Partisan Effects of Legislative Term Limits

Term limits remain a popular policy reform and have generated a great deal of scholarship as a result. Although many predicted that term limits would benefit the Republican party, the literature finds no marked partisan effects, possibly because termed‐out legislators have largely been replaced by copartisans. This article demonstrates that term limits have indeed had partisan effects—just not on electoral outcomes. Term limits have caused a significant reallocation of institutional power from Democrats to Republicans (as measured by contributions from access‐oriented interest groups), in large part because they have removed more senior Democrats than Republicans. The partisan effects of term limits therefore point to the institutional value of seniority.     

Remaking the House and Senate: Personal Power,Ideology, and the 1970s Reforms

Although much has been written on the critical congressional reforms of the 1970s, few studies have analyzed support for reform systematically. In this article, we draw upon previously untapped sources of information that make an individual‐level, quantitative analysis possible. We analyze 20 indicators that measure support for a wide variety of reforms in both chambers. Our results reveal a remarkably consistent pattern: in virtually every case, junior members and liberals were more pro‐reform than were senior members and conservatives. Also, Republicans were often more likely than Democrats to back reform. Our findings challenge the view that the reform movement was essentially a Democratic party phenomenon; liberals and junior members in both parties—not just Democrats—supported reform.     

The Consequences of Electoral Institutions for Careerism

Although electoral institutions have been shown to have a variety of effects, scholars have not investigated if certain voting rules enable politicians to enjoy longer legislative careers. I took advantage of a natural experiment—a sudden transition from a semiproportional voting rule to single‐member districts with plurality voting (SMDP)—to measure the effect of electoral institutions on careerism. My analysis revealed that voting rules have a profound influence on the dynamics of legislative careers: politicians elected under SMDP are far less likely to suffer electoral defeat or to retire than those elected via cumulative voting. The findings of this study not only provide additional insight into the seat safety of politicians elected in first‐past‐the‐post systems, but moreover offer new criteria by which to evaluate the choice of electoral institutions.     

The dynamics of health care opinion, 2008-2010: partisanship, self-interest, and racial resentment

Recent debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act highlights the extent of party polarization in Washington. While the partisan divide on this issue is stark among political elites, it is less clear how the mass electorate has responded to this divisive conflict. In this article we examine individual-level dynamics in health care attitudes between 2008 and 2010. We find partisan attachments and self-interests strongly predict change in health care attitudes, with Republicans growing more opposed to universal health insurance between 2008 and 2010, and those personally worried about medical expenses less likely to abandon support. We find, however, that the effect of partisanship is moderated by self-interest, with strong Republicans significantly less likely to switch to opposition if they were personally worried about medical expenses. Finally, we find that health care policy preferences, already tinged with racial attitudes in 2008, became increasingly so by 2010.     

Evangelizing Congress: The Emergence of Evangelical Republicans and Party Polarization in Congress

The realignment of evangelical voters is well‐documented, but religion's impact within Congress is less clear. New data on home churches of members of Congress shows that the realignment of congressional evangelicals, combined with their growth and distinctly conservative legislative behavior, has significantly contributed to party polarization in Congress. Controlling for other factors, evangelicals are significantly more conservative than members of other religious traditions. This conservatism also has second‐order effects on the polarization of the House, where their more partisan proposals comprise a larger share of the roll‐call agenda when Republicans are in the majority. Moreover, evangelical Republicans in Congress differ significantly from evangelical Democrats in terms their geography, denominations, and experiences prior to Congress.     

The sins of the father: The destruction of the Republican family in Franco's Spain

The postwar years in Spain were little more than the perpetuation of the Civil War on an ideological terrain, as the Franco Regime consistently vilified the memory of the Second Republic and remorselessly persecuted the defeated Republicans. In fact, nationalist diatribes against communism and its attendant ills of separatism and laicism were invariably expounded in medical terminology, referring as they did to the “cancer” and “virus” which had devastated the nation during the Civil War. This empirically unverifiable theory sustained that a large scale extermination (the Civil War) had to be carried out to rid Spain of this “virus” thus preempt the contagion of this fervently Catholic and patriotic nation. Horkheimer affirms that the family is the microcosm of the fascist state, as the relationship between siblings and parents replicates the obedience of the citizen to the fascist state. As Republican traits were at antipodes to the prescribed national attributes, the Francoist State sought to destroy the Republican family by a myriad of measures such as the inculcation of a zealous National Catholicism in their children, which in turn precipitated both selfhatred and the children's outright rejection of their parents. However, the social persecution of the defeated transcended indoctrination: in the postwar years, the horrendousness of life for the Republicans was compounded by the State's quasi reconversion policy, which resulted in Republican children being forcibly removed from their homes, and been adopted by pro-Francoist families, or in many cases, rehoused by religious orders which, within a decade, witnessed a huge increase in the number of supposed orphans becoming seminarists. In this article, I intend to elaborate on both the means by which the Francoist State eradicated the Republican family, and its long-term consequences.     

