US labor party

The High Court in Australia agrees with the Mandla definition of ‘race’.     

Nationalism and art

The rise to prominence of Christian fundamentalism in the USA has threatened the separation of church and state which is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. But just as there are those who wish to see Christianity become a more dominant force in public life, others vigorously oppose any change in the status quo. Both groups have had recourse to the Supreme Court, but it is unlikely that the Court will retreat from its view that the Constitution demands equality between religions.     

Teaching Judicial Politics Through a Supreme Court Simulation

Abstract

This article describes various iterations of a Supreme Court simulation that we developed for undergraduate political science classes. We address when simulations should be used to introduce a topic to students, and when simulations should be used to develop students’ understanding of a topic after introducing it. In the simulations, we played the role of attorneys delivering oral arguments before the Supreme Court, while students played the role of Supreme Court justices. Students questioned attorneys, deliberated in groups, voted on the merits of the case, and explained their decisions. We varied when the simulation was conducted, with one class doing the simulation before a lesson on judicial decision making and two classes doing the simulation following a lesson on judicial decision making. We evaluate the simulation by using results from student questionnaires that assessed the students' interest in judicial politics, their knowledge of the Supreme Court, and their understanding of judicial decision making. We find that the simulation most effectively accomplished the intended learning outcomes when the simulation was conducted after a lesson on decision making in the Supreme Court, rather than before the lesson. In addition, our results demonstrate that the simulation increased students’ interest in the Supreme Court and their desire to learn more about the institution. Our results have implications for political scientists aiming to enhance student learning through simulations.     

Presidential Bureaucratic Power and Supreme Court Justice Voting

Presidency scholars suggest that the federal bureaucracy has become presidentialized and that the federal agencies have become a primary tool for presidential policy implementation. However, in its review of federal agency litigation, the Supreme Court stands as an important monitor of executive bureaucratic action. Here, the conditions under which Supreme Court justices choose to facilitate executive bureaucratic action are assessed. This study tests the proposition that Supreme Court justices' voting decisions to support the president's bureaucratic agents are conditioned upon theoretically interesting extra-legal factors. Logistic regression analysis was conducted on justices' votes from Supreme Court cases involving cabinet and independent agencies during the years 1953–1995. The results indicate that Supreme Court justices' voting decisions to favorably review bureaucratic actions are influenced by extra-legal factors including attitudinal, political, and external concerns.     

First impressions: Western barbarians at the Celestial Court

Britain's First View of China: Lord Macartney's Embassy to the Peking Court, 1792–94. A joint British Museum/British Library Exhibition. Sponsored and supported by the British Taiwan Cultural Institute. British Museum, 10 October 1992–4 April 1993.

The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China 1792–4, by Alain Peyrefitte (translated from the French by Jon Rothschild). Harvill, London, 1993. xxxiii + 630 pp., colour illus., maps. £30. ISBN 0–00–272677–7.     

Corporations and the law: Historical lessons for contemporary practice

Abstract

This article examines the role of the courts, especially the Supreme Court, in facilitating the development of a capitalist economy and enhancing corporate power. Theoretically, I employ an approach which treats the law as a constitutive process. I first survey key legal developments in the nineteenth century through which the courts fostered and nurtured the development of a capitalist economy. Then I analyze the post‐New Deal era, examining the transformation of economic doctrines by the Supreme Court to legitimate a newly emergent corporate‐administrative state. In the last part of the article I use this historical analysis to address contemporary issues for the Left of how to bring about fundamental change in the United States. I discuss the degree to which the law can be used as a means of progressive reform and how strategic legal choices are related to the debate about social movement, discourse, class‐based, and political strategies for change.     

Dragons,lions and gibbering demons

China: A New History, by John King Fairbank. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London, 1992. xvii ± 519 pp., photos, maps. £19.95, $27.95. ISBN 0–674–11670–4. The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the first British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking 1792–94, by Aubrey Singer. Barrie and Jenkins, London, 1992. xv ± 192 pp., illus, maps. £18.99. ISBN 0–7126–5444–5.

Britain's Encounter with Revolutionary China, 1949–54, by James Tuck‐Hong Tang. Macmillan Press, Basingstoke and London; St Martin's Press, New York, 1992. xiii+ 264 pp., £45. ISBN 0–333–54896–5.     

