Law and Politics Commons^™

Crown Prosecutors And Government Lawyers: A Legal Ethics Analysis Of Under-Funding, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Crown prosecutors and government lawyers are reliant on governments for their funding but exert no meaningful influence or control over such funding decisions. Nonetheless, this article demonstrates that as a question of law, under-funded Crown prosecutors and government lawyers risk violating their professional duties. If so, they must promptly inform the government, refuse new matters and, if necessary, withdraw from existing matters. If the government purports to block such refusal or withdrawal and does not provide adequate funding, resignation will become necessary. While law societies will likely not prioritize disciplinary action against such lawyers, the policy reasons to forego such …

Voter Harassment And The Limits Of State And Federal Power, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Acts of voter harassment are often difficult to prevent. One longstanding, albeit underused, tool for addressing such harassment is found in section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Continued use of the provision, however, is threatened by recent decisions restricting private enforcement of the VRA. This Essay examines one challenge to such enforcement, exploring the linkage between section 11(b)’s prohibition on voter intimidation and the enforcement of constitutional voting guarantees, on which private enforcement of the provision presently depends. It invites consideration of the idea that this linkage is sufficient and private enforcement is appropriate because section 11(b) provides …

Super-Groups: Legal Empowerment And “Public Law”, Matthew B. Lawrence

Faculty Articles

Not all interest groups are created equal. Some groups are created by or with the help of law. Law can confer political power on groups through wealth, rents, concentrated interest, and durability, creating synthetic factions that use their state-given influence to dominate lawmaking. Deregulatory and progressive traditions in public law have long thought differently about laws that empower. A deregulatory tradition sees legal empowerment as a democratic pathology that counsels against lawmaking, citing empowerment concerns as a perennial rhetorical point against consumer protection, environmental protection, and social welfare programs, among others, for fear they will lead to “capture.” At the …

Expertise, Ideology, And Dissent, Paul R. Gugliuzza, Jonathan R. Nash, Jason Rantanen

Faculty Articles

Part I sketches a theory of dissent, explaining how voting and opinion-writing behavior on a multi-member court, such as a federal court of appeals, is a function of both a judge's preferences, as well as costs, including the relational disruption that comes from disagreeing with colleagues.

Part II provides background on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as well as a survey of prior studies of decision-making on the court and explanations of those studies' limitations.

Part III describes our methodology, including the novel dataset we built for the purpose of this study.

Part IV conducts a …

Healing Communities With Police Divestment: Seeking Abolition Through Transformative Reform And Community-Government Collaboration, Jessica E. Gillson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Concerns about the efficacy and sustainability of the U.S. carceral system have persisted throughout the country’s history, recently fueling renewed activism and bipartisan calls for reform. However, proposed solutions remain divisive. This thesis first defines the current status of our prison systems, then explores collaborative alternatives to incarceration and policing that support communities and break cycles of incarceration.

Focusing on partnerships among local governments, community organizations, justice-involved individuals, and law enforcement, this study examines holistic approaches to crime prevention, reentry, and reintegration. Using an interdisciplinary framework incorporating restorative justice, community resilience, and systems theory, it investigates how community-based strategies can …

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 …

From Likes To Legislation: How The Internet Has Facilitated Hate Speech, Anti-Dei Discourse And Policy, And Threatens Our Democracy, Carmen Lynn Benavides-Garb

Undergraduate Scholarship

I argue that the way hate speech, and Anti-DEI rhetoric spreads online, through social media and algorithms, has impacted real-world Anti-DEI policies, attitudes, and overall backlash. In this essay I will begin by discussing the four themes found in my literature review, 1) Online Hate Speech, 2) Social Media and Algorithms, 3) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and 4) Anti-DEI Movements. From there, I will discuss the historical background of DEI movements in America to provide context about what makes this moment in history unique. I will then discuss the role of the Trump Presidency in relation to Anti-DEI work. …

Alternatives To Delaware? Evaluating Corporate Law In Nevada, Texas, And Wyoming, Joseph Landau, Bailey Swartz, Anthony Rickey, Robert Ragazzo, Benjamin Edwards, George A. Mocsary

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

War Courts: Fdr, National Security, And The War On Terrorism, Harvey Gee

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Method Is The Message: Movement Law And The Social Change Commons, Raymond H. Brescia

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Legal scholars have long sought to understand the relationship between social movements and the law. A new group of such scholars has argued that to better understand this relationship, and to advance social change that is effective, sustainable, equitable, and just, they must engage in dialogue with such movements to generate ideas that will catalyze that change. For those interested in generating ideas that can spark meaningful and lasting social change, such developments in legal scholarship represent an exciting evolution in the relationship between legal scholarship, legal scholars, and social movements: a relationship that appears to be growing stronger, deeper, …

Lewd, Rude, Obscene, And… Violent? Analyzing Student Clothing Depicting Firearms Under The First Amendment’S Obscenity Test, Luke Gorman

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today’s national news and social media have repeatedly exposed our school-age children to the effects of shootings occurring within their schools and communities. Each shooting brings with it commentary, sometimes from the students themselves. While in-school student speech is more limited than speech levied in the outside world, students do not shed their speech rights at the “schoolhouse gate.” As a result, courts have failed to outline a consistent approach for when a student will be punished for wearing a shirt depicting a firearm to school. This Comment addresses this delicate balance by proposing a consistent three-part test framed by …