Restoring Responsibility: Promoting Justice, Therapy and Reform Through Direct Brain Interventions

Direct brain intervention based mental capacity restoration techniques—for instance, psycho-active drugs—are sometimes used in criminal cases to promote the aims of justice. For instance, they might be used to restore a person’s competence to stand trial in order to assess the degree of their responsibility for what they did, or to restore their competence for punishment so that we can hold them responsible for it. Some also suggest that such interventions might be used for therapy or reform in criminal legal contexts—i.e. to make non-responsible and irresponsible people more responsible. However, I argue that such interventions may at least sometimes fail to promote these responsibility-related legal aims. This is because responsibility hinges on other factors than just what mental capacities a person has—in particular, it also hinges on such things as authenticity, personal identity, and mental capacity ownership—and some ways of restoring mental capacity may adversely affect these other factors. Put one way, my claim is that what might suffice for the restoration of competence need not necessarily suffice for the restoration of responsibility, or, put another way, that although responsibility indeed tracks mental capacity it may not always track restored mental capacities.     

Lessons learned: A lawsuit's impact on journalistic behavior

Forty‐two journalists who had been sued for invasion of privacy were asked to describe the impact of the lawsuits on their professional lives. Findings indicate that most of the journalists felt changed by the experience—despite nearly all of them prevailing in formal legal proceedings. The changes they described were categorized as “defensive” (adjusting routines to minimize the likelihood of a similar suit) far more often than “instructive” (changing fundamental journalistic practice), and there was little evidence of a chilling effect from the suits, but the journalists clearly felt some degree of sting from the litigation. Just as the Iowa libel study discovered ten years earlier from the plaintiffs' perspective, this study has found from the defendants' perspective that litigation against the media—court outcomes notwithstanding—is by no means futile.     

Corruption,Party Leaders,and Candidate Selection: Evidence from Italy

Research indicates that voters are not particularly effective at removing corrupt politicians from office, in part because voters make decisions on the basis of many competing factors. Party leaders are much more single-minded than voters and will choose to deselect implicated legislators if it means maintaining a positive party reputation and improving the odds of winning a legislative majority. We examine renominations to Italy’s legislature in two periods marked by corruption. We compare these renomination patterns with those from the prior legislature, when corruption lacked political salience. Our analysis shows that incumbent renominations are negatively associated with the number of press mentions that link the incumbent to corruption—but only when corruption is salient to the public. Our study highlights the importance of party leaders in forcing malfeasant legislators out of office—and reducing corruption—and redirects attention from voters to political elites as a critical channel in enforcing democratic accountability.     

The sins of the father: The destruction of the Republican family in Franco's Spain

The postwar years in Spain were little more than the perpetuation of the Civil War on an ideological terrain, as the Franco Regime consistently vilified the memory of the Second Republic and remorselessly persecuted the defeated Republicans. In fact, nationalist diatribes against communism and its attendant ills of separatism and laicism were invariably expounded in medical terminology, referring as they did to the “cancer” and “virus” which had devastated the nation during the Civil War. This empirically unverifiable theory sustained that a large scale extermination (the Civil War) had to be carried out to rid Spain of this “virus” thus preempt the contagion of this fervently Catholic and patriotic nation. Horkheimer affirms that the family is the microcosm of the fascist state, as the relationship between siblings and parents replicates the obedience of the citizen to the fascist state. As Republican traits were at antipodes to the prescribed national attributes, the Francoist State sought to destroy the Republican family by a myriad of measures such as the inculcation of a zealous National Catholicism in their children, which in turn precipitated both selfhatred and the children's outright rejection of their parents. However, the social persecution of the defeated transcended indoctrination: in the postwar years, the horrendousness of life for the Republicans was compounded by the State's quasi reconversion policy, which resulted in Republican children being forcibly removed from their homes, and been adopted by pro-Francoist families, or in many cases, rehoused by religious orders which, within a decade, witnessed a huge increase in the number of supposed orphans becoming seminarists. In this article, I intend to elaborate on both the means by which the Francoist State eradicated the Republican family, and its long-term consequences.     

