Regional Leaders in the Diffusion of Tort Innovations among the American States

Many studies have analyzed the diffusion of legislative policies,but relatively little work has been done on the spread of judicialinnovations. An analysis of the spread of eight tort doctrinesamong the American states indicates that there were clear regionalleaders, including some states that were not early adoptersof the innovations but still served as leaders for their neighbors.There was little relationship between being a regional leaderfor legislative adoptions and being a regional leader in judicialadoptions, indicating that different processes influenced diffusionin these two arenas of state political activity.     

Interstate Banking: Current Status and Unfinished Agendas

In 1986, most of the centuries-old barriers against interstatebranch banking fell. By the end of the year, thirty-seven stateshad passed legislation authorizing some form of interstate branchbanking. Moreover, two federal judicial decisions had clearedthe way for interstate banking by restricting state regulatoryauthority over interstate branch banking when it is conductedeither through a shared-use automatic teller machine or by a"nonbank bank." These developments have dramatically changedthe nature of the business of banking, creating an entirelynew legislative agenda for states. High on the list of the itemsthat states must now consider are regulatory and tax parityamong competing financial institutions; multiple taxation offinancial institutions that do business in several states; taxavoidance by out-of-state banks; and out-dated jurisdictionalstandards.     

Judicial Federalilsm and Equality Guarantees in State Supreme Courts

The new judicial federalism emphasizes state court relianceon state constitutional grounds for the enhanced protectionof individual rights. Commentary in the legal literature givesthe impression of much state court activism in this area. However,a quantitative analysis of 2,286 equal protection cases decidedby state supreme courts between 1975 and 1984 shows much lowerlevels of the exclusive use of state constitutions. The dataalso reveal significant regional variations in the nature ofequal protection cases filed, the types of alleged discrimination,the use of independent and adequate state grounds, and the frequencyof judicial invalidation of state action. These variations areexplored in terms of political culture, the institutional featuresof the state judiciary, and the content of state bills of rights.     

Bringing home the votes: Electoral outcomes in state legislative races

This analysis assesses the effects of campaign activity, measured in terms of the campaign expenditures of candidates, on the outcomes of state legislative elections. The research utilizes election results from the 1978 elections for the state houses in California and Iowa. In addition, the investigation specifies the influence of partisan strength and incumbency on election outcomes. Two multiple regression models are estimated, one in which the partisan vote outcome is the dependent variable and one in which the vote of challengers is the dependent variable. Although the results of the inquiry underscore the partisan character of state legislative races, they also show that, akin to congressional contests, a challenger's campaign spending can sometimes have a greater effect on the voting outcome than the incumbent's spending. But these state legislative elections are largely partisan affairs in which bringing home the votes mainly involves support for political parties in the legislative districts and the intensity of campaign efforts represented by campaign expenditures.     

Gubernatorial Use of the Item Veto for Narrative Deletion

Legislative use of narrative, such as conditions and riders, in appropriations bills has become common and has had negative consequences for the executive budget and veto, as well as for the legislative process. Some governors have used the item veto as a remedy. While they have not necessarily diminished the amount of narrative, they have achieved some protection of the executive budget and veto power. Their success depends greatly on the type of legal authority embodied in this constitutional power.     

REMEDIES WITHOUT RIGHTS? THE LEGAL BASIS OF BROAD-GAUGE DECREES IN PRISON CONDITIONS CASES

This paper examines the legal basis for "broad-gauge" or "administrative intervention" decrees in the sort of lawsuits which have come to be known as extended impact cases, polycentric disputes, or public law litigation. It concludes that equity provides an adequate basis for such decrees and that the Supreme Court's recent use of a narrower view of judicial equity powers, sometimes called the tailoring principle, is not compelled by precedent. The paper further argues that the Supreme Court appears headed in the direction of using the tailoring principle in prison conditions cases (e.g., Bell v. Wolfish ), although some support for a broader view of judicial equity power is found in Hutto v. Finney .     

The Politics of Court Budgeting in the States: Is Judicial Independence Threatened by the Budgetary Process?

Judicial independence in American politics has been hailed as a means of preserving individual liberty and minority rights against the actions of the majoritarian branches of government. Recently, however, legal professionals and scholars of the courts have begun to question the magnitude of judicial independence, suggesting that budgeting and finance issues pose a threat to judicial independence. This article explores whether state judiciaries are being threatened on this front by soliciting the perceptions of key state officials. Using surveys of court administrators, executive budget officers, and legislative budget officers in the states, we examine three aspects of the politics of judicial budgeting: competing for scarce resources, interbranch competition, and pressure to raise revenues. The survey responses suggest that, in a substantial number of states, judicial independence has, at times, been threatened by interbranch competition and pressures to raise revenues.     

