Towards a Welsh health law: devolution, divergence and values

COVID-19 and Brexit have given political impetus to re-examine Wales’s place within the United Kingdom’s devolution settlement. Health has been a key site for divergence in law and policy as between the administrations in Cardiff and London. In light of these contests, and the longer-running trends in devolution, this article considers whether a distinct ‘Welsh’ health law has now emerged. We examine the constitutional context and the range of sources for this new legal field. We argue that a set of values can be identified through an attentive reading of the legislative output of the Welsh Parliament, through reflection on the policy development of health in Wales, through the devolution process. While accepting that these are varied and heterogeneous, these values are as much an expression of universal ethical goals as they are of any delineable Welsh essence. No mere summation of positive law, these values allow one to define a distinctive realm of Welsh health law, have the potential to act as an interpretative lens for analysing law and policy flowing from Westminster, and could potentially act as a value structure for further Welsh legislation.

Działalność ustawodawcza wolnych sejmów w czasach Rady Nieustającej (1778–1786)

The author discusses the legal framework of the legislative activity of ‘free’ (that is, not confederated) Sejms. He discusses parliamentary practice between 1778 and 1786 after a thorough analysis of the king’s legislative initiative with special emphasis on proposals submitted by the throne, and the role played by the Permanent Council in drafting laws. The author argues that numerous bills drafted by envoys had little impact on the results of Sejms because after the election and control of the executive authorities ended, there was no time to examine the drafts. Sejm decisions could be divided into two categories: a) decisions made before the separation of two chambers – concerning elections (of executive and judiciary authorities) and vote of acceptance for the Permanent Council; and b) legislative decisions made during further proceedings, with a special subcategory in the form of provisions related to the control over executive powers. The author also provides a quantitative analysis of legislative output between 1778 and 1786.

Policy analysis and the legislature in Colombia

This chapter describes the operation of the legislative branch in Colombia and the challenges of applying evidence-based analysis in the public policy process that occur within such a highly politicized environment. It summarizes some of the previous findings of the research conducted on the role of Congress in the contemporary policy-making process. It also shows how Congress has played an important part in reacting to executive bills, protecting constituency interests, leading public debates, and occasionally affecting the agenda impeding governmental action. The chapter covers the period after the 1991 Constitution, examining mostly the legislative output of Congress. It underscores the rules establishing the separation of powers and evaluates the nature of the party system determining the separation of purpose among the branches and the legislative output.

When Reputation Trumps Policy: Party Productivity Brand and the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act

In late 2017, congressional Republicans enacted a major tax bill despite voter opposition, resistance from organized interests, and considerable uncertainty about its policy consequences. Why did they do so? We argue that Republicans’ concern with their party’s reputation–in particular, its productivity brand–trumped negative evaluations of the legislation by citizens, interest groups, and policy experts. To support this claim, we analyze measures of legislative output, news media content, public opinion, and lawmaker sentiment. Our findings underscore the importance of party reputation in explaining legislative behavior and suggest that there may be explanatory value in distinguishing between different types of party valence brands.

States Testing the Legal Limits: The Effect of Electoral Competition on the Constitutionality of State Statutes

When the U.S. Supreme Court decides to exercise judicial review on a law passed by a democratically elected institution, it can have a profound and critical impact on public policy. Furthermore, recent research shows that the Court more frequently declares state statutes unconstitutional than federal statutes. However, only a limited number of studies have extensively explored this political phenomenon. One aspect of a state that has not been considered in connection with the Supreme Court’s use of judicial review over state legislation is the electoral environment in which the laws are produced. We argue that because electoral competition affects the legislative output from a state, it could also influence the likelihood that a state has a statute invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court. When examining all states between 1971 and 2010, we find evidence in support of our theoretical expectation. Specifically, we find that an increase in electoral competition corresponds to an increased likelihood that a state has a statute invalidated by the Supreme Court. This finding contributes to our understanding of the Supreme Court’s use of judicial review, and it also suggests that electoral pressure can incentivize states to craft unconstitutional public policy.

Immigrant legislation, across and within the United States

State governments are now the principal source of immigrant legislation in the US. Existing research presents contradictory findings concerning the sources of pro- and anti-immigration state legislation. However, research has not adequately accounted for the multidimensional nature of immigrant legislation and the fact that many variables hypothesized to affect state legislation encompass both within-state, time-varying effects and time-invariant, cross-sectional effects. Measurement and research design strategies to address these problems are applied to a dataset of state immigrant legislation approved between 2005 and 2012. The findings are important because they show that partisan, demographic, and economic effects are often different within versus across states and may differently affect the volume versus the relative tenor of legislative output.

The Retention of Expertise and Productivity in State Legislative Committees

Legislative committees rely on the expertise and experience of their members, but instability in committee systems threatens the enhancements in productivity associated with specialization. This can occur in two ways, both of which are more common in state legislative committees than they are in Congress. First, membership retention on committees is generally lower, even after accounting for differing levels of legislative turnover across legislatures. Second, many state legislative committee systems undergo reorganization between sessions, changing the policy jurisdictions, and, therefore, the applicability of members’ previously developed expertise. In this article, I examine the consequences of these two sources of committee instability on legislative output in 14 state legislatures. I find that both membership retention and jurisdictional reorganization significantly affect the number of bills processed through committees and the number of bills ultimately enacted. These linkages are also conditioned on several committee and institutional factors, particularly legislative turnover. Last, I find a weaker but discernible effect of membership retention on committees’ propensity to perform their gatekeeping role.