University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: United States

Bridge, Nichols (2016), “Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court: A Mechanism to Maintain, Build, and Consolidate.”

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Dave Bridge, Curt Nichols, “Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court: A Mechanism to Maintain, Build, and Consolidate.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 41, no. 1 (2016): 100–125.  Summary: Reexamination and reinterpretation of the “mature” (1955–1984) New Deal era of congressional attacks on the Supreme Court reveals a new hypothesis: that Court‐curbing efforts played a previously unrecognized …

Kyle, Reiter (2021), “Military Courts, Civil-Military Relations, and the Legal Battle for Democracy: The Politics of Military Justice (1st ed.)”

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B.J. Kyle, A.G. Reiter, Military Courts, Civil-Military Relations, and the Legal Battle for Democracy: The Politics of Military Justice (1st ed.). London: Routledge, 2021. Summary: The interaction between military and civilian courts, the political power that legal prerogatives can provide to the armed forces, and the difficult process civilian politicians face in reforming military justice remain …

Landau, Dixon (2020), “Abusive Judicial Review: Courts Against Democracy.”

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David Landau and Rosalind Dixon, “Abusive Judicial Review: Courts Against Democracy.” UC Davis Law Review, vol. 53, no. 3 (2020): 1313-1387. Summary: 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 …

Driesen (2021), “The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power.”

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David M. Driesen, The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2021. Summary: In The Specter of Dictatorship, David Driesen analyzes the chief executive’s role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey and argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to …

Gandur, Chewning, Driscoll (2025), “Awareness of Executive Interference and the Demand for Judicial Independence: Evidence from Four Constitutional Courts.”

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Martín Gandur, Taylor Kinsley Chewning, and Amanda Driscoll, “Awareness of Executive Interference and the Demand for Judicial Independence: Evidence from Four Constitutional Courts.” Journal of Law and Courts, vol. 13, no. 1 (2025): 122–47.  Summary: Awareness of courts has long been theorized to engender enhanced support for judicial independence, but this is a logic that …

Kroncke (2025), “Legal Complicity in an Age of Resurgent Authoritarianism”

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This article critiques the ethical assumptions underlying liberal legal professionals’ engagement with authoritarian regimes, particularly through the lens of modernization theory, which once promised that economic development would naturally lead to democratization.