Suchergebnisse

To modern observers of American politics, our current hyperpartisan era appears historically extreme, even bizarrely partisan. The preceding Cold War era was far less partisan and ideologically polarized. Spanning roughly from World War II through the 1980s, it offers a hopeful model for a better, less partisan American politics. However, this historical baseline is badly misleading. Partisanship for most of American history was much more similar to today's hyperpartisanship than the Cold War. And legislative redistricting, for most of American history, was just as intensely partisan as today's hyperpartisan gerrymandering. But it was precisely during the Cold War era of partisan peace that courts inaugurated election law and began overseeing redistricting. The development of redistricting law, and indeed most of election law, therefore occurred during the unusual circumstance of historically low partisanship when partisan complications largely receded from judicial attention. As a result, our inherited law of redistricting developed by courts during the Cold War era is fundamentally mismatched to today's hyperpartisanship and hyperpartisan gerrymandering. Moored to outdated Cold War assumptions, the Supreme Court badly underestimates hyperpartisanship and the effectiveness of hyperpartisan gerrymandering.

Health care reform was the dominant issue on the political agenda during the early 1990s. Few issues during the decade persisted on the public agenda for so long. Why did it resonate so loudly? And why did it emerge then, from 1991 to 1994, rather than earlier or later? Did public opinion drive political leaders to address health care reform, or did political leaders convince the public of health care reform's importance?

"The idea that wealthy people use their money to influence things, including politics, law, and media will surprise very few people. However, as Michael S. Kang and Joanna Shepherd argue in this readable and rich study of the state judiciary, the effect of money on judicial outcomes should disturb and anger everyone. In the current system that elects state judges, the rich and powerful can spend money to elect and re-elect judges who decide cases the way they want. Free to Judge is about how and why money increasingly affects the dispensation of justice in our legal system, and what can be done to stop it. One of the barriers to action in the past has been an inability to prove that campaign donations influence state judicial decision-making. In this book, Kang and Shepherd answer that challenge for the first time, with a rigorous empirical study of campaign finance and judicial decision-making data. Pairing this with interviews of past and present judges, they create a compelling and persuasive account of people like Marsha Ternus, the first Iowa state supreme court justice to be voted out of office after an intense her and her decision in a same-sex marriage case. The threat of such an outcome, and the desire to win reelection, results in judges demonstrably leaning towards the interests and preferences of their campaign donors across all cases. Free to Judge is thus able to identify the pieces of our current system that invite bias, such as judicial reelection, and what reforms should focus on. This thoughtful and compellingly written book will be required reading for anybody who cares about creating a more just legal system"--