Direct Legislation: An Appraisal and a Suggestion

1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 400-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph G. Lapalombara ◽  
Charles B. Hagan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Progressive Movement ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Direct Legislation ◽  
General Operation ◽  
Law Making

The United States has now had a half-century's experience with the process customarily denominated direct legislation. The phrase usually means, and is so used here, the power of the electorate to participate in the law-making function by voting for or against particular proposals submitted at regular or special elections. The proposals may have originated in the legislative assembly or they may have been submitted through the action of the electorate. There are other procedural details in which the processes in particular states may vary, but here the concern is with the general operation of the system. Perhaps more attention has been devoted to that situation in which the legislature has the option of submitting a proposal or not as it sees fit. It is not thought, however, that this detail would cause any serious difference in the conclusions that are drawn here or the suggestions that are made.Direct legislation has been associated with the Progressive movement which was active at the turn into the present century. The movement was a protest against a number of activities which were prevalent among the states at that time. One of the protests alleged that the legislatures had become wholly “corrupt” and that consequently it was necessary to “clean” them up. This line of analysis also postulated that the people were “incorrupt” and that if given the opportunity they would “purify” the political activity of their states and even the nation. Direct legislation was looked upon as one of the most significant means by which these goals were to be accomplished.

scholarly journals Is This Tax Reform, or Just Confusion?

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Slemrod
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Tax Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Tax Base ◽  
Tax System ◽  
The Law ◽  
Jobs Act ◽  
Tax Cuts

Based on the experience of recent decades, the United States apparently musters the political will to change its tax system comprehensively about every 30 years, so it seems especially important to get it right when the chance arises. Based on the strong public statements of economists opposing and supporting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a causal observer might wonder whether this law was tax reform or mere confusion. In this paper, I address that question and, more importantly, offer an assessment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The law is clearly not “tax reform” as economists usually use that term: that is, it does not seek to broaden the tax base and reduce marginal rates in a roughly revenue-neutral manner. However, the law is not just a muddle. It seeks to address some widely acknowledged issues with corporate taxation, and takes some steps toward broadening the tax base, in part by reducing the incentive to itemize deductions.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Lacombe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Rifle Association ◽  
Gun Policy ◽  
Competitive Shooting ◽  
Military Preparedness

This chapter focuses on the political power of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and asks the questions: What is the source of its power? How does it operate? How has it shaped gun policy and the broader political system? It looks beyond the NRA's use of financial resources and turns instead to what the chapter describes as ideational resources: the identity and ideology it cultivates among its members, which have enabled it to build an active, engaged, and powerful constituency. The chapter contends that the NRA has played a central role in driving the political outlooks and political activity of its supporters — activity that has had both direct and indirect influence on federal gun policy in the United States. Even from its earliest days as a relatively small organization dedicated to marksmanship, competitive shooting, and military preparedness, the NRA cultivated a distinct worldview around guns — framing gun ownership as an identity that was tied to a broader, gun-centric political ideology — and mobilized its members into political action on behalf of its agenda. The chapter analyzes how a group can construct an identity and an ideology, and what happens when it aligns these behind a single party.

The Progressive Movement in England

1974 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. F. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Progressive Movement ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twentieth Century America

On the centenary of the birth of C. P. Scott, the political outlook of the Manchester Guardian under his editorship was explained thus: ‘He, and those who wrote under him, thought always in terms of what he called “the progressive movement”. What was important was that those who were agreed on reforming measures should work together to secure them’. In its use of the rather imprecise label ‘progressive’, in its conception of a reform movement wider than strict party boundaries, in its distinctive flowering in the press—in all these respects the progressive movement of early twentieth-century America gives us some notion of what Scott had in mind. And indeed American historiography can, I believe, suggest valuable lines of analysis which have not been fully applied in England. Perhaps the most obvious would entail giving closer attention to the intellectuals and publicists and asking more searching questions about their role in politics. A few years ago the late Charles Mowat pointed to the broadly similar problems in social policy which Britain and the United States faced at this time; and he commented on how, despite these similarities, the history of social reform in the United States had been written with due attention to the history of ideas: in Britain, by contrast, almost exclusively in terms of political and administrative history. It would not, perhaps, be fair to extend Mowat's observation by saying that in England we purposely write history with the ideas left out.

scholarly journals Second Amendment and the Gun-Control Controversies: A Flaw in Constitutional Framing and an Antinomy of American Conservatism

