University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: Bibliography of Scholarly Work

Set this parent category as well when using any of the child categories.

Chua (2012), “Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore”

Posted on

Lynette J. Chua. “Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore.” Law & Society Review, vol. 46, no. 4 (2012): 713-748. This article examines how legal strategies shape advocacy under authoritarian rule through a qualitative study of Singapore’s gay movement. It analyzes how activists engage in …

Wang (2024), “Embedded Supervision: China’s Prosecutorial Public Interest Litigation Against Government”

Posted on

Yueduan Wang. “Embedded Supervision: China’s Prosecutorial Public Interest Litigation Against Government.” Regulation & Governance, (2024): 1-41. This study challenges the assumption that diminished institutional autonomy necessarily weakens legal oversight in authoritarian regimes. Focusing on prosecutor-led public interest litigation in China, it shows that legal professionals can, under certain conditions, enhance their influence over state agencies …

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

Posted on

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.”

Posted on

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.” 

Posted on

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”

Posted on

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”

Posted on

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”.

Posted on

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”. 

Posted on

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”.

Posted on

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 …