Banning political parties in a democratic constitutional state: the second NPD ban proceedings in a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT

Backes’s article discusses the judgement of the Second Senate of the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) of 17 January 2017—not to ban the right-wing extremist party Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)—in light of recent lively international debates on the protection of democracy. It considers the logic of an examination of proportionality as established by German constitutional law, considering aspects of the legitimacy, suitability, necessity and appropriateness of the party ban. The article shows that the newly introduced criterion of ‘potentiality’ requires an examination of proportionality even if the court itself denies this. Thus the threshold for intervention has been raised, moderately, since a concrete or even immediate threat as defined in police law is not required. The Court links the definition of a free democratic basic order more closely to the established minimum definitions of comparative research and provides clarification that further refutes the (exaggerated) accusation of ‘vagueness’. In doing so it has sharpened the contours of the concept of militant democracy that is widely regarded in international comparative studies.     

The West German Federal Constitutional Court as Guardian of the Federal System

The West German Federal Constitutional Court has generally actedas a guardian of the German federal system. The Court has preventedattempts by the federation to encroach upon the modest autonomyleft to the Länder. If a national solution for a problemseems indispensable, the Court favors techniques that compensatethe Länder for a loss of autonomy by granting them certainparticipation rights. Guided by that principle, the Court'sconstruction of the Basic Law has increased considerably thenumber of federal statutes that require the approval of theBunesrat. Thus the Court emphasizes today the idea of partnership.However, in a 1986 decision, the Court made clear that a certainamount of federal leadership is needed to keep the system running.In this decision, the Court reminded the federation expresslyof its responsibility for the whole.     

Judges as agents of social change: Can the courts break the affordable housing deadlock in metropolitan areas?

Abstract

Nowhere is the chasm between the races more apparent than in the physical division of metropolitan areas between inner‐city poverty and suburban affluence. Thus far, public policy efforts to introduce metropolitan perspectives into local land use regulations have been unsuccessful. The series of New Jersey Mount Laurel decisions lays out a possible path for introducing comprehensive regional planning by deploying the constitutional power of state courts. Relying on the allied professions of economics and city planning, the New Jersey Supreme Court eliminated the legal barriers to affordable housing in the suburbs.

Questions have been raised over courts’ ability to reform local government powers, but many traditional objections to the effectiveness of judicial reform seem to have been overcome in the New Jersey litigations and legislations. State courts can play an indispensable role in solving regional land use problems if they secure the support of community leadership groups.     

Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?

Abstract

This essay argues that the new global regime of R2P bifurcates the international system between sovereign states whose citizens have political rights, and de facto trusteeship territories whose populations are seen as wards in need of external protection. Under the direction of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court has become an integral part of the international R2P regime by allowing for the legal normalization of certain types of violence (such as Western counterinsurgency efforts), while arbitrarily criminalizing the violence of other states as ‘genocide’. In place of this unequal global regime, the essay concludes by arguing for an internally-driven process of political reform and legal reconciliation, as pioneered in South Africa.     

Inter-Institutional Dynamics: Assessments of the Supreme Court in a Separation of Powers Context

Using data collected from a survey experiment, we examine whether information about the nature of the interactions between the Supreme Court and Congress influences respondents’ assessments of the Court. We find that political sophistication is key to understanding how individuals incorporate the separation of powers context into their evaluations of the Court. Political sophisticates give the Court its highest assessments when told that the Court and Congress are often in disagreement, and that Congress is most responsible for this disagreement. Assessments of the Court are significantly lower, however, when sophisticates believe that high levels of disagreement between the Court and Congress are due to the Court’s actions and when these respondents believe that the Court and Congress agree a high proportion of the time. These results suggest that for political sophisticates, the Court’s institutional standing is related to the balance it strikes between deference to Congress and judicial independence.     

Evidence and Actions on Mortgage Market Disparities: Research,Fair Lending Enforcement,and Consumer Protection

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present an overview of the research on discrimination in mortgage underwriting and pricing, the experiences of minority borrowers both prior to and during the financial crisis, and federal efforts to mitigate foreclosures during the crisis. We next discuss the history of legal cases alleging disparate treatment of minority borrowers, and recent cases alleging disparate impact in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Inclusive Communities decision. Using these discussions as a background, we examine and discuss mortgage regulations issued by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau following the financial crisis, describe recent developments in the FinTech industry and explore the implications for fair lending policy and minority borrowers more generally. Finally, we draw conclusions and make recommendations for improving the mortgage market outcomes of minority borrowers and increasing minority borrowers’ access to credit.     

