Category Archives: legislation and legislatures

“Senate Dysfunction Blocks Bipartisan Criminal Justice Overhaul”

September 16, 2016, 7:19 amlegislation and legislatures, political parties, political polarizationRick Hasen

NYT: A major criminal-justice overhaul bill seemed destined to be the bipartisan success story of the year, consensus legislation that showed lawmakers could still rise above politics and take on a serious societal problem. Then the election got in… Continue reading

“Legislating in the Shadows”

September 16, 2016, 7:00 amlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Chris Walker has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming Penn L Rev). Here is the abstract: Federal agencies are deeply involved in legislative drafting — both in the forefront by drafting the substantive legislation the Administration desires to submit to… Continue reading

“Take Back the House, Democrats. Please.”

September 4, 2016, 7:37 amcampaigns, legislation and legislatures, political partiesRick Hasen

Robert Frank in NYT Sunday Review.

NYT: Congressman Introduced Tobacco Lobbyist Bill Verbatim; Sen. Landrieu Failed to Register as Lobbyist

September 2, 2016, 10:22 amlegislation and legislatures, lobbyingRick Hasen

Eric Lipton on business as usual in DC.

“A Democratic Senate Might Need to Curtail Filibuster, Harry Reid Says”

September 1, 2016, 9:03 amlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

NYT: Senator Harry Reid says Democrats should move to curtail the filibuster if they win the White House and Senate in November only to run up against persistent use of the tactic by Republicans. “Unless after this election there is… Continue reading

“Temporary Legislation, Better Regulation and Experimentalist Governance: An Empirical Study”

July 26, 2016, 5:57 pmlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This article presents the findings of an extensive multi-method empirical study that explored the relationship between temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. Temporary (or “sunset”) legislation, statutes… Continue reading

“Congress at Work: A Documentary Supplement for Courses in Legislation”

June 14, 2016, 6:57 amlegislation and legislatures, pedagogy, statutory interpretationRick Hasen

New from Peter Strauss: Casebooks on Legislation typically omit legislative materials, as such, giving students little if any chance to work directly with statutes and the processes that create them. Yet lawyers may become intimately involved in the legislative… Continue reading

“Secret Laws Passed In The U.S. Spike Under Obama”

June 2, 2016, 9:57 amlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Vocativ reports: A new survey shows that for the past 30 years, Congress has steadily passed an increasing number of “secret laws”—provisions that are kept from the public eye. That’s according to an exhaustive study by Dakota Rudesill, an… Continue reading

“Demise of Local News May Be Ruining Congress”

June 1, 2016, 5:04 pmlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Smart Jonathan Bernstein: For several senators up for re-election this year, a significant problem is that no one in their home states knows who they are. This is a consequence, as the Washington Post’s Paul Kane points out,… Continue reading

“Senators vote to keep themselves dependent on lobbyists”

May 30, 2016, 7:37 pmlegislation and legislatures, lobbyingRick Hasen

Lee Drutman for Vox: The Senate Appropriations Committee voted this week to keep senators and their staff dependent on the expertise and information that lobbyists provide. Okay, let me be fair. The committee didn’t do this explicitly. But by ignoring… Continue reading

“Sometimes ‘People’ = ‘Legislature'”

May 25, 2016, 8:26 amlegislation and legislatures, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

Seth Barrett Tillman: This is a response to Professors Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash & John Yoo, People ≠ Legislature, 39 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 341 (2016) (noted on this blog here). Professors Prakash and Yoo’s… Continue reading

“Classified Legislation: Tracking Congress’s Library of Secret Law”

May 19, 2016, 2:48 pmlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Dakota Rudesill: Most citizens assume that all of the law Congress writes is public. That is not, in fact, true. Our general norm of publishing law has a significant and largely overlooked legislative exception: classified addenda associated with three annual… Continue reading

Two Witnesses Accidentally Offer Identical Congressional Testimony Prepared by Lobbying Firm

May 18, 2016, 1:19 pmlegislation and legislatures, lobbyingRick Hasen

Oops.

Columbia Law Review Symposium Honoring Peter Strauss

May 16, 2016, 7:31 amlegislation and legislaturesRick Hasen

Somehow I missed this excellent issue honoring Peter Strauss: Symposium in Honor of Peter L. Strauss. 115 Colum. L. Rev. 1675-2069 (2015). [H]|[L]|[LA]|[W]|[WN] Katzmann, Hon. Robert A. Celebrating Professor Peter… Continue reading