Principles,Passions, and the Paradox of Modern Law: A Comment on Bybee

In All Judges Are Political—Except When They Are Not: Acceptable Hypocrisies and the Rule of Law ( 2010 ), Keith Bybee considers the hypocrisy of modern law—that is, the widespread view that judges are both principled and partisan—by drawing an analogy with courtesy. Both law and courtesy contain and manage the diverse and potentially divisive interests that would, were they not contained, disrupt social life. In this essay I extend this argument by considering whether the relationship between law and courtesy is more than merely analogical. I suggest that both systems are aspects of larger historical developments out of which emerged the modern subject and the modern state, creating a social world made up of apparently bounded individuals and institutions. As such, law and courtesy do more than conceal and contain interests and subjectivity; they produce the unruly, partisan subjects they are designed to manage.     

The Rule of Law,Comprehensive Doctrines,Overlapping Consensus,and the Future of Europe

For more than a decade now a profound rule-of-law crisis has gripped the European Union, and while the fight for the rule of law has topped not only the academic but also the judicial and political agenda, the results have been disappointingly meagre. This article argues that the main reason for that should be sought in a political strategic move of justifying the assaults on the rule of law by resorting to an “illiberal democracy.” This premeditated political narrative shift has unleashed onto the political sphere and onto public discourse at large comprehensive doctrines which had hitherto been left dormant thanks to an overlapping consensus on the rule of law as a central building block of the political conception of justice à la Rawls. Once this overlapping consensus was broken, the rule of law itself lost its neutral character as a referee on the right among the many conceptions of the good, itself becoming part of the highly politicized power play for dominance among irreconcilable—liberal and illiberal—comprehensive doctrines. The overlapping consensus in the EU is thus broken, but there are no conceptual reasons inherent to the rule of law itself for which it could not be rebuilt in the future.     

“If you’ve come a’seeking justice, no Irish need apply:”1 Irish Republicans, political asylum, and United States foreign policy

For over a century, Irish Republicans have sought and found legal refuge in the United States. Such individuals were rarely targeted by immigration policies for previous politically-motivated offences nor were U.S. extradition warrants granted. More recently, however, several Irish Republicans have faced prosecution, extradition, or deportation from the United States. This essay highlights the complex, relationship between the legal formalism of those proceedings and broader political considerations related to the requirements of the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and British governments. Despite an 18-month IRA cease-fire and the U.S. interest in promoting the peace process, the executive branch of the United States failed to provide any concessions in these legal proceedings that might have been beneficial to the peace process.     

告密、良心自由与现代合法性的困境——法哲学视野中的告密者难题

告密者案件不是一般意义的疑难案件，而是一个“根本性的疑难案件”，其中不仅牵涉到法律解释的争议，也牵涉到对法律合法性的争议。德国法院对告密者案件的真实裁决是审慎严谨的，比起哈特的方案，这些裁决更合于法律实证主义忠于法律的宗旨。拉德布鲁赫和富勒对这个案件的建议都比哈特方案更好，哈特方案并不能回避恶法非法的问题。纳粹统治时期司法沦为犯罪工具，法官丧失良心自由，这是现代社会真实的合法性困境。     

Opportunity Costs and Outside Careers in U.S. State Legislatures

Cost‐benefit models of career choice predict that potential legislators choose legislative careers when they expect greater utility from legislative service than from other options. In state legislatures, the utility of legislative service includes the monetary value of outside careers. I hypothesize that legislators are more likely to pursue outside careers when financial opportunity costs are higher or when they derive less non‐monetary value from legislative service. In particular, I posit that individual characteristics that predict labor market value (such as age, education, race, and sex) and legislative salary predict outside careers. I test this model employing a new dataset of individual outside‐career activity derived from financial disclosure reports. The findings strongly support the hypothesis that outside‐career behavior is a function of the financial opportunity costs of legislative service. In addition, I find that Republicans are more likely to hold outside careers than are Democrats. This research has important implications for the study of state legislative participation, legislative organization, and the Democratic bias hypothesis.     

