International human rights courts and environmental human rights: re-imagining adjudicative paradigms (original) (raw)

The Deep Patterns of Campaign Finance Law

Why has American campaign finance law long suffered from doctrinal confusion and sparked bitter ideological conflict? This Article demonstrates that these attributes are rooted in a judicial dispute over the cognitive and social characteristics of central actors in elections. The Article unpacks the foundations of campaign finance law through a multi-tiered analysis of case texts. It first explicates the doctrinal deficiencies that riddle the Supreme Court's campaign finance jurisprudence. These flaws reflect the Court's clumsy engagement with democratic theory, which has been an unrecognized driver of campaign finance law and the wellspring of the partisan dispute. Conservatives assert that the pillar of democracy is free participation in the marketplace of information, and subsequently reject restriction of campaign financing even when advanced in the name of anticorruption. Conversely, liberals perceive democracy as vulnerable to systemic corruption from plutocratic influences and thus endorse regulatory oversight of campaign spending. The latter half of the Article excavates the origins of this conflict: the factions adopt divergent positions on the cognitive and social attributes of political actors (voters, candidates, donors, and public officials). As these positions inform the factions' theories of democracy, the campaign finance quagmire can be traced to political and psychological assumptions present in the cases. Progress in campaign finance law demands revision of the relationship between these assumptions and contemporary electoral realities.

Dollars and Sense: Campaign Finance Reform for the 21st Century

2019

MS. CRAIG: Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being here today. My name is Kristine Craig, and I'm the executive editor of the Journal of Legislation. I would like to begin with some introductions for our speakers. First we have Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy on the right. Professor Torres-Spelliscy teaches at Stetson on election law, corporate governance, business entities, and constitutional law. Her academic work has appeared in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Policy. She has also written pieces for The New York Times, The Economist, and Forbes Magazine. She has testified before Congress on campaign finance reform and has spoken at 31 universities on topics around the country. Next we have Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos. Professor Stephanopoulos teaches and researches at the University of Chicago on a variety of areas within election law, constitutional law, and comparative law, in addition to publishing in academic journals such as the Harvard Law Review, Standard Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. He has written for publications such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He's also been involved in a variety of recent litigation efforts, including his work on the efficiency gap for the first successful partisan gerrymandering lawsuit in more than 30 years.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE AND ELECTORAL REFORM: A FEMINIST ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE

In " Campaign Finance and Electoral Reform: A Feminist Economics Perspective, " we begin by examining the impact of the current regime of campaign finance on the American political system, in terms of the possibilities for corruption, for inegalitarian agenda-setting, and on the quality of representation by office-holders. We then briefly review attempts to regulate this system, from the Tillman Act of 1907 to the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (" McCain-Feingold "). We examine and critique the extant proposals for change, including legislation and/or regulation to " plug the holes " in FECA (the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971), public financing of all federal campaigns (through either lump-sum payments or " voter vouchers "), and the deregulation of all campaign contributions, combined with immediate reporting of the same. Next, using the work of feminist economist Amartya Sen, we examine the proposals for reform through the lens of feminist economics, critiquing the neoclassically based assumption of individualistic political decision-making on which they are built. We examine the reasons for the decline of " dialogic sites, " institutions and venues where ordinary Americans can debate politics, form coherent political world-views, and pressure candidates and elected officials. Finally, using both the tools of modern communications technology and lessons from the civil rights and feminist movements, we present a tentative list of proposals for reform and democratic renewal of the American political system.

Rethinking the Campaign Finance Agenda

The Forum, 2008

For one-third of a century, federal campaign finance debates have been stuck in a corruption rut. Whether in Congress, FEC or the courts, most of the action has been about limiting contributions and certain expenditures. After defending the ban of soft money contributions to national political parties and questioning the effects of electioneering regulations, the article argues that whatever one's positions on these issues it is time to rethink the agenda for future research and action. Rather than focus on corruption prevention, research and policy should move to such positive goals as increasing electoral competition, candidate emergence and promoting equality through small donors and volunteers. The article concludes with initial survey research findings from an ongoing project on donor participation.

Assuring the Fair Value of the Political Liberties: The Need for an Ethos of Justice

Readings in Philosophy, 2013

In this article I explored the co-tenability of John Rawls’ two principles of justice by framing the problem in terms of the alleged compatibility of the equality of the political liberties vis-à-vis inequalities in income and wealth. I contend that historical considerations, as well as aspects internal to Rawls theory, present formidable difficulties for Rawls if he wants to maintain the lexical ordering of the first principle over the second. I questioned whether there are suitable institutions that could actually implement his principles. I then discussed and appled the insights of G.A. Cohen to resolve the objections articulated in the first half of this paper. While his insights do not specifically address my concern, they can be suitably modified to help illuminate and explain why Rawls’ assumption regarding the compatibility of political equality and socioeconomic inequality is untenable, given the conflicting demands of his two principles. I argued, ultimately, that a well-ordered society regulated by justice as fairness requires its citizens to affirm an ethos of justice within their everyday individual transactions if such a society is to be considered truly just in the Rawlsian sense.