Law & Policy最新文献

Law has translated the coronavirus crisis into politically salient forms in people's lives, from states of emergency, to border closures, to mask mandates. Yet political theory work on these forms has focused on constraining arbitrary state power. In this paper, I try to broaden this focus. Substantively, I argue that policy and its implementation also matter to how we theorize the role of law in crises, in terms of how we understand the political power of society and its relationship to the state. Methodologically, I argue that thinking about law in this way is more than a complement to or replacement for thinking about constraints on arbitrariness. Rather, different forms of thinking about law and crisis should constantly be used to critique each other in order to pursue the sorts of legal innovations required by geomobile and interconnected crises. Given that the current pandemic and its broader consequences are still unfolding, I turn to development policy and practice to demonstrate the process and consequence of such ongoing critique in action. Studying rule of law reforms—including during the West African Ebola crisis—I show how practitioners continually reimagined law in ways that facilitated ongoing legal innovation that could adapt to the politics of the crisis.

We assess changes in oral arguments at the US Supreme Court precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the degree to which those changes persisted once the justices acclimated to the new procedures. To do this, we examine whether key attributes of these proceedings changed as the Court experimented with telephonic hearings and subsequently returned to in-person oral arguments. We demonstrate that the initial telephonic forum changed the dynamics of oral argument in a way that gave the chief justice new power and reconfigured justices' engagement during these proceedings. However, we also show that the associate justices adapted to this new institutional landscape by changing their behavior. The findings shed light on the consequences of significant, novel disruptions to institutional rules and norms in the government and legal system.

This study analyses the legal consciousness of Chinese citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic when the authoritarian state invoked heavy penalties to deter noncompliance with its excessive COVID-19 restrictions. China used the approach of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey,” publicly punishing those who violated restrictions in order to deter noncompliance. This article explains why ordinary citizens supported this selective application of the law, as well as how the possibility of being the “chicken” contributed to their compliance (or noncompliance) with excessive COVID-19 restrictions. It suggests that the uncertainty and unpredictability of law in the authoritarian state bred fear, which then led to compliance, regardless of the lack of procedural fairness. People's dissatisfaction with the rules, however, led them to tolerate and even support the noncompliance of people they trusted.

This paper explores how the use of emergency powers by the US and Puerto Rican governments exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and manufactured the conditions for furthering the multilayered economic, legal, political, and humanitarian crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006. The paper discusses three cases. First, it examines how the multiple declarations of the state of emergency, and its constant renewals, produced contradictory public health policies. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the Puerto Rican government has issued over 90 executive orders aimed at addressing the emergency, producing an unclear, contradictory, and unequal emergency management policy. Second, the paper focuses on the impact of the passing of Law 35 on April 5, 2020, which imposed severe penalties on those who disobeyed executive orders. As a result, hundreds of Puerto Ricans were arrested, fined, and incarcerated for violating the issued order. Third, the paper studies how, citing the presence of corruption, the Puerto Rican government implemented anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies that made it more difficult for those most in need of it—mainly poor and racialized individuals, as well as immigrants and working women—to access Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Thus, the paper argues that emergency policies designed to address the pandemic, punitive governance, and anti-corruption and anti-fraud policies undermined Puerto Rico's capacity to handle the pandemic, exacerbated its impact, and created an unequal recovery scenario.

We examine the impact of legal representation in an administrative setting. Focusing on adversarial proceedings within the United States Patent and Trademark Office and employing new data on patent litigation, we investigate patent rights—a legal area dominated by specialized, upper-hemisphere litigation teams that generally represent parties with ample resources. Even in an environment with substantial parity in representational capability, we find that litigation team quality matters. Perceived firm quality and litigation team size both enhance the likelihood of victory; these findings are robust under a number of different approaches used to account for the ability of attorneys to select their clients.

This paper discusses the effect of income on access to justice in the context of the Dutch welfare state, which offers subsidized legal aid to low-income households and also has a well-established market for private legal expenses insurance (LEI). We find that access to non-state legal resources such as LEI is a key determinant of the liklihood of seeking legal advice, particularly for middle-income groups whose socioeconomic position is increasingly precarious. The importance of non-state legal resources for the middle class demonstrates the cushioning effect of subsidized legal aid for low-income households, but also raises questions about how to safeguard access to justice for households other than those with the lowest incomes.

This article contributes to the literature on the pathways of incorporation of undocumented immigrants in the United States by providing insights into the perspectives of street-level bureaucrats implementing policies seeking to increase college access at the state level. Results from a survey of public school counselors in New Jersey show that most counselors have limited knowledge of the policies that affect undocumented students' access to college, whether those policies concern attendance or eligibility for in-state tuition and financial aid. Those who are familiar with these laws have usually sought specific professional development on their own rather than relying on training provided by their employers. The results also indicate that counselors who work in urban areas and in majority-Latino institutions had greater knowledge of these policies than those working in suburban and rural areas or in predominantly white schools. This article highlights the role of place in the bureaucratic incorporation of undocumented immigrants at the state level, specifically investigating the type and level of services that this group receives in the public education system. We also contribute to the public policy literature by showing the effects of ad hoc implementation of inclusive policies by street-level bureaucrats.

In the 2000s and 2010s, US states have seen an important wave of change in criminal justice policies toward a “smart on crime” approach. In this context, several states have rolled out algorithmic risk assessment tools for statewide use in pretrial decisions, whereas some others have not, and still others are moving back from using such tools again. The present article examines the explanations for this variance. To this end, it tests competing expectations about the role of functional pressures, including fiscal strain and the party-political balance of power. The findings show that functional pressures, policy diffusion, and politics affect the likelihood that algorithmic tools will be used in criminal justice. Democratic control of both the state executive and legislative branches increases the likelihood that a state will use these tools, indicating that Republicans are reluctant to leave the “tough on crime” paradigm behind and to advance the “smart on crime” approach.

Police redistricting reforms are surprisingly understudied. While many understand redistricting in other realms as a mechanism of social inclusion and exclusion, police redistricting is often overlooked as merely technocratic. We argue that, in fact, police redistricting reforms are substantively and theoretically important because they articulate urban policy amid the pressures of neoliberal governance. Redistricting defines the functions and activities of the police, responds to political and economic pressures, and redistributes resources across racial spaces. To illustrate, we analyze publicly available materials describing 43 police redistricting reforms in 35 major cities in the United States. We find in these reforms an enduring emphasis on the role of the police as emergency service providers. Urban austerity and growth politics inflect redistricting and impact the distribution of police service across the city. While redistricting can theoretically result in more equitable policing, it can also amplify racial inequities by triaging resources toward downtowns and predominantly white neighborhoods, at the expense of police response in communities of color. We call for more attention to police redistricting as an arena of urban governance.