Public Law and Legal Theory Commons^™

Time To End Presidential Caucuses, Sean J. Wright

Fordham Law Review

Following the 2016 election cycle, there will be a great opportunity to implement reform. A major change should be to move away from presidential caucuses. They persist with, in the words of John Oliver, “complex, opaque rules.” These complex rules, which include participating in person for over an hour, negatively impacts participation in the electoral process. For example, in 2012, “participation rates in the Republican Party’s caucuses averaged 3 percent.” 3 percent. Compellingly, PolitiFact has observed that “[c]aucuses and delegate math can be incredibly confusing, and the arcane party structures don’t reflect how most people assume presidential selection works.” Yet, …

Amendment Creep, Jonathan L. Marshfield

Michigan Law Review

To most lawyers and judges, constitutional amendment rules are nothing more than the technical guidelines for changing a constitution’s text. But amendment rules contain a great deal of substance that can be relevant to deciding myriad constitutional issues. Indeed, judges have explicitly drawn on amendment rules when deciding issues as far afield as immigration, criminal procedure, free speech, and education policy. The Supreme Court, for example, has reasoned that, because Article V of the U.S. Constitution places no substantive limitations on formal amendment, the First Amendment must protect even the most revolutionary political viewpoints. At the state level, courts have …

The Role Of Judicial Discourse In Distorting The Public Inquiry Image: Is The Inquiry Becoming An Endangered Species?, Diana Morokhovets

LLM Theses

The goal is to explore the construction of the Public Inquiry image and its persona via judicial decision-making and legal discourses that are utilized to justify the final product of an inquiry. For instance, while the commissioner is generally equipped with extensive coercive and discretionary powers, there is scarcely any research on why these powers are exercised the way that they are and how (or if) the decisions that are made condition the public image of the inquiry and their ultimate impact on the survival of the institution. Specifically, it will be argued that despite the fact that a judge-commissioner …

Using Proactive Legal Strategies For Corporate Environmental Sustainability, Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, Paul Shrivastava, Adam Sulkowski

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

We argue that proactive law can help organizations be more sustainable. Toward that end, this Article first summarizes proactive law literature as it pertains to corporate sustainability. Next, it examines a series of cases on the pivotal nexus between proactive law and corporate sustainability. It then advances novel propositions that connect proactive law to central organizational design elements. The discussion traces further implications and suggests fruitful avenues for research and ways of using proactive law for firms to become more sustainable.

The Second Circuit And Social Justice, Matthew Diller, Alexander A. Reinert

Fordham Law Review

This Article highlights just a few areas of law as illustrations of the Second Circuit’s jurisprudence in dealing with claims of marginalized and subordinated individuals and groups. In the area of civil rights, this Article focuses on sexual harassment law and prisoners’ rights. In the area of public benefits, this Article focuses on public assistance and the disability benefit programs of the Social Security Act.

American Bar Association Resolution 112: Championing Public Access To The Law., Nina A. Mendelson

Articles

In August 2016, the American Bar Association House of Delegates reaffirmed the fundamental democratic principle of public access to the law. ABA Resolution 112 calls on Congress to enact legislation ensuring a basic level of public access, without charge, to all regulatory law. Such legislation would address serious current obstacles to the public’s ability to see the law.

Cultural Democracy And The First Amendment, Jack M. Balkin

Northwestern University Law Review

Freedom of speech secures cultural democracy as well as political democracy. Just as it is important to make state power accountable to citizens, it is also important to give people a say over the development of forms of cultural power that transcend the state. In a free society, people should have the right to participate in the forms of meaning-making that shape who they are and that help constitute them as individuals.

