Hiring Supreme Court Law Clerks: Probing the Ideological Linkage Between Judges and Justices

Since the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of Supreme Court law clerks have had prior experience clerking in lower courts, primarily the federal courts of appeals. Throughout that period, there has been a tendency for Justices to take clerks from lower court judges who share the Justices’ ideological tendencies, in what can be called an ideological linkage between judges and Justices in the selection of law clerks. However, that tendency became considerably stronger between the 1970s and 1990s, and it has remained very strong since the 1990s. This Article probes the sources of that alteration in the Justices’ selection of law clerks. Although no definitive conclusions are possible, two developments seem to be responsible for the change. The first is growing ideological polarization among political elites, which has given Justices stronger incentives to seek out law clerks whose policy preferences are similar to those of the Justices. The second is a pair of changes in applications for Supreme Court clerkships: a massive increase in the numbers of applicants and the development of a practice in which applicants apply to all nine Justices. These changes give the Justices more reason to use the identity of the judge with whom an applicant has clerked as a source of information about the applicant’s policy preferences. Thus, it appears that a major change in the character of American politics has combined with changes in clerkship applications to bring about a strengthening of the ideological linkage between judges and Justices in clerk selection

Seeing Beyond Courts: The Political Context of the Nationwide Injunction

ProfessionalAcademi

Identity, Knowledge, and Environmentalism: How the Media can Affect the Politics of Climate Change in the United States

This paper will examine how individual identities can affect both their news media preferences and their belief in climate change. Identity impacts what news sources an individual finds trustworthy, and therefore what news sources they read and watch. Identity also affects an individual’s belief that climate change is already happening, and that it is manmade. Media preferences can also shape those beliefs, based on the way they frame the same story, and what rhetoric is used within each frame. The media uses rhetoric and framing to influence individuals’ knowledge on particular topics, which impacts their voting behaviors. A person’s identity can influence many things, including their chosen media source. This identity can have several different implications, including the knowledge that they have on climate change and climate change policy based solely on the media sources that they trust. Media sources have the power to influence individuals’ knowledge of climate change and climate change policy because of the way that they present the same news story

A Call for Compromise: Examining Polarization and the Potential Use of ADR Solutions in Congress Post-Trump Administration

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Administrative Sabotage

Government can sabotage itself. From the president’s choice of agency heads to agency budgets, regulations, and litigating positions, presidents and their appointees have undermined the very programs they administer. But why would an agency try to put itself out of business? And how can agencies that are subject to an array of political and legal checks sabotage statutory programs? This Article offers an account of the “what, why, and how” of administrative sabotage that answers those questions. It contends that sabotage reflects a distinct mode of agency action that is more permanent, more destructive, and more democratically illegitimate than more-studied forms of maladministration. In contrast to an agency that shirks its statutory duties or drifts away from Congress’s policy goals, one engaged in sabotage aims deliberately to kill or nullify a program it administers. Agencies sabotage because presidents ask them to. Facing pressure to dismantle statutory programs in an environment where securing legislation from Congress is difficult and politically costly, presidents pursue retrenchment through the administrative state. Building on this positive theory of administrative sabotage, this Article considers legal responses. The best response, this Article contends, is not reforms to the cross-cutting body of administrative law that structures most agency action. Rather, the risk of sabotage is better managed through changes to how statutory programs are designed. Congress’s choices about agency leadership, the concentration or dispersal of authority to implement statutory programs, the breadth of statutory delegations, and other matters influence the likelihood that sabotage will succeed or fail. When lawmakers create or modify federal programs, they should design them to be less vulnerable to sabotage by the very agencies that administer them

On Frustration: Toward A Theory Of A Democratic Politics Of Perseverance

This study examines democratic frustration as a defining experience of ordinary citizens, exploring how ordinary citizens should properly understand their democratic aspirations as being the source of both inspiration and frustration, and how a more robust citizenship can take shape in three distinct dimensions of democracy—communicative, symbolic, and temporal. Examining democratic communication as a site of frustration that invites a moral-psychological analysis of how to foster a better attitudinal strategy, Chapter two proposes a theory of magnanimity with which we can harness the motivational power of superiority while making the very power more compatible with and conducive to a sound and vibrant democratic politics. Focusing on the symbolic dimension of democracy, which involves the politics of the people, Chapter three offers a theory of the sublime people as an interpretive tool that highlights both the need of individual citizens to invite and invoke the people and the importance of holding up against the tendency of endangering themselves to lapse into uncritical passivity and the idolatry of the claimed people. Chapter four warns against the popular trend of placing overemphasis on relatively short-lived extraordinary moments in our democratic experience, and proffers an alternative view of time as a journey, showing how each individual can grow more attached to reality while becoming more attentive, inventive, and persevering

Rationalist causes of war : mechanisms, experiments, and East Asian wars

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation specifies and tests rationalist mechanisms of war. Why would rational states fight each other despite their incentives for peaceful bargains that would avoid the costs of war? In the rationalist theory of war, private information and the commitment problem are the key causes of war. I study the effects of these factors - and the mechanisms regulating their effects - through randomized experiments, historical analysis of the decision processes in three wars, and a comparative study of all international wars fought in East Asia in the last century. This is the first integrated study of rationalist causes of war that combines randomized experiments with historical cases. Despite a wide theoretical literature, there are few empirical tests of rationalist explanations for war. I use experimental and historical evidence to show that the commitment problem has strong positive effects on conflict. The effects of private information are less clear. Next, I specify six mechanisms that regulate the effects of the commitment problem and the private-information problem: three mechanisms (exogenous, endogenous, and inadvertent enforcement) for the first problem and three mechanisms (signaling with sunk cost, implementation cost, and salient contradiction) for the second. The experimental and historical evidence largely converge. Each of the three enforcement mechanisms calms the commitment problem and reduces the risk of conflict. Evidence for the three signaling mechanisms is mixed. Finally, I use the case universe of East Asian wars to assess the relevance of the mechanisms, suggest theoretical refinements, and infer alternative theories of war.by Ch-yuan Kaiy Quek.Ph.D