strengthening The Office Of The Public Advocate, Lucas Anderson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The President's Enforcement Power, Kate Andrias

Articles

Enforcement of law is at the core of the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care” that the laws are faithfully executed, and it is a primary mechanism for effecting national regulatory policy. Yet questions about how presidents oversee agency enforcement activity have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. This Article provides a positive account of the President’s role in administrative enforcement, explores why presidential enforcement has taken the shape it has, and examines the bounds of the President’s enforcement power. It demonstrates that presidential involvement in agency enforcement, though extensive, has been ad hoc, crisis-driven, and frequently opaque. The Article thus …

Real Masks And Real Name Policies: Applying Anti-Mask Case Law To Anonymous Online Speech, Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

The First Amendment protects anonymous speech, but the scope of that protection has been the subject of much debate. This Article adds to the discussion of anonymous speech by examining anti-mask statutes and cases as an analogue for the regulation of anonymous speech online. Anti-mask case law answers a number of questions left open by the Supreme Court. It shows that courts have used the First Amendment to protect anonymity beyond core political speech, when mask-wearing is expressive conduct or shows a nexus with free expression. This Article explores what the anti-mask cases teach us about anonymity online, including proposed …

Charities In Politics: A Reappraisal, Brian Galle

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Federal law significantly limits the political activities of charities, but no one really knows why. In the wake of Citizens United, the absence of any strong normative grounding for the limits may leave the rules vulnerable to constitutional challenge. This Article steps into that breach, offering a set of policy reasons to separate politics from charity. I also sketch ways in which my more-precise exposition of the rationale for the limits helps guide interpretation of the complex legal rules implementing them.

Any defense of the political limits begins with significant challenges because of a long tradition of scholarly criticism of …

Gaming Direct Democracy: How Voters’ Views Of Job Performance Interact With Elite Endorsements Of Ballot Measures, Craig M. Burnett, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey, we look at California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of four Indian gaming measures on the ballot during the presidential primary election of 2008. We find that voters who had knowledge of the elite endorsement differed little from those who did not. We show, however, that Schwarzenegger’s endorsement was conditionally related to support for the measures, depending …

The Politics Of Statutory Interpretation, Margaret H. Lemos

Faculty Scholarship

In a new book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, Justice Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner describe and defend the textualist methodology for which Justice Scalia is famous. For Scalia and Garner, the normative appeal of textualism lies in its objectivity: by focusing on text, context, and canons of construction, textualism offers protection against ideological judging—a way to separate law from politics. Yet, as Scalia and Garner well know, textualism is widely regarded as a politically conservative methodology. The charge of conservative bias is more common than it is concrete, but it reflects the notion that textualism narrows the …

The Political Morality Of Voting In Direct Democracy, Michael Serota, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

The voting levers in candidate elections and in direct democracy elections are identical. The political obligations that bind the citizens that pull them are not. This Essay argues that voters in direct democracy elections, unlike their counterparts in candidate elections, serve as representatives of the people and are, accordingly, bound by the ethics of political representation. Upending the traditional dichotomy between representative and direct democracy, this Essay explains why citizens voting in direct democracy are representative legislators who must vote in the public interest and must not vote in their private interests.

2013 International Advocate For Peace Award Acceptance Speech, Jimmy Carter

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

On April 10, 2013, the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution presented its annual International Advocate for Peace Award to Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States. What follows is a transcription of his public address at the Law School, entitled "America as Global Mediator."

The Mobility Case For Regionalism, Nestor M. Davidson, Sheila R. Foster

Faculty Scholarship

In the discourse of local government law, the idea that a mobile populace can “vote with its feet” has long served as a justification for devolution and decentralization. Tracing to Charles Tiebout’s seminal work in public finance, the legal-structural prescription that follows is that a diversity of independent and empowered local governments can best satisfy the varied preferences of residents metaphorically shopping for bundles of public services, regulatory environment, and tax burden. This localist paradigm generally presumes that fragmented governments are competing for residents within a given metropolitan area. Contemporary patterns of mobility, however, call into question this foundational assumption. …

Presidential Power, Historical Practice, And Legal Constraint, Curtis A. Bradley, Trevor W. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The scope of the President’s legal authority is determined in part by historical practice. This Essay aims to better understand how such practice-based law might operate as a constraint on the presidency. Some scholars have suggested that presidential authority has become “unbounded” by law, and is now governed only or primarily by politics. At the same time, there has been growing skepticism about the ability of the familiar political checks on presidential power to work in any systematic or reliable fashion. Skepticism about law’s potential to constrain in this context is heightened by the customary nature of much of what …

Niklas Luhmann's Theory Of Autopoietic Legal Systems, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1984 and his death in 1998, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann developed a comprehensive theory of what he called autopoietic or self-referential systems.He worked out this approach both at the level of a social system as a whole and at the level of various social subsystems, such as state, economy, science, religion, education, art, family, and — the concern of the present article — law. My particular topics in this critical introduction to Luhmann’s theory are (a) its relation to more standard legal theory, (b) foundational or self-referential problems in law, and (c) the problem of law’s relation to other …

From Coolidge To Christie: Historical Antecedents Of Current Government Officials Dealing With Public Sector Labor Unions, Bryan J. Soukup

Law Student Publications

One might ask: what do Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Scott Walker and Chris Christie have in common? The most obvious answer is that they all are (or were) Republican Governors, but these four men have something much deeper in common. All four have faced-off against powerful public sector labor unions and won. This paper will address and examine the similarities between the anti-union actions taken by these men— Coolidge and the Boston Police Strike of 1919, Reagan and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (“PATCO”) Strike of 1981, and Walker and Christie’s recent dealings with public employee unions. In the end, …

The Search For Authenticity And The Manipulation Of Tradition: Restrictions On Women's Reproductive Rights In The United States And Egypt, Sarah M. Stephens

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that restrictions on women's reproductive rights in both the U.S. and Egypt are rooted in the use of authenticity and cultural essentialism to maintain patriarchal control. These restrictions, though justified through differing cultural and legal frameworks, reflect a common goal of silencing women and preserving traditional social hierarchies. The analysis highlights how law and politics are employed as tools to construct cultural otherness, furthering political agendas at the expense of women's reproductive autonomy and dignity.