Courts, Agencies, and Congressional Committees: A Neo-Institutional Perspective

1993 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Miller

Based on over 75 personal interviews with members of Congress and their staffs, this article examines how three House authorization committees differ in their reactions to federal court decisions versus their reactions to federal agency decisions. In general, Congress holds the courts in higher esteem than it does the agencies. The courts are generally seen as less political than the agencies, and committee reactions to court decisions are seen as much more unusual than reactions to agency decisions. The attitudes of the three committees toward decisions of the other institutions vary in ways consonant with their institutional roles, the committees' political cultures, and the primary goals of the committee members. The domination of lawyer members on the policy oriented Judiciary Committee results in that committee being the most deferential to the courts. The constituency focused Interior Committee is oriented to local interests and members' reelection goals, and it responds to the courts or to agencies only when constituency pressures force it to do so. The power oriented Energy and Commerce Committee treats the courts and the agencies just like any other political actors.

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-345
Author(s):  
David J Stute

Abstract Since the 1948 enactment of 28 USC § 1782 in the United States, no consensus has emerged as to the availability of federal court discovery to parties in private foreign or international arbitral proceedings. This year, within months of one another, six federal courts have issued rulings that are widely inconsistent on the availability of section 1782 discovery. The courts have ruled that a proceeding before a private international arbitral tribunal is eligible for section 1782 discovery; that, categorically, no such discovery is available; that the definition of private arbitral tribunal applies to CIETAC; and that discovery is available by virtue of a party’s parallel pursuit of discovery through foreign civil proceedings. As these cases demonstrate, recent US court decisions have brought no predictability, let alone certainty, to the subject. Congress, on the other hand, could and should amend the statute so as to include private tribunals in the scope of section 1782. This article discusses the case law’s state of disarray; proposes a legislative solution; considers the proposed amendment’s merits; and advocates for Congress to act.


1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Daniel Albas ◽  
Cheryl Albas

When universities administer examinations, they do so dramaturgically. That is, they use spaces, props, equipment, and bodies to convey specific messages (that examinations are important, serious, formal affairs which reflect the larger societal values of universalism and individualism) to students. Drama and dramaturgy require both actors and an audience; the interaction consists of the effect that the one has on the other, that the other has on the one and both of these. The focus of this paper is on the interaction between the message and students' response to it, that is, the students' definition of the situation. In particular, emphasis is upon the notion that the dramaturgical messages given by the university will be interpreted largely as they were intended to be, that in some cases the effect of the message is dysfunctional, either because it is misinterpreted or because it is challenged.


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.


2015 ◽  
Vol 166 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-245
Author(s):  
Willi Zimmermann ◽  
Kathrin Steinmann ◽  
Eva Lieberherr

Annual review of Swiss forest policy 2014 Swiss forest policy in 2014 was marked by the passage of the Federal Council's message and draft of an amendment of the Forest Law, which was also treated by the Council of State's Commission for Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy and by the Council of State itself. This revision affects more than 20 articles of the current Forest Law. Despite these numerous alterations, the revision has not caused major debates. The forest-relevant parliamentary interventions decreased drastically in 2014, but since the beginning of 2015 a countertrend is notable. The forest budget remained practically the same as in previous years. The number of federal court decisions in relation to the forest sector has stayed small. Yet there are increasingly significant cantonal court decisions in this domain. In terms of broader forest policy, the public administration has mainly undertaken new standpoints regarding spatial planning and energy policies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 163 (5) ◽  
pp. 145-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willi Zimmermann

Annual review of Swiss forest policy 2011 The revision of the Forest Act, the adoption of the Forest Programme 2020 by the Federal Council as well as the preparation of the second contribution period of the New System of Financial Equalisation and Division of Tasks between the Confederation and the Cantons (NFE) shaped, in addition to the routine business, the forest policy of 2011. The parliamentary initiatives on forest and forest policy issues remained of about the same amount as in previous years, while the Federal Court decisions on forest legislation have declined significantly. In various forest-related sectoral policies, the government and parliament made important decisions. In climate policy, the Parliament adopted the CO2 Law. However, this has not yet happened to the revision of the Spatial Planning Act. In nature and landscape policy, the administration has prepared the Swiss biodiversity strategy so far that the Federal Council could send it out for consultation. The revision of the Hunting Regulation, with changes in the management of large carnivores, is nearing adoption. At the international level, the Federal Council has submitted the European Landscape Convention to the Parliament for ratification, and the European forestry ministers have agreed to the preparation of a European Forest Convention.


