Judicial Procedures as Instruments of Political Control: Congress's Strategic Use of Citizen Suits

Citizen suit provisions, which give proregulatory interests access to the federal courts, can be used by Congress to increase the courts' role in regulatory policy. I analyze 284 environmental regulation bills reported favorably out of committee and show that committee support for citizen suits is a function of the committee's policy goals and the political context in which the bills are generated. These findings indicate that Congress deliberately uses judicial procedures as instruments of political control and that scholars examining judicial policymaking must include legislative goals in the list of explanatory factors.     

Party attachments and political fragmentation in Europe

Abstract. Values and ideologies seem to be changing rapidly in many countries of Western Europe. These developments imply a shift among the adherents of political parties. On the one hand, we expect to see a process of deideologization weakening the traditional ties between parties and their adherents. On the other hand, increasing pluralization is suggested by the ongoing process of individualization. In this study we analyze the orientations of the adherents of the main political parties in 12 Western European countries in the last two decades. We expect to find clear traces of ongoing deideologization as well as pluralization, but this expectation proves to be inaccurate. Neither deideologization nor pluralization can be accepted as a common feature of party adherents in advanced industrial societies. On the contrary. Each of these processes seems to follow a different path of development in distinct countries and in distinct party families. A general 'decline-of-the-party' or an 'end-of-ideology' is not to be found among the adherents of the main parties in Western Europe in the last decades. The processes appear to be more complicated, with divergent developments in different countries.     

Small Beginnings

Yangzhou and Zhenjiang share one river and many stories to tourists who find the two cities My first taste of China outside Beijing began with a swing through eastern Jiangsu Province's Yangzhou and Zhenjiang cities, along the fabled Yangtze River. The area northwest of Shanghai does not find itself featured prominently in many guidebooks. But one can     

Descent of the Dollar and Rise of the Rest

Though another Great Depression seems to have been averted for the moment, great geo-economic shifts are in the works as a result of the global meltdown emanating from Wall Street. Four Nobel laureates in economics take a look at where we are headed.     

Rights and Individual Well-Being

Abstract
This article challenges the view permeating much philosophical thought that the primacy of individual rights represents the individual's standpoint against the public good or against the requirements of others generally. The author explicates the underlying features of our common culture contending that the conflict between individual and general good as being central to rights misconstrues the surface features of rights. The range and nature of common goods determine the options available to individuals and define their well-being. The relative absence of conflict of interests and the background of a common tradition make the courts a suitable forum for the conduct of this branch of politics.     

On the Autonomy of Legal Reasoning*

Abstract The paper argues that reasoning according to law is an instance of moral reasoning. Several ways of understanding this claim are distinguished. A number of arguments to the effect that because of the internal logic of the law, or the special skills it involves legal reasoning should be seen as immune to moral considerations are rejected. Nevertheless, the paper affirms the relative and limited autonomy of legal reasoning, and the sui generis role of doctrine in it which is manifested in the many cases in which the moral considerations pertaining to the case underdetermine its result.