Portugal's semi-presidentialism (re)considered: An assessment of the president's role in the policy process, 1976–2006

This article analyses the policy-making role of Portugal's heads of state in the period 1976–2006. Not only is Portugal rarely studied in the English language comparative literature, but there is no consensus concerning the proper definition of the country's system of government, whether it is semi-presidential or parliamentary. This article presents new data on the Portuguese president's role in the following areas: cabinet appointment and dismissal; parliamentary dissolution; ministerial appointments; referral of legislative bills to judicial review; veto powers; and agenda-setting through going-public tactics. It is concluded that the president's role in the policy process has never been irrelevant. While the 1982 constitutional reform did eliminate the possibility of undisguised presidential government, presidents have continued to be important in policy making, particularly due to use of their veto and dissolution powers. Therefore, the article argues that Portugal has remained solidly semi-presidential.     

Taking on the World: The International Activities of American State Legislatures

State legislatures in the United States engage in a substantialamount of international activity. In the 2001-2002 legislativesessions, some 886 bills and resolutions with significant internationalimplications were introduced. Approximately 306 of these wereadopted. This level of international activity has increasedsubstantially since 1991, and the substantive focus has changedover time. In addition, about half of all state legislaturesreceived at least one foreign delegation and sent at least onedelegation of members abroad in the last session. As in mostareas of state policy, there is considerable interstate variationin legislatures' international activities. Some states had virtuallyno international legislative activity, whereas others were veryactive. The principal factors explaining this variation werethe degree of state involvement in the international economy,as measured by the level of state exports, and party controlof the legislature.     

Learning from the Americanists (Again): Theory and Method in the Study of Delegation

European(ist) scholars have largely followed their American(ist) colleagues in the formulation of theories about delegation of powers to non-majoritarian institutions, most notably through the application of principal-agent models of relations between legislative principals and their executive and judicial agents. This article suggests that Europeanists can once again learn from recent developments in both theory and method in the study of delegation in American politics. The first section discusses the methodological challenges of testing hypotheses about the conditions under which agents might enjoy some degree of autonomy from their legislative principals, and draws lessons from the recent Americanist literature. The section examines the development in American politics of a second wave of principal-agent analysis which aims to formulate and test hypotheses about the conditions under which legislative principals might delegate authority and discretion to bureaucratic agents. The third and final section of the article examines some preliminary applications of the principal-agent approach to the European Union and to the comparative study of European parliamentary democracies, and proposes a research agenda for the comparative study of national-level delegation in the parliamentary systems of Western Europe.     

More Effective Than We Thought: Accounting for Legislative Hitchhikers Reveals a More Inclusive and Productive Lawmaking Process

For more than half a century, scholars have been studying legislative effectiveness using a single metric—whether the bills a member sponsors progress through the legislative process. We investigate a less orthodox form of effectiveness—bill proposals that become law as provisions of other bills. Counting these “hitchhiker” bills as additional cases of bill sponsorship success reveals a more productive, less hierarchical, and less partisan lawmaking process. We argue that agenda and procedural constraints are central to understanding why lawmakers pursue hitchhiker strategies. We also investigate the legislative vehicles that attract hitchhikers and find, among other things, that more Senate bills are enacted as hitchhikers on House laws than become law on their own.     

我国《刑法》第13条“但书”的司法适用分析

"但书"司法适用的现状暴露出令人担忧的问题,归结起来,集中表现在两个方面:一是"但书"司法适用少,作为支撑无罪司法判决的法律依据引用得更少;二是"但书"司法适用不统一、不协调。目前,论证和阐明"但书"司法适用的必要性和可行性是当务之急。从必要性角度分析,传统犯罪构成理论体系的完善需要出罪机制的建立,它是刑事诉讼法适用的内在需要和实体前提。从可行性角度分析,它是刑法总则统率、指导分则的内在要求和具体体现,是法律规范基本构造发挥效用、保持生命力的重要体现,具有司法解释的合法性保障和认可依据。据此,可从程序和实体两个维度构建"但书"的司法适用路径,使其在司法实践中发挥实效。     

State Constitutional Limits on Legislative Procedure: Legislative Compliance and Judicial Enforcement

Most state constitutions contain detailed restrictions on thelegislative process. Violations of some of these restrictions(e.g., single-subject requirements) are reflected on the faceof a final enactment. Other violations (e.g., alteration ofa bill to change its original purpose) are not evident in thefinal enactment, but require investigation of the legislativeprocess. State courts have developed a variety of approachesto these second types of violations, from excluding all evidencebeyond the enactment to permitting any evidence of constitutionalviolations. The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act was passedin apparent violation of both types of constitutional restrictions.The legislative debates reflected legislators' attitudes aboutsuch restrictions, but the Pennsylvania courts refuse to enforcethem. After surveying other judicial approaches, the articlediscusses the legislative and executive obligation to followconstitutional restrictions, regardless of judicial enforcement.The article then advocates increased judicial enforcement, whilemaintaining proper deference to the legislature.     