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (8) ◽  
pp. 24-60
Author(s):  
Acheoah Ofeh Augustine
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
Control Question ◽  
The People

This article is a critical input to the national and international debate on Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution since 1791. Auspiciously, the paper interrogates the historical, ideological, and socio-cultural roots of the Gun Rights from Medieval Europe to modern America as well as its implications for homeland security in 21st Century American society. The whole legalistic, philosophical and socio-cultural rationale for and against the Gun Control Question in mainstream American politics elicits many questions: Why has it been legislatively infeasible to address the frailties inherent in the 2nd Amendment texts? Is the Second Amendment immutable amid post-1791 realities? Has morality lost its place in American politics? Was the rights prescribed under 2nd Amendment vested on the individuals as construed impliedly or on the people as expressly stipulated in the constitution? And why has America with the most sophisticated military and intelligence architecture in the world failed to demonstrate the capability to contain sectarian killings in the land? The paper submits that the Gun Control Debate lays bare, one of the internal cleavages within the American political and social system, a nation so admired not just by her military, economic and diplomatic clout but also by the valued she stresses and defend world over: freedom, justice, equality and global peace, ideals for which the United States supplanted pax-Britanica for Pax-Americana. The appalling antecedents of gun killings in America knows no rank with 11 presidential assassination attempts for which four American presidents died: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1901) John F Kennedy (1963) with Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan seriously injured in the 1912 and 1981 assassination attempts. The quartet presidential assassins: John Wilkes Booth; Charles J. Guiteau; Leon Czolgosz and Lee Harvey Oswald were all some of the first high profile abusers of the 2nd Amendment and the gun rights it granted. The death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X among many also resonates one of the foundational flaws of a nation globally reputed as the policeman of the earth. When will this trend ever end?.Millions have gone yet there seems to be hyper-partisanship about the Gun Control Question. This political cleavage represents a failure of the present generation of the political elites, the people and the American institutions to rise above and repeal the frailty of the 2nd Amendment, couched in one of the most nebulous languages in constitutional framings since the first ten Amendment to the world’s first-ever written constitution was ratified on 15 December 1791.The lessons from the government response to the Gun Question never placed America as a society developing societies should aspire to become, it is totally antithetical to the admirable values known about the greatest nation since the collapse of Nazism, Fascism and in the last decade of the 20th Century Communism for which in the submissions of Francis Fukuyama, Liberal Democracy became the Last Man metaphorically outlasting all other contending ideological contemporaries thus: “The End History”. The moral, spiritual, political leaders of America must converge on one front on the Gun Question, the Republicans must not hide under conservative garb and watch the blood of innocent generation of Americans been wasted by abusers of the Second Amendment. The appropriate measures to put a permanent lid on the mindless gun-related deaths must be carried out. The Democrats must forge a bipartisan consensus to arrest the moral drift in the land under the guise of the 2nd Amendment’s immutability clause: “shall not be infringed upon”. American political leaders must not under whatever guise send the wrong signal to the international community that will characterize the state as a policeman that cannot police his home, Charity begins at home, it is contradictory, antithetical and undermined every value upon which America prides herself under the rubric Pax-Americana. Historical antecedents show that the National Rifle Association is a shadow of itself, haven being skewed from its original goal to promote martial qualities and marksmanship to a lobbyist group without conscience for humanity. The American Institutions must live up to their mandate to tame the sinister and overbearing influence of the group. To the political leaders of the land the patriots of the 1775 Revolution fought for a land of the free it is your bounden duty to ensure their labor never be in vain: Lincoln was conscious of this during the heady days as was Andrew John who put their differences aside to restore national psyche, President Trump must not trade the blood of the children of America with his 2020 presidential re-election ambition as the NRA pro-Trump for 2020 billboards suggests. The Gun-Control debates further lays bare one of the antinomies of American Conservatism “being pro-life, anti-abortion and at the same time, pro-gun” as the abuses and defense of the 2nd Amendment represent one of the Ideological conspiracies against under the garb of Classical Liberalism propagated by contemporary votaries of American conservatism.

scholarly journals “THE FALL OF THE SECOND WALL”: THE NORMALIZATION OF RELATIONS BETWEEN CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES AND THE ROLE OF POPE FRANCIS

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Pablo A. Baisotti
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Relationship

The pastoral trips of Pope Francis to Cuba and to the United States were not only religious. The political activity that he organized to consolidate the relationship between the two recently reconciled countries was remarkable. Through visits, meetings and masses the Pope expressed his position and concerns about various arguments, beyond the recomposed Cuban-American relationship. During the trip he addressed subjects including the environment, poverty, family, union, freedom, all of which were themes that the Pontiff had clearly stated in his encyclical Laudato Si ‘(2015) and his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013). With this trip, Pope Francis ended up consolidating his status as a global politician as well as a pastor with a high degree of acceptance not only among Catholics.

