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Fall 2022 Events to be Announced! Register through the link above to receive email notifications
Past Events from 2021-2022 School Year:
Wed., May 4, 2022, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Crafting the Language of Borders: The CJEU’s Strategic Opinions in Freedom to Move and Reside Cases
Presenter: Maureen Stobb (Georgia Southern University) & Jamie Scalera (Georgia Southern University)
Discussant: Lisa Conant (University of Denver)
Abstract: European Union (EU) integration prompted a reconceptualization of citizenship that rests in the tension between the national and the supranational, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) plays a crucial role in this process. EU integration fundamentally changed traditional understandings of sovereign borders and national citizenship, creating a framework in which states do not hold the sole power to determine who crosses and remains lawfully within its borders, or claims access to social benefits. Scholars generally agree that the CJEU makes decisions with bounded discretion and have identified mechanisms by which its rulings are constrained. Our paper builds on this literature to explain the content of CJEU opinions in this salient area of law. We investigate the language employed by the CJEU in cases involving a fundamental right associated with EU citizenship, the freedom to move and reside, and ask whether the Court strategically alters its language in response to the political and economic context. We argue that the CJEU crafts its language in anticipation of the political ramifications of its decisions. Our findings have important implications for the debate concerning the impact of the CJEU in European integration and, more generally, in the reconceptualization of borders and citizenship across the globe.
Wed., April 6, 2022, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Gender Violence and Public Attitudes Toward Punishment
Presenter: Kelebogile Zvobgo (College William & Mary) & Suparna Chaudhry (Lewis & Clark College)
Abstract: What is the appropriate remedy for gender violence? Prior scholarship has examined government policy but neglected public opinion. In particular, previous research has not evaluated the public’s sensitivity to effectiveness and human rights arguments made by human rights non-governmental organizations (HROs). To answer this question, we leverage a survey experiment on capital punishment for the crime of rape. While the death penalty is conventionally regarded as an ineffective deterrent and inconsistent with international human rights principles, it is used in many countries around the world to punish serious crimes like rape. We expect that individuals who are presented with effectiveness and human rights arguments will be less likely to support the death penalty as a punishment for rape and more likely to support alternatives like imprisonment and victim compensation. Our results are important because they indicate the extent to which HROs can sway the public toward effective, human rights-compatible policies.
Wed., March 2, 2022, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Performing Legality: When and Why Chinese Government Leaders Show Up in Court (with Jieun Kim and Benjamin L. Liebman)
Presenter: Rachel Stern (UC Berkeley) (with Jieun Kim)
Discussant: Susan Whiting (University of Washington)
Abstract: Starting in 2015, Chinese government leaders have been required by law to appear in court when citizens sue their unit. Yet, little empirical research has been undertaken to explain this unique practice of “performing legality,” in which government leaders are asked to sacrifice their time to demonstrate how seriously the government (or at least their unit) takes legal proceedings. Given time constraints, when and why do government leaders appear in Chinese courtrooms? Drawing on an original dataset of 129,855 administrative lawsuits resolved between 2015 and 2018, we find that government leaders show up in just 10.6 percent of cases. Contrary to our expectation that leaders would prioritize lawsuits that seem likely to spiral into protest, a combination of regression analysis and topic modeling shows no evidence that government leaders are more likely to attend cases involving multiple plaintiffs, or involving the hot button issue of land expropriation. Rather, leaders appear significantly more often in cases involving citizen-side lawyers and multiple government defendants. Drawing on government documents, media reports, and Chinese language scholarship, we suggest that leaders try to sidestep the hard emotion work of defusing plaintiff anger, and instead strategically pick tractable cases to attend. Beyond our dataset, demands on Chinese officials to “perform legality” are also poised to continue. This gives courts an increasingly central role in resolving thorny disputes that require coordination between government agencies, and also make them frontline educators in Xi Jinping’s drive to re-train the bureaucracy to take law more seriously.
Wed., February 2, 2022, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Legal Mobilization and the Embedding of Constitutional Law
Presenter: Whitney Taylor (San Francisco State University)
Discussant: Lisa Vanhala (University College London)
Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of “constitutional embedding,” or the process by which particular visions of constitutional law come to take root both socially and legally, and demonstrates the key role of legal mobilization in propelling constitutional embedding. When constitutional rights talk has entered the vernacular and does so with respect to specific rights and legal tools that can be used to claim those rights, a constitution has become socially embedded. Legal embedding has occurred when judges establish, alter, and – especially – expand precedent related to a specific understanding of the purpose of constitutional law. Legal mobilization serves as a mechanism of constitutional embedding, as the iterative process of claims-making in the formal legal sphere shapes how both everyday citizens and legal actors understand what the law is and does – or what the law ought to be and do. To illustrate the relationship between legal mobilization and constitutional embedding, I draw on one year of fieldwork in Colombia, including 90 elite interviews (with judges, practicing lawyers, law professors, activists at NGOs that engage in strategic litigation, and officials at government agencies tasked with overseeing rights claims) and 93 interviews with rights claimants.
