University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: Bibliography of Scholarly Work

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Wang and Xia (2024), “State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice”

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Yueduan Wang and Ying Xia. “State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 49, no. 1 (2024): 451–77. This study explores how attorneys and law-related NGOs navigate legal opportunities in China amid ongoing democratic backsliding. Following “law-based governance” reforms that professionalized the judiciary, expanded legal aid, and granted …

Dias & Schapiro (2026). “Resisting democratic backsliding from within the state: Environmental politics in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.”

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Dias, V. M., & Schapiro, M. G. (2026). Resisting democratic backsliding from within the state: Environmental politics in Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Policy Studies Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.70101 The article argues that polycentric governance can enable meaningful resistance to democratic backsliding from within the state by fragmenting executive power across multiple institutions with overlapping authority. Focusing on environmental politics …

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 …

Kureshi(2022). “Seeking supremacy: The pursuit of judicial power in Pakistan”

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Kureshi, Y. (2022). Seeking supremacy: The pursuit of judicial power in Pakistan. Cambridge University Press. The emergence of the judiciary as an assertive and confrontational center of power has been the most consequential new feature of Pakistan’s political system. This book maps out the evolution of the relationship between the judiciary and military in Pakistan, explaining …

Vieira (2024). “Battle of powers”.

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Vieira, O. V. (2024). Battle of powers. Wilson Center & FGV São Paulo Law School. n the epilogue of Battle of Powers, Oscar Vilhena Vieira argues that Brazil’s democracy survived the Bolsonaro era because constitutional institutions—above all the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) and the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE)—embraced a role of defensive democracy. From 2019 …

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 …

Helmke (2004). “Courts under constraints: judges, generals, and presidents in Argentina”.

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Helmke, G. (2004). Courts under constraints: judges, generals, and presidents in Argentina. Cambridge University Press. This study offers a theoretical framework for understanding how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy. In stark contrast to conventional wisdom, the central findings of the book contradict some assumptions that only independent judges rule against the government …

Gibler & Randazzo (2011). Testing the effects of independent judiciaries on the likelihood of democratic backsliding.

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Gibler, D. M., & Randazzo, K. A. (2011). Testing the effects of independent judiciaries on the likelihood of democratic backsliding. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 696-709. The authors test the efficacy of judicial independence in preventing regime reversals toward authoritarianism. Using a dataset of judicial constraints across 163 different countries from 1960 to 2000, they find …

Castagnola (2017). Manipulating courts in new democracies: forcing judges off the bench in Argentina.

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Castagnola, A. (2017). Manipulating courts in new democracies: forcing judges off the bench in Argentina. Routledge. When can the Executive manipulate the composition of a Court? What political factors explain judicial instability on the bench? Using original field data from Argentina’s National Supreme Court and all twenty-four Provincial Supreme Courts, Andrea Castagnola develops a novel theory …