Suchergebnisse

Introduction : the (non-legal) role of states in constitutional maintenance -- Alerting the people : the origins and early practice of state maintenance -- Interposing the protective shield and exerting state authority : the failures of state maintenance -- The authority to reject interpretation : state maintenance in the 20th century -- Reinvigoratio n: the return of Madisonian maintenance, nullification, and the affirmation of judicial authority -- Conclusion : on development and constitutionalism.

AbstractThis article presents case studies of pardons in the presidencies of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. In doing so, the article moves away from the idea in existing scholarship that pardons of the past were largely noble acts of statecraft, untouched by ideological, partisan, or personal political motivations. Instead, it develops an account of how and why these pardons should be understood as both enabling presidents to achieve certain political objectives and, simultaneously, operating in an inherited environment in which presidents used existing resources to legitimate their pardons. In so doing, presidents refashioned those inherited resources and, thereby, created new resources for future presidents. The picture that emerges is of pardons as both sources of political innovation and political constraint.

Robert Cover argues that nomoi (normative universes) exist and operate in law-like fashion, serving as a competitor with the state's law. The state's response is jurispathic – it attempts to kill off competing nomoi. The HBO series The Wire portrays both the existence of nomoi and the state's effort to kill it off. It also reveals that the jurispathic effort fails to destroy the community's commitment to their nomos. Rather than destroy competing nomoi, The Wire portrays how a dialogue can emerge out of law-nomos conflict with the power to alter both law and nomos while promoting certain democratic goods.

AbstractSchool prayer represents a curiosity of Reagan era politics. Reagan and the social conservative movement secured numerous successes in accommodating religious practice and faith in the public sphere. Yet, when it came to restoring voluntary school prayer, conservatives never succeeded in securing the judicial victory that they sought despite conditions that seemingly favored change. Herein, we attempt to reconcile Reagan era successes with Reagan era failures by exploring Reagan's entrepreneurial activity to affect both the demand (i.e., judges) and supply (i.e., litigants) side of legal change. Identifying Reagan's entrepreneurial activities in his attempt to alter national social policy reveals the resilience of legal institutions to presidential and partisan regimes. Reagan's efforts to change national school prayer policy gained some measure of legislative success by securing the Equal Access Act but it failed to garner a change in school prayer jurisprudence. We conclude by noting that the difficulty of influencing both the demand and supply side of legal change in a timely manner and its implication for reconstructing policy through the courts.