Civil Dissent by Obedience and Disobedience: Exploiting the Gap Between Official Rules and Societal Norms and Expectations

Civil dissent comes in many forms, from peaceful protest to open violation of official rules. But strict obedience to official rules may also serve as a dissenting act. Professors Jessica Bulman-Pozen and David E. Pozen examine obedience as dissent in their article, Uncivil Obedience. The term “uncivil obedience” is meant to capture what Bulman-Pozen and Pozen consider the paradox expressed by “insolence toward law” through conformity to law. This inversely mirrors the paradox expressed by a civil disobedient’s fidelity to law through violation of law. Conceptually, ‘uncivil obedience’ is best understood as a form of civil disobedience. An uncivil obedient’s departure from societal expectations or norms serves the same purpose as a civil disobedient’s departure from an official rule: both expose the gap between law and societal expectations or norms and draw attention to what is just, right, or good to close the gap. Analyzing what Bulman-Pozen and Pozen term “uncivil obedience” as an act of civil disobedience also avoids theoretical problems when confronted with general jurisprudence questions pertaining to the concept of law, and avoids practical problems, namely, sleight-of-hand political maneuvering

Can Judges Be Uncivilly Obedient?

In a recent article, Jessica Bulman-Pozen and David Pozen identified “uncivil obedience” as a tactic for protesting laws or regulations, not by violating the law, as with civil disobedience, but rather by scrupulous attendance to it. They noted that it is a tactic available to private and public actors alike, but were doubtful that a judicial variety existed. They were skeptical because, in their opinion, even hyper-formalist legal opinions would be unlikely to be perceived as provocative as scrupulous adherence to the letter of the law might be when practiced by non-judicial actors. In this Article, I argue that judicial uncivil obedience is possible, discuss examples of lower court uncivil obedience to United States Supreme Court decisions, speculate why uncivil obedience might be a particularly attractive form of dissent by inferior courts in a hierarchical judicial system, and argue that my examples satisfy Bulman-Pozen and Pozen’s criteria. In addition, I argue that the constraints on uncivil obedience identified by Bulman-Pozen and Pozen, which can limit the opportunity for its exercise, have analogues that likewise limit the ability of judges to engage in uncivil obedience

A Research Agenda for Uncooperative Federalists

This paper was presented at the 2012 Legal Scholarship Symposium. The full video is available here

A Research Agenda for Uncooperative Federalists

Increasing demand on more effective cell culture reactors has driven optimization works to increase output of products. This has led to development of soft sensors that uses mathematical formulas to increase the available information for the parameters during runs. In the project two parameters was evaluated for use in such a soft sensor, viability by measuring on-line capacitance with Aber probe and L-lactate production using BioSenz apparatus. To determine how well these could be used both were used on batch reactors measuring on a mouse-mouse B cell hybridoma culture which produced IgG1. On-line measurements were performed by probes which measured directly on the cell suspension or withdrew sterile sample from the reactor. Measuring viability gave results with low error, which can be concluded to the variation in reference cell count, but it could not be determined if measuring L-lactate production with BioSenz works in reactors of this size. More work needs to be done on other types of reactors, like fed-batch or perfusion, or lower working volumes.

Potential Consequences of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Replacement of the Quarterly Reporting Requirement for Semi-annual Reporting

This study extends the discussion of potential consequences of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s replacement of the quarterly reporting requirement for semi-annual reporting. This research summarizes the perspectives about quarterly and semi-annual reporting from reporters, critics, business executives and academic researchers, analyzes the influential parties from changing reporting regulation, and provides detailed explanation about potential impacts. Five parties are related to the replacement of the quarterly reporting requirement, including corporations, investors, analysts, auditors and Trump Administration. This research concludes that the auditor will be the least influential party and corporations will be the most impacted party

Promoting home ownership

Earlier in the week Robert Pozen wrote in the FT about reforming US mortgage interest relief

Rethinking the Management of Foundation Endowments

Reviews the performance of foundation endowments since October 2007, lessons for investors, trends in endowment management models, and the strengths and weaknesses of five models. Recommends ways to make the most of investment consultants

Administrative Balance

Two of the most discussed administrative-law theories in contemporary discussion are executive preemption and big waiver. Executive preemption is the idea that agency regulations preempt state law by extension of the federal statutes the agencies are charged with enforcing. Big waiver is the idea that Congress delegates, to administrative agencies, the power to waive statutory provisions. The constitutional questions raised by executive preemption and big waiver can be put in the following terms. Executive preemption raises constitutional issues as regulatory agencies go farther and farther away from the “clear statement” of a given statute. Thus, one wonders whether agencies are turning themselves into an unconstitutional lawmaking body. Big waiver also raises constitutional issues. To some, it inverts the traditional approach to delegation and allows regulatory agencies to, in part, cancel laws that Congress passed. Executive preemption and big waiver currently constitute two separate theories of administrative law. This paper instead argues that these theories should be thought of in tandem. Executive preemption takes rights away from the states and big waiver gives rights back. As such, these tools allow agencies to balance federalism concerns in our present era of legislative gridlock