Balkinization
an unanticipated consequence of
Jack M. Balkin
E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
Mary Dudziak mdudziak at law.usc.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Mark Graber mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Bernard Harcourt harcourt at uchicago.edu
Scott Horton shorto at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman marty.lederman at comcast.net
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Gerard Magliocca gmaglioc at iupui.edu
Jason Mazzone jason.mazzone at brooklaw.edu
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Nate Persily npersily at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at princeton.edu
Rick Pildes rick.pildes at nyu.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Brian Tamanaha btamanaha at wulaw.wustl.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
Egypt’s “Leaderless Revolution” and Presidentialism: A Toxic Combination
Bruce Ackerman
American- or French-style presidentialism flows organically from a revolutionary context in which the leader of a national liberal movement – Washington or Bolivar, De Gaulle or Walesa – has emerged during a lengthy period of struggle against an authoritarian regime. By the time the movement has gained power, the leader’s selection as president seems the obvious choice to symbolize the achievement of the People over its oppressors. The key question is whether the leader is willing to "constitutionalize his charisma," and use his reservoir of popular support to stabilize the constitutional regime. If not, a charismatic dictatorship is the likely outcome.
But this dynamic is beside the point when it comes to a “leaderless” revolution of the Egyptian type, where the authoritarian regime successfully represses the opposition, and then suddenly collapses without providing the movement with time for its own leadership to emerge. Under this scenario, a parliamentary system provides a far more promising constitutional transition to democracy than its presidential counterpart. The presidential form requires the revolutionaries to anoint a single leader prematurely -- thereby preempting a desirable period of democratic contestation, in which rival leaders compete for power. In contrast, a parliamentary system allows a number of political parties to project a number of different leaders onto the stage under conditions of relative equality, allowing them to present a set of competing options in a series of coalition governments.
The case for parliamentarianism is especially compelling in Egypt, since the Mubarak regime was selectively repressive – crushing secular dissent but allowing the Moslem Brotherhood to survive as the only organized opposition group. I develop my argument further in an essay I've just published in Foreign Policy magazine. Posted
10:31 AM
by Bruce Ackerman [link]
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
DOMA: The Politics of Scrutiny
Jason Mazzone
As I have discussed in previous posts (here and here), the Obama administration takes the position (and will argue in the Second Circuit) that classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened or intermediate scrutiny, under which the government must establish that the classification is substantially related to an important government objective. The administration does not, then, take the position that strict scrutiny should apply, under which the government would have to establish that the classification is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. Why does the administration endorse intermediate but not strict scrutiny? Read more » Posted
2:35 PM
by Jason Mazzone [link]
Another way to ask this is: What makes the prison budget seemingly impervious to deficit constraints? Although most of the cost of mass incarceration today is borne by states, the case of the federal budget is a perfect illustration. Think about it. We have a Democratic presidential administration that explicitly calls for reducing mass incarceration and has plans to release well-behaved convicts. We have continuing drops in violent crime at the national level. We are about to slash education programs because of our exponential federal deficit. And yet the Obama administration just proposed an 11 percent increase in spending on the federal prison system. What makes that particular budget line impervious?
The website DrawCongress.org is now live. On this website you will see congressional redistricting plans drawn by students in my Redistricting and Gerrymandering Course at Columbia. DrawCongress.org represents the first attempt to create an internet depository for nonpartisan congressional maps for the entire country.
This website and associated project have three goals. First, the project seeks to educate both the students involved and the general public about the redistricting process. We hope that the maps and redistricting plans contained there depict what is possible in the current round of redistricting and what nonpartisan plans might look like. Second, we hope that these plans serve as a benchmark against which incumbent-drawn plans can be assessed. While not passing judgment on the plans states adopt this redistricting cycle, we hope that the plans contained there illustrate alternative paths not taken and, therefore, both the promise and potential pitfalls of nonpartisan redistricting. Finally, for those states that fail to craft redistricting plans, this website provides ready-made legally defensible congressional plans.
Thus far, we have plans up for Virginia, New Jersey, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Arkansas. Each posted plan includes a statewide map, individual district maps, plan statistics and reports, and a block equivalency file that can be downloaded and placed into any mapping program.
In the coming months students at Harvard and Yale will also be placing maps up on the site, and we invite others to do so as well. Anyone interested in doing so should contact me at npersi@law.columbia.edu. Posted
8:34 AM
by Nate Persily [link]