Beyond Citizens United

The doctrine announced in Citizens United rendered most efforts to regulate campaign financing unconstitutional. We argue, however, that the doctrine allows for a novel approach to the concerns inherent in campaign financing that does not directly infringe on political speech, because it operates later in the process, after the election. This approach allows us to address a broad range of these issues and to do so with legal tools that are readily available. We describe two applications of our approach in this Article. First, we argue that courts should use a modified rational basis review when a law implicates the interests of a major campaign contributor. The nature of the inquiry remains the same—the law only needs to serve some public purpose—but the standard is modified to be less deferential, because the campaign spending undermines the democratic accountability rationale behind that deference. Second, we argue that some of the key goals of campaign finance regulation can be realized through institutional design of the policymaking process, which has far fewer constitutional limits than campaign finance regulation

Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: insights into genome architecture and evolution.

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. All mycobacteriophages characterized to date are dsDNA tailed phages, and have either siphoviral or myoviral morphotypes. However, their genetic diversity is considerable, and although sixty-two genomes have been sequenced and comparatively analyzed, these likely represent only a small portion of the diversity of the mycobacteriophage population at large. Here we report the isolation, sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of 18 new mycobacteriophages isolated from geographically distinct locations within the United States. Although no clear correlation between location and genome type can be discerned, these genomes expand our knowledge of mycobacteriophage diversity and enhance our understanding of the roles of mobile elements in viral evolution. Expansion of the number of mycobacteriophages grouped within Cluster A provides insights into the basis of immune specificity in these temperate phages, and we also describe a novel example of apparent immunity theft. The isolation and genomic analysis of bacteriophages by freshman college students provides an example of an authentic research experience for novice scientists

Beyond \u3ci\u3eCitizens United\u3c/i\u3e

The doctrine announced in Citizens United rendered most efforts to regulate campaign financing unconstitutional. We argue, however, that the doctrine allows for a novel approach to the concerns inherent in campaign financing that does not directly infringe on political speech, because it operates later in the process, after the election. This approach allows us to address a broad range of these issues and to do so with legal tools that are readily available. We describe two applications of our approach in this Article. First, we argue that courts should use a modified rational basis review when a law implicates the interests of a major campaign contributor. The nature of the inquiry remains the same—the law only needs to serve some public purpose—but the standard is modified to be less deferential, because the campaign spending undermines the democratic accountability rationale behind that deference. Second, we argue that some of the key goals of campaign finance regulation can be realized through institutional design of the policymaking process, which has far fewer constitutional limits than campaign finance regulation

Beyond Citizens United

The doctrine announced in Citizens United rendered most efforts to regulate campaign financing unconstitutional. We argue, however, that the doctrine allows for a novel approach to the concerns inherent in campaign financing that does not directly infringe on political speech, because it operates later in the process, after the election. This approach allows us to address a broad range of these issues and to do so with legal tools that are readily available. We describe two applications of our approach in this Article. First, we argue that courts should use a modified rational basis review when a law implicates the interests of a major campaign contributor. The nature of the inquiry remains the same—the law only needs to serve some public purpose—but the standard is modified to be less deferential, because the campaign spending undermines the democratic accountability rationale behind that deference. Second, we argue that some of the key goals of campaign finance regulation can be realized through institutional design of the policymaking process, which has far fewer constitutional limits than campaign finance regulation