Author(s):  
Nimer Sultany

This chapter analyzes concrete Egyptian and Tunisian cases that showcase the interplay between continuity and rupture. These cases illustrate the lack of a systemic relation between law and revolution. On the one hand, the judiciary that interprets and applies the law is part of the very social and political conflicts it is supposed to resolve. On the other hand, the law is incoherent and there are often resources within the legal materials to play it both ways. Thus, the different forces at work use both continuity and rupture to advance their positions. Furthermore, legitimacy discourse mediates the contradictions between law and revolution in the experience of different legal and political actors. This mediation serves an ideological role because it presupposes a binary dichotomy between continuity and rupture, papers over law’s incoherence by reducing it to a singular voice, and reduces revolution to an event rather than a process.


Author(s):  
Hugh H. Benson
Keyword(s):  
The One ◽  

This chapter presents a reading of Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. These dialogues, in which Plato depicts the weeks leading up to Socrates’s last day, are replete with various philosophical explorations. Among those explorations is the question of how to live our lives. On the one hand, Socrates is clear and straightforward. We should live the examined life—making logoi and examining ourselves and others in order to determine whether we are as wise as we think we are, and we should live the virtuous life. This is how Socrates lives his life. On the other hand, the examined life undercuts, or at least should undercut, the confidence with which he seeks to live the virtuous life. It may help bring some stability to the general principles by which he lives his life, but it can do so only defeasibly and without certainty.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110321
Author(s):  
Kayla S. Canelo

Scholars have sought to understand the dual characterization of Supreme Court justices as both legal and political actors. One way to further uncover this complexity is to assess how the justices engage with the interest groups that file amicus curiae or “friend-of-the-Court” briefs. Scholars have revealed that the justices often “borrow language” from these briefs in their opinions. However, much less often, they cite the amici. These two uses are distinct in that one is revealed to the reader while the other is not. So which interest groups do the justices decide to cite and which do they borrow language from? I find the justices borrow more language from ideologically similar interests, but that ideology plays a less central role in the decision to cite. Specifically, I find that the justices are less likely to cite briefs filed by ideologically overt interests, but this only extends to the most ideologically “extreme” groups. Further, the justices are not more likely to cite briefs filed by interests that are ideologically similar to their own preferences. These findings provide insight into how the justices balance policy and legitimacy goals.


1902 ◽  
Vol 48 (202) ◽  
pp. 434-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. S. Clouston

Dr. Clouston said that when he suggested toxæmia to the secretary as a suitable subject for a discussion at this meeting he had not intended to be the first speaker, because his object was to bring out more fully the views of the younger members who had recently committed themselves so strongly to the toxæmic and bacterial etiology of insanity, and so to get light thrown on some of the difficulties which he and others had felt in applying this theory to many of their cases in practice. It was not that he did not believe in the toxic theory as explaining the onset of many cases, or that he under-rated its importance, but that he could not see how it applied so universally or generally as some of the modern pathological school were now inclined to insist on. He knew that it was difficult for those of the older psychological and clinical school to approach the subject with that full knowledge of recent bacteriological and pathological doctrine which the younger men possessed, or to breathe that all-pervading pathological atmosphere which they seemed to inhale. He desired to conduct this discussion in an absolutely non-controversial and purely scientific spirit. To do so he thought it best to put his facts, objections, and difficulties in a series of propositions which could be answered and explained by the other side. He thought it important to define toxæmia, but should be willing to accept Dr. Ford Robertson's definition of toxines, viz., “Substances which are taken up by the (cortical nerve) cell and then disorder its metabolism.” He took the following extracts from his address at the Cheltenham meeting of the British Association (1) as representing Dr. Ford Robertson's views and the general trend of much investigation and hypothesis on the Continent.


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