ECONOMIC MOTIVES FOR "SOCIAL" PROGRAMS: THE NEW FEDERAL DIRECTION

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), passed by Congress in 1982, is significant federal employment and training legislation for a number of reasons. Most noticeably, it substantially enhanced private sector and state government roles in the administration of such programs. In order to understand both the programmatic impact of JTPA and its likely consequences on subsequent federal employment and training initiatives, it is necessary to look at the politics of the legislation-especially those interests that are strongly represented through its implementation and those that are not. By doing this, one obtains a better sense of the dimensions of conflict around future employment and training legislation. General guidelines within which Congress should act in subsequent legislative activity are laid out.     

Employment Laws and the Public Sector Employer: Lessons to Be Learned from a Review of Lawsuits Filed against Local Governments

Numerous aspects of the day-to-day operations of local governments are subject to legal scrutiny; public managers and officials must be keenly aware of the legal rights and protections that extend to both citizens and employees of local governments. This research evaluates several areas of concern in the human resource administration of municipal governments with respect to the management of public employees within the protections set forth by the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. Sample cases filed from 2000 to 2007 against local governments in Tennessee involving Title VII violations, retaliation, hostile work environment, Family and Medical Leave Act violations, and other employee grievances are detailed. The intent of this analysis is to highlight many of the laws and legal principles that relate to municipal human resources management and to provide scholars and practitioners with a brief overview of the liabilities that may arise from the employment relationship between local governments and their employees.     

Federal Preemption of State Regulation of Insurance: End of a 200-Year Era?

This article examines state regulation of insurance, focusingon congressional and judicial attempts to displace state regulatoryprimacy over insurance. After describing the early period ofstate insurance regulation from the U.S. Supreme Court's decisionin Paul v. Virginia to the Court's overruling of that decision,the article examines the McCarran-Ferguson Act and the post-McCarranenvironment, including examples of judicial preemption of stateinsurance laws. Finally, the article considers the system ofinsurance regulation envisioned in H.R. 1290, the most recentcongressional attempt to displace state insurance regulation,and state initiatives to counter federal regulation. AlthoughH.R.1290 purports to setup a dual regulatory scheme, the broadpreemption language in the bill would allow federal regulatorsto preempt virtually all state insurance laws. Moreover, thedecisions of the Supreme Court in Garcia v. San Antonio MetropolitanTransit Authority and Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Councilwould leave no political or judicial forum for states to debatethe extent and impact of federal preemption     

The legal subject in modern African law: A Nigerian report

In recent years, the judicial systems of African countries have been increasingly ineffective, as demonstrated in cases as varied as the genocide in Rwanda and the land seizures in Zimbabwe. It is not only in cases involving individual rights and the state that the legal system is barely existent. The situation is just as bad, if not worse, in the administration of criminal justice. Whether it is the police, the prisons, or the courts, under both military and democratic governments, we are confronted with evidence of the impotence of the judiciary. This article examines the relationship between the executive and judicial branches of government in Nigeria. It also makes recommendations to improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of African judiciaries in checking executive power.     

Horses and hippos: Why Italian government bills change in the legislative arena, 1987–2006

Scholars interested in legislative processes pay relatively little attention to the changes made to bills in parliamentary democracies. On the one hand, comparative research has often described parliamentary institutions as ineffectual vis‐à‐vis cabinets throughout the lawmaking process; on the other hand, for a long time the rational choice literature has focused more on the formal rules regulating amendatory activity than on amendatory activity itself. Hence, very few studies have tried to explain how much government bills are altered in parliament and why. This article investigates the changes made to governmental legislation in Italy. Taking the modifications occurring during the legislative process as the dependent variable, a number of explanatory hypotheses derived from both existing scholarship and original arguments are discussed and tested. This also allows the identification of some usually unobserved aspects of the decision‐making process within the cabinet. The findings can also be relevant for comparative research since Italy has been characterised during the period under scrutiny (1987–2006) by two distinct electoral systems, two extremely different party systems (pivotal and alternational), governments with various ideological orientations and range, and both partisan and technical ministers.     

Legislative agenda-setting in parliamentary democracies

Various strands of literature in comparative politics regard governments as the only noteworthy initiators and mainsprings of legislative policy making in parliamentary democracies. Opposition activity in policy making is more often associated with the intention to prevent, rather than to shape, policy. Does this perception reflect real‐life politics? To answer this question, this article discusses different arguments that link institutional and policy‐related characteristics to the incentives and constraints of different government and parliamentary actors to initiate or co‐sponsor legislative bills. More specifically, it relates policy‐, office‐ and vote‐related incentives, as well as institutional and resource constraints of legislative actors, to the likelihood that these actors will take the lead in legislative agenda‐setting. These arguments are confronted with original data on the universe of all legislative bills in four parliamentary systems over one and a half decades. The article concludes that opposition and, in particular, bipartisan agenda‐setting is indeed rare. Yet, in contrast to widely held maxims, it is neither absent nor spurious, but related to the allocation of power and the intensity of ideological conflict both within and between the (coalition) government and parliament.