Wed., January 5, 2022, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Outsourcing Enforcement
Presenter: Desiree LeClercq (Cornell University)
Discussant: Krzysztof Pelc (McGill University)
Abstract: International organizations often outsource the enforcement of international law to their member states. The International Labor Organization (ILO), for instance, has neither its own adjudicative body nor an internal system of sanctions. Instead, the ILO’s maritime rules authorize states to impose costly retributive measures against noncompliant states. Conventional scholars are optimistic that these kinds of authorizations will strengthen otherwise toothless international law. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, states neither followed nor enforced the ILO’s rules, harming hundreds of thousands of seafarers in the process
Where has international law gone wrong? Challenging the conventional view, this Article unearths the state-centric drawbacks linked to outsourced enforcement, including political fealties, power imbalances, and market priorities. The implications of outsourced enforcement are wide-reaching, and the stakes of compliance are high, particularly given concurrent attempts to establish similar systems of outsourced enforcement across new international instruments.
This Article proposes a theory of outsourced enforcement – specifically, one that is based on mandatory adjudicative bodies housed in international organizations. It concludes by explaining how such reform is possible and necessary to achieve the organizational mission.
Wed., December 1, 2021, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00-9:00am PDT
Project: Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China
Presenter: Ke Li (CUNY)
Discussant: Poulma Roychowdhury (McGill University)
Abstract: Marriage Unbound follows a group of Chinese women seeking judicial remedies for conjugal grievances and disputes. Using data from multiple sources—observations, in-depth interviews, judicial statistics, government publications, and news articles—this book presents a meticulous examination of how these women wrestle with government officials and village leaders in the front lines of dispute management; how they interact with legal professionals who make a living by serving clients; how they struggle to convey marital grievances and rights claims to judges at the grassroots level; and, in the end, how the local government, the legal profession, and the court system far too often fail to protect women’s rights and interests. Ultimately, this book shows how a study of women’s legal mobilization and rights contention can forge new ground for our understanding of law and politics, culture and the state, and power and inequality in an authoritarian context.
Wed., November 3, 2021, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00 – 9:00am PDT
Project: Social Capital, Institutional Rules, and Constitutional Amendment Rates
Presenter: William Blake (UMaryland-Baltimore County) and Joseph Cozza and Amanda Friesen
Discussant: Mila Versteeg (University of Virginia)
Abstract: Why are some constitutions amended more frequently than others? Despite the importance of this question to political science and legal theory, there is little consensus regarding the forces that shape constitutional amendments. Some scholars only focus on institutional factors, while others emphasize variations in constitutional attitudes. This paper makes a contribution to both literatures by examining how social capital reduces the transaction costs imposed by amendment rules. We conduct cross-sectional analyses of amendment rates for democratic constitutions globally and time-series analyses of efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution. The results indicate amendment frequency is a product of amendment rules, group membership, civic activism, and levels of social and political trust, but these effects vary across contexts based on the corresponding transaction costs. Our findings suggest social capital can have beneficial effects on social movements that demand constitutional amendments and the political elites and voters who supply them.
Wed., Oct. 6, 2021, 11:00am – 12:00pm EST/8:00 – 9:00am PDT
Project: Judicial Backsliding: A Guide to Collapsing the Separation of Powers
Presenter: Lydia Tiede (Houston) & Steph Haggard (UCSD).
Discussant: David Landau (Florida State)
Abstract: While we have a highly-developed theoretical and empirical literature on judicial independence, there is less research on judicial backsliding: the process through which autocratic executives—often with legislative support—collapse the separation of powers. We seek to conceptualize judicial backsliding and theorize about how it occurs. We propose a general methodological approach to identifying episodes of backsliding that can be modified to suit the research interests of the community working on the judiciary in a comparative context. We find that constitutional review is a necessary condition of judicial backsliding and that it takes place not only as a result of executive actions but through collusion between executives and legislators.
Events from Previous School Years:
May 5, 2021
Sandra Botero and Laura Gamboa, “Legislating through the Judiciary: Congress and the Constitutional Court in Colombia”
April 7, 2021
Lucia Tiscornia, “Policing the Urban Poor: Support for Punitiveness and Police Violence in a Latin American City”
March 3, 2021
Monika Nalepa, “Transitional Justice Against Agents of Repression and the Threat of Regime Change”
February 3, 2021
Aylin Aydin-Cakir, “Court-Curbing and the Question of Institutional Legitimacy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment”
January 6, 2021
Georg Vanberg and Ben Broman, “Feuding, Credible Commitments, and the Blessings of Judicial Independence”
December 2, 2020
Karen Alter, “The Ties Uniting International Law and Empire”
November 4, 2020
Bakhtawar Ali and Sultan Mehmood, “Judicial Corruption, Favor Exchange and the Rule of Law in Pakistan”
October 7, 2020
Lauren McCarthy, “Citizen Oversight of the Legal System in Russia”
September 2, 2020
Amanda Driscoll, Jay Krehbiel, and Michael Nelson, “Unmasking the Rule of Law: Understanding Preferences for Consistent Enforcement during COVID 19”
July 25, 2020
Juan Wang, “Institutional Proximity and Judicial Corruption: A Spatial Approach”