Emer de Vattel on the Society of Nations and the Political System of Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Zurbuchen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political System ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

This chapter aims to explain why considering Vattel as a founding father of positivism rests on a misunderstanding. Despite the continuous attention Vattel received in the scholarly literature as well as in the diplomatic and juridical practice, especially in the United States, his legacy remained highly contested ever since his treatise The Law of Nations was first published in 1758. One reason is its indebtedness to the modern natural law tradition but also to Vattel’s originality, mainly due to the significance he attributed to the sovereign state as a free and independent member of the society of nations. Vattel established many dualisms to develop his very broad notion of the law of nations: he applied the law of nations to the ‘political system’ of Europe, which he considered a kind of republic instituted for maintaining order and liberty and founded on the scheme of the balance of power.

Judicial Deference in Foreign Relations

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 805-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan I. Charney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Law

Disputes with foreign policy implications have often been brought to the federal courts. These cases call attention to the tension between the authority of the political branches to conduct the foreign relations of the United States and the authority of the courts to render judgments according to the law. How this tension is resolved, in turn, bears directly on the commitment of the United States to the rule of law.

scholarly journals Konstytucja – „uporządkowanie” rzeczywistości politycznej?

2007 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Tomasz Żyro
Keyword(s):  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Social Conventions ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Élan Vital ◽  
Law Making

Liberal culture and practices draw on, and are shaped by, different strands of legal positivism. Within the framework of legal positivism, the emphasis on legal institutions has been displaced by a focus on the institutions which apply the law, such as courts. Legal positivism unambiguously declares that both the very existence of the law and its content depend on social facts rather than on its value. The law is therefore a social construct and the most ‘social’ of all is the state. In this way, the philosophy of law has been dominated by the dispute between those who, following St Augustine, think that ‘an unjust law is not a law at all’ and those who, like John Austin, retort that ‘the existence of the law is one thing, its right character or the lack of it, is another’. The point of departure for liberal practice is the paucity of ethical norms, but most of all, however, the paucity of the practice of law making. Ethical dimension may be applied, at most, to the content of social conventions. Legal positivists long ago gave up on the thesis that moral norms are important only if they are rooted in God’s commandments. Such an attitude toward the law, even if ‘the voice of the people’ is not aware of these implications, leads to relativism, which may be overcome in two ways. The first finds its expression in the need to follow societal changes. Each new state of society means that a new constitution is needed, cut appropriately to that society’s needs and interests. The second reaction to relativism is the effectiveness which is related to the power held by the authorities, in this case the power to make the law. The higher the legal norm, the greater the will of the might. The drafting of a constitution is an expression of the élan vital unbound. In the taxonomy of law, everything is triangular, resembling a triangle upside down, and making for an appearance of order, with the basic law at the top and below it an ocean of acts. Law making becomes a yardstick for political activity. In the world of politics, where the very fact of existence is contingent on being noted and being seen, to act means nothing else than submitting initiatives for new legal acts. To act spectacularly means to change the basic law.

Woodrow Wilson, Victoriano Huerta, and the Recognition Issue in Mexico

1984 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter V. N. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Internal Stability ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
United States Imperialism

I. The Evolution of the Law of Recognition until 1913To state that the United States imperialistically meddled in Mexican internal affairs in 1913 would scarcely surprise the scholarly community. The theme of United States imperialism in Latin America has been the subject of dispassionate scholarship and patriotic diatribes. Regardless of their perspective, writers have generally focused upon the political, social, strategic, and economic aspects of intervention. Considerably less attention has been given the United States' creative use of international law to affect the internal stability of Latin American nations. This article will contribute to bridging this gap by analyzing the manner in which Woodrow Wilson used the law of recognition to unseat Mexico's dictator, Victoriano Huerta; a man Wilson considered unfit to govern.

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