Enticing Business to Create a Healthier American Diet: Performance‐Based Regulation of Food and Beverage Retailers

The American public could enjoy a much healthier diet if we enticed food and beverage retailers (stores and restaurants) to substantially reduce the calories, added sugar, sodium, and saturated fat that pass through their cash registers—say, a 25 percent reduction in sugar, salt, and fat and a 10 percent reduction in calories. Rather than ordering firms to make specific changes in what they sell, this strategy—called performance‐based regulation—leaves industry to figure out what is the best way to transform the American diet in a positive way. Because it calls for real changes in outcomes, this regulatory strategy could be far more effective than information disclosure policies that rely on consumer choices, and because it does not require adding extra cost to the price of food and beverages, it could be politically far more attractive than taxing unhealthy foods. Appealing to both conservative and liberal values, instead of relying on the professional expertise of public health regulators, performance‐based regulation enlists America's large food retailers to serve the public good—or suffer substantial financial penalties for failing to do so.     

Perceived Sanction Threats and Projective Risk Sensitivity: Auto Theft,Carjacking, and the Channeling Effect

Although sanction threats promote fear, among committed offenders, that fear can become a resource with which to sculpt emerging crime preferences. In such cases, criminality is not deterred but channeled. We explore the channeling process here as it relates to auto theft and carjacking. Our qualitative findings reveal that auto thieves are reluctant to embrace the violence of carjacking due to concerns over sanction threat severity they attributed to carjacking—both formal (higher sentences) and informal (victim resistance and retaliation). Meanwhile, the carjackers are reticent to enact auto theft because of the more uncertain and putatively greater risk of being surprised by victims, a fear that appears to overcome the enhanced long-term formal penalty of taking a vehicle by force. We examine the implications of offenders’ decision-making for the analytic intersection of rational choice and deterrence, offering the notion of projective risk sensitivity to encapsulate the process.     

Initiatives that Counter Violent Radicalization but are Perceived as Suitable by Targeted Communities

To redress the scourge of violent extremism, an array of policies, programs, and practices have been implemented. Yet, these initiatives could sometimes conflict with the preferences of individuals who may be susceptible to radicalization. To illustrate, some initiatives might challenge the values of these individuals. The degree to which these individuals feel significant or important might thus decrease—a decrease that has been shown to rouse the pursuit of violent radicalization. To prevent this complication, two studies were designed to uncover programs, policies, or practices that align to the preferences of people who may be more susceptible than average to violent radicalization. In Study 1, three individuals who had been charged with crimes related to terrorism, but had since relinquished extremism, were asked to suggest initiatives they feel could prevent violent radicalization in Australian Muslims. Similarly, in the second study, young Australian Muslim adults who rejected extremist ideologies were asked the same question. The participants advocated initiatives that foster tolerance towards diverse perspectives, inspire individuals to trust their values and intuition, encourage civic engagement, improve the credibility of imams, and enable people to derive strength from their community. A review of previous literature indicates that many of these initiatives might not only resonate with the preferences of individuals who may be vulnerable to violent extremism but could also foster a sense of significance and meaning in life—an experience that tends to prevent radicalization.     

Tax policy as social policy: cafeteria plans, 1978-1985

Since the passage of Section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code in 1978, cafeteria plans have offered employees a choice of tax-free fringe benefits. Although these plans have been popular with employers and employees, Treasury Department officials and many tax lawyers soon came to regard Section 125 as a mistake. The Treasury has tried to reclaim through regulation the revenue and the fundamental principles of tax law it had asked Congress to give away in 1978. This paper is a history of Section 125 that emphasizes its relationship to health policy. On the basis of interviews and printed primary sources, the paper argues that Treasury officials made a less than rigorous assessment of the impact of cafeteria plans because they were preoccupied with a larger agenda of making tax-free benefits more equitable. Moreover, they saw no reason to collaborate with the health policy community to plan this agenda; they saw themselves as implementing a social policy already in the Internal Revenue Code.     

Unfamiliarity and Procedural Justice: Litigants' Attitudes Toward Civil Justice in Southern China

While procedural justice has been regarded as a distinct and essential factor shaping litigants' views on civil justice, few studies have focused on China, a country with a unique legal tradition and frequent legal reforms. Drawing on surveys and interviews with litigants in a basic‐level court in Southern China, this study examines attitudes toward the civil justice system. Echoing several existing studies from China, our mixed methods analysis confirms that their views are dominated by outcomes—litigants with favorable outcomes are more likely to be satisfied, while those with unfavorable outcomes are more likely to be dissatisfied. Their unfamiliarity with the operation of the system constitutes a major reason for the dominance of substantive outcomes in their evaluations of the system. Many cannot distinguish between process and outcomes, nor do they feel control over the process. Moreover, they are dissatisfied with the process because it fails to meet their often‐erroneous expectations. Our results do not necessarily challenge the importance of procedural justice, but they do suggest that China may be different. Litigants' perceptions of justice and fairness are situated and shaped by specific contexts.