Judicial Behavior and Public Opinion: Popular Expectations Regarding the Factors That Influence Supreme Court Decisions

This article examines the mass public's perceptions of the factors that actually influence Supreme Court decisions as well those that ought to influence such decisions. We expect significant discrepancies between what the public believes ought to be the case and what it perceives to actually be the case with regard to Supreme Court decision making and that these discrepancies have a significant negative impact on the public's assessment of the Court. More specifically, we hypothesize that the public believes that political factors have more influence on the Court than ought to be the case and that the public perceives traditional legal factors to be less influential than they should be. We find that the expected discrepancies do exist and significantly detract from popular regard for the Court.     

The 2000 American Presidential Election

Abstract

The 2000 Presidential election was one of the longest, most expensive and closest in American history. It was the Presidential election that exposed the flaws (or genius) of the electoral college system, demonstrated the imperfections of media dependency on exit polls and quick election calling, and showed how a third party candidate with just two percent of the popular vote could make the difference in the crucial state of Florida. Democrats lost states they should have won; Republicans lost every big city and most of their suburbs; and the Florida election came down to a five-to-four muddled decision by the Supreme Court. Americans collectively learned a great civics lesson: that even in a bitter, controversial contest, our candidates accept defeat graciously; the simple act of voting is not so simple; and that for all its shortcomings, the electoral college did work.     

Ambient accountability: intelligence services in Europe and the decline of state secrecy

Abstract

In the 1990s, judgments in the European Court of Human Rights concerning state surveillance forced many West European countries to introduce new parliamentary bodies and formal systems for accountability. Promising both greater transparency and lawful intelligence, these frameworks were then energetically rolled out to Central and Eastern Europe. Although officials boasted about their effectiveness, these formal accountability mechanisms have failed to identify serious abuses over the last decade. Moreover, the security regime in much of Central Europe still remains largely unreconstructed. The article argues that a robust culture of accountability cannot be conjured into existence merely by introducing new laws and regulations, or indeed by the increasing tide of media revelations about intelligence. However, it suggests that we are now seeing the rise of a more complex pattern of ‘ambient accountability’ which is at last challenging the secret state across Europe.     

Congress,the Supreme Court,and Judicial Review: Testing a Constitutional Separation of Powers Model

Recent scholarship suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court might be constrained by Congress in constitutional cases. We suggest two potential paths to Congressional influence on the Court's constitutional decisions: a rational‐anticipation model, in which the Court moves away from its preferences in order to avoid being overruled, and an institutional‐maintenance model, in which the Court protects itself against Congressional attacks to its institutional prerogatives by scaling back its striking of laws when the distance between the Court and Congress increases. We test these models by using Common Space scores and the original roll‐call votes to estimate support in the current Congress for the original legislation and the Court's preferences over that legislation. We find that the Court does not appear to consider the likelihood of override in constitutional cases, but it does back away from striking laws when it is ideologically distant from Congress.     

The Limits of Judicial Desegregation Remedies after Missouri v. Jenkins

How far can federal courts go to remedy unconstitutional segregation?In Missouri v. Jenkins in 1990, the U. S. Supreme Court appearedto add new taxing powers to the existing tools already availableto the judiciary. By a 5–4 vote, the Court affirmed court-orderedtaxation to fund an elaborate and expensive desegregation planfor the Kansas City, Missouri, School District. This articleexamines that decision, how it developed, what it said, howit was received, and, most important, what its long-term significancemay be. We argue that the "new" judicial taxing authority sanctionedin the decision may not prove nearly as important as at firstanticipated In the long run, Missouri v. Jenkins may prove mostsignificant for the questions about desegregation remedies raisedby Justice Anthony Kennedy in a dissenting opinion. Those questionscould presage a more skeptical Court outlook on substantiveschool desegregation remedies, at least where those remediescall for additional public funding, as well as greater Courtdeference to the outcomes of state-local political processes.     

Fighting Housing Discrimination in Europe

ABSTRACT

There is no exact European equivalent to the U.S. Fair Housing Act. The member states of the European Union (EU) have transposed into law the EU Racial Equality Directive of 2000 that prohibits discrimination in, among other things, access to the supply of goods and services, including housing, on the basis of race. Most housing discrimination case law so far comes from nonbinding decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and European Committee of Social Rights under the revised European Social Charter of the Council of Europe. This article explains how the European context of discrimination and segregation differs from the American, reviews the major legal conventions establishing equal rights in housing, protected classes, and key precedents. It discusses how mixing policies in social housing are the primary mechanism to reduce residential segregation in Europe. The special case of extreme discrimination against the Roma is presented, before concluding with some comparative observations.