Dobbs V. Brown, Benjamin H. Barton

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization1is the most important and impactful Supreme Court decision since at least Roe v. Wade, and potentially since Brown v. Board of Education. Past survey data show that most Americans can only name two Supreme Court opinions: Roe and Brown. Dobbs will surely join that list. This Article compares the history, drafting, and opinions of Dobbs and Brown to show what a missed opportunity Dobbs represents. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the opinion, it should be clear that Dobbs was one of those unique times (like that of Brown) where the Court …

Money Talks: The Disproportionate Influence Of Corporations On U.S. Governance Today, David C. Hayter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Corruption: “Dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials . . . )”; and “inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery).”

What does the word “corruption” first bring to mind? For some, maybe a foreign country—where political regimes blatantly use the government as a tool to further personal agendas or gains without due consideration of the citizenry. For others, a fictional movie or TV show depicting politicians and police officers providing protections to mafia members in exchange for cash. No matter what comes to mind, many today think of corruption as manifested …

Political Disinformation In The Anthropocene, Jeffrey Omari

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Anthropocene is the name that scientists have given to our current geological epoch, which references the overwhelming influence of human agency on the Earth and its ecological systems. Adopted as a theoretical tool across multiple academic disciplines, social scientists often employ the term to address deep-rooted political and socioeconomic problems and the symptoms of global inequalities and injustices. Meanwhile, legal scholars have employed the term to address the global environmental harms of human agency and to examine how normative frameworks must fundamentally change and adapt to the times ahead. At the same time, recent scholarship also notes that democracies …

I Hate Self-Care: A Criminal Defense Lawyer’S Lament, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Don’t get me wrong—I think people should take care of themselves. They should eat well, exercise regularly, and get a good night’s sleep. They should spend time with friends and family. They should have hobbies and interests. With any luck, they should find true love. But in the past decade or two, and especially since the COVID pandemic, there has been a disturbing turn inward. I’m talking about the “self-care” craze, which has become its own pandemic, or at least epidemic.

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In this Essay, I share my concerns about what I regard to be an excessive focus on self-care …

Minor V. Happersett, Dobbs V. Jackson Women's Health Organization, And The Supreme Court's Refusal To Reconstruct America, Henry L. Chambers, Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

One hundred and fifty years ago, in the wake of the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments, the United States Supreme Court decided Minor v. Happersett. In Minor, the Court ruled Missouri could continue to deny women the right to vote based on their sex. The decision was simply reasoned. In the absence of clear constitutional text requiring Missouri to provide the right to vote to women or proof that the right to vote was a right of citizenship, Missouri had no obligation to allow women to vote. Some states had banned women citizens from voting since the country’s founding. Missouri …

Anti-Democratic Rights Of Nature, Noah M. Sachs

Law Faculty Publications

The global Rights of Nature (RoN) movement, which seeks to confer enforceable rights on organisms and ecosystems, has become a political force, and governments are now codifying legal rights for nature in legislation. But policymakers and legal scholars are overlooking how assertions of vague rights held by a limitless class of non-humans could lead to repressive, anti-democratic outcomes. Many scholars view recognition of nature’s rights as an expansion of the boundaries of democracy, but a critical examination of RoN scholarship and advocacy shows that RoN principles are designed to check and constrain democratic institutions. Core tenets of the RoN movement …

Procedural Political Economy, Luke P. Norris

Law Faculty Publications

When the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure came into being in 1938, a broad political economy discourse was driving significant legal and policy reform efforts. Legal scholars, economists, political leaders, and others placed questions of economic power and their relationship to democracy at the center of those reform efforts, honing and developing a political economy tradition that is a forebearer to today’s law-and-political economy (LPE) approach. Both then and today, the relationship of civil procedure to these trends has not been fully mined. This Article tells a vital part of that story, tracing the federal civil procedure system’s political economy …

Mind The Gap(S): Mitigating Harassment In A Post-#Metoo Workplace, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Elizabeth C. Tippett, Anu Ramdin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In a post-#MeToo workplace, harassment remains pervasive, and harassment law still fails to provide protection for the harms experienced by many workers—particularly those in the most vulnerable jobs. Even when reform efforts are introduced through legislation, courts, and agency guidance, it often does not provide greater power, autonomy, and dignity to women in ways that would more meaningfully protect them from workplace abuse. We are the first to create a database of state legislation, including over three thousand bills, that allows us to empirically analyze the extent to which lawmakers comprehensively address harassment following the rise of the #MeToo movement. …

The Administrative State's Second Face, Emily R. Chertoff, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We often assume that there is one administrative state, with one body of administrative law that governs it. In fact, the administrative state has two distinct faces: one turned toward regulation and benefits distribution, and one turned toward physical force and surveillance. The two faces are growing further apart under the Roberts Court, which has hemmed in the first face with decisions like Loper Bright while showing solicitude for national security and law enforcement agencies.

This Article delineates the two faces of the administrative state. It provides a descriptive account of the second face and the distinctive administrative law that …