University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: Evidence of Lawyers’ Facilitation

Levesque et al. (2023). “Crimmigrating Narratives: Examining Third-Party Observations of US Detained Immigration Court.” 

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Levesque, C., DeWaard, J., Chan, L., McKenzie, M. G., Tsuchiya, K., Toles, O., … Boyle, E. H. (2023). Crimmigrating Narratives: Examining Third-Party Observations of US Detained Immigration Court. Law & Social Inquiry, 48(2), 407–436. doi:10.1017/lsi.2022.16 Crimmigrating Narratives: Examining Third-Party Observations of US Detained Immigration Court examines how U.S. immigration courts criminalize non-citizens through what the authors call …

Levesque & Chan (2022). “Process as Suffering: How US Immigration Court Process and Culture Prevent Substantive Justice”

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Levesque, C., Horner, K., & Chan, L. (2022). Process as Suffering: How US Immigration Court Process and Culture Prevent Substantive Justice. Alb. L. Rev., 86, 471. Process as Suffering: How U.S. Immigration Court Process and Culture Prevent Substantive Justice argues that U.S. immigration courts impose a unique form of “double punishment” on noncitizens: first through …

Landau & Dixon. (2019). “Abusive judicial review: courts against democracy”. 

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Landau, D., & Dixon, R. (2019). Abusive judicial review: courts against democracy. UC Davis L. Rev., 53, 1313. Both in the United States and around the world, courts are generally conceptualized as the last line of defense for the liberal democratic constitutional order. But this Article shows that it is not uncommon for judges to issue decisions …

Kureshi (2025), “To Reinforce or Replace: Courts and Democratic Backsliding”

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Kureshi, Yasser. To Reinforce or Replace: Courts and Democratic Backsliding (2025). Government & Opposition. doi:10.1017/gov.2025.10015. Courts are often seen as defenders of democracy, but this article shows that empowered judiciaries can also enable democratic backsliding. Kureshi develops a framework distinguishing courts that reinforce political representation from those that replace elected institutions when fighting corruption. Through …

Manzi (2024), “Judicial Populism and Corruption Prosecutions in the Mani Pulite Operation”

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Manzi, Lucia. Judicial Populism and Corruption Prosecutions in the Mani Pulite Operation. Law & Social Inquiry (2024). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Bar Foundation. This article develops a new analytical framework for understanding the success of Italy’s Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) anti-corruption operation by showing how prosecutors relied on a …

Kwong (2025). “The Legal Profession in Battle: Cause Lawyers Versus State-Embedded Lawyers in Hong Kong’s Democratization”.

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Kwong, Y. H. (2025). The Legal Profession in Battle: Cause Lawyers Versus State-Embedded Lawyers in Hong Kong’s Democratization. Social & Legal Studies, 34(4), 580-601. The existing literature has long recognized that cause lawyers play important roles in fighting for political justice. However, the implications of how the state responds to these lawyers have yet to be comprehensively …

Wendel. (2022). “Lawyer shaming”.

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Wendel, W. B. (2022). Lawyer shaming. U. Ill. L. Rev., 175. The Lincoln Project’s effort to shame law firms working on behalf of the Trump campaign is only the most recent example of the public criticism, even vilification, directed against lawyers who represent unpopular clients. The legal profession is mostly unified in its response, which appeals …

Litman (2020). “Lawyers’ Democratic Dysfunction”.

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Litman, L. (2020). Lawyers’ Democratic Dysfunction. Drake L. Rev., 68, 303. As part of the symposium on Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson’s Democracy and Dysfunction, this Article documents another source of the dysfunction that the authors observe-elite lawyers’ unwillingness to break ranks with other elite lawyers who participate in the destruction of various norms that are integral …

de Sa e Silva (2022), “Autocratic Legalism 2.0: Insights from a Global Collaborative Research Project.”

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de Sa e Silva, Fabio de. “Autocratic Legalism 2.0: Insights from a Global Collaborative Research Project.” Verfassung Und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America 55, no. 4 (2022): 419–40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27305889. Since the early 2000s, scholars have increasingly examined the phenomenon of democratic backsliding. While legal analysis was initially peripheral …

de Sa e Silva (2020), “From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and Lawyers in Brazil’s Illiberal Turn (2014–2018)”

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  de Sa e Silva, F. (2020). From Car Wash to Bolsonaro: Law and lawyers in Brazil’s illiberal turn (2014–2018). Journal of Law and Society, 47(S1), S51–S73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12250   The article examines the role of law and lawyers in Brazil’s recent democratic decline. While legal professionals are often depicted as either victims of or counterforces …