The digital age shows the advantages of a cultural theory over purely democracy-based theories. First, the cultural account offers a more convincing explanation of why expression that seems …

Multifactoral Free Speech, Alexander Tsesis

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article presents a multifactoral approach to free speech analysis. Difficult cases present a variety of challenges that require judges to weigh concerns for the protection of robust dialogue, especially about public issues, against concerns that sound in common law (such as reputation), statutory law (such as repose against harassment), and in constitutional law (such as copyright). Even when speech is implicated, the Court should aim to resolve other relevant individual and social issues arising from litigation. Focusing only on free speech categories is likely to discount substantial, and sometimes compelling, social concerns warranting reflection, analysis, and application. Examining the …

The Voice Of The People: Public Participation In The African Continent, Rafael Macia

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Public participation is becoming a more common characteristic of constitutional drafting processes around the world, and Africa has not been an exception in this regard. This paper seeks to survey several of the public participation processes undertaken in a number of African nations, in order to examine the methods followed and the effects produced by such processes. For that purpose, I have analyzed the constitutional drafting efforts in South Africa, Uganda, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kenya, and Egypt. These processes all show different circumstances and approaches, with variations in terms of their top-down or bottom-up nature, and, more importantly, in terms …

Peter Approved My Visa, But Paul Denied It, Emily Callan, Johnpaul Callan

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Prison Bars On Classroom Doors, Cornelius Lee

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

How And Why A Code Of Silence Between State's Attorneys And Police Officers Resulted In Unprosecuted Torture, Elliott Riebman

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

What (And Whom) State Marijuana Reformers Forgot: Crimmigration Law And Noncitizens, Carrie Rosenbaum

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering The History Of Open Courts In The Digital Age, Rory B. O'Sullivan, Catherine Connell

Seattle University Law Review

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution of the State of Washington guarantees, “Justice in all cases shall be administered openly, and without unnecessary delay.” The Washington State Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to guarantee the public a right to attend legal proceedings and to access court documents separate and apart from the rights of the litigants themselves. Based on this interpretation, the court has struck down laws protecting the identity of both juvenile victims of sexual assault and individuals subject to involuntary commitment hearings. Its interpretation has also compromised the privacy rights of litigants wrongly named in legal …

Uncle Sam Is Watching You: A Recommendation For Minnesota Legislation Regarding Police Drone Use, Joe R. Paquette

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Transatlantic Influences On American Corporate Jurisprudence: Theorizing The Corporation In The United States, Tara Helfman

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

In interpreting and evaluating the history of the Supreme Court's corporate jurisprudence, legal scholars have deployed three broad theories of corporate legal personality: the aggregate entity theory, the artificial entity theory, and the real entity theory. While these theories are powerful ways of conceptualizing the corporation, this article shows that they have not been as central to the Supreme Court's corporate jurisprudence as recent scholarship suggests. It instead argues that historic transformations in the high court's corporate jurisprudence are best understood in light of contemporary intellectual currents rather than through an expost facto application of the aggregate, artificial, and real …

Documentation And Emotions: Producing Displaced Legal Subjects, Susan M. Sterett

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Disasters are globally inflected today in humanitarian assistance, the organizations that support people after disaster and operate globally, and in the mobilization of arguments international human rights arguments. The domestic bureaucratic processes of humanitarian assistance after disaster in the United States do not state these connections; after Hurricane Katrina in the United States, they were most evident in the people and organizations that helped, and in the flow of humanitarian assistance from around the world that paid for assistance. Second, domestic documents for claiming assistance must limit that assistance to people hurt in disaster. That means they assist people who …

Taking Charge 2016: A Study Of The Strategic Budgeting Priorities Of The Residents Of Lincoln, Nebraska, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Addison Fairchild

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

This report presents the results of the 2016 Taking Charge initiative sponsored by the City of Lincoln. This initiative included an online survey and a half-day, face-to-face, Community Conversation. Most previous Taking Charge activities have focused more narrowly on the immediate concerns of an impending budget proposal (e.g. which specific programs should be funded or discontinued to maintain a balanced budget). This year’s efforts also focused on specific items relevant to the City’s future budget policy priorities. As usual, residents were also given the opportunity to rate the City’s performance and City officials on a variety of performance characteristics.

A …

The Device Of Fiction In Public International Law, Jean J. A. Salmon

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.