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The Democracy Principle in State Constitutions
Get PDFIn recent years, antidemocratic behavior has rippled across the nation. Lame-duck state legislatures have stripped popularly elected governors of their powers; extreme partisan gerrymanders have warped representative institutions; state officials have nullified popularly adopted initiatives. The federal constitution offers few resources to address these problems, and ballot-box solutions cannot work when antidemocratic actions undermine elections themselves. Commentators increasingly decry the rule of the many by the few.
This Article argues that a vital response has been neglected. State constitutions embody a deep commitment to democracy. Unlike the federal constitution, they were drafted – and have been repeatedly rewritten and amended – to empower popular majorities. In text, history, and structure alike, they express a commitment to popular sovereignty, majority rule, and political equality. We shorthand this commitment the democracy principle and describe its development and current potential.
The Article’s aims are both theoretical and practical. At the level of theory, we offer a new view of American constitutionalism, one in which the majoritarian commitment of states’ founding documents complements the anti-majoritarian tilt of the national document. Such complementarity is an unspoken premise of the familiar claim that the federal constitution may temper excesses and abuses of state majoritarianism. We focus on the other half of the equation: state constitutions may ameliorate national democratic shortcomings. At the level of practice, we show how the democracy principle can inform a number of contemporary conflicts. Reimagining recent cases concerning electoral interference, minority entrenchment, and more, we argue that it is time to reclaim the state constitutional commitment to democracy
Beyond Unprecedented, S2 Ep2: Meme Stock Mania
Get PDFIf three stock traders get together to drive up the price of a stock and then dump it, that’s fraud. But what if nearly 900,000 individual investors send GameStop soaring because they love PlayStation and hate short sellers? And what if their plans were circulated in a social media forum instead of a back room? Retail investors jumped into the stock market thanks to the ease of trading apps like Robinhood and a dearth of other things to do during pandemic lockdowns. But are short sellers bad or just misunderstood?
Professor Joshua Mitts, an expert on the intersection of social media and the stock market, joins co-hosts Professor Eric Talley and Research Fellow Kate Waldock \u2723 to discuss the return of retail investors, the ramifications for short sellers, and what it all means for market regulation.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_2/1002/thumbnail.jp
Standing Rock Thunderhawk Litigation Advances in Appeals Court and in Discovery Toward Trial
Get PDFNew York, January 25, 2021 — Advancing yet another step toward trial set for August 2021, the Standing Rock Thunderhawk litigation is now in discovery against Morton County and TigerSwan, LLC, and briefed on qualified immunity at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
The ERA Brief October 2021
Get PDFWe are excited to return to campus and rejoin the vibrant law school community. Our work at the ERA Project has taken on a renewed sense of urgency as we seek to advance sex equality in a time when the right to bodily autonomy is under threat from restrictions on reproductive and transgender rights
The ERA Brief June 2021
Get PDFAt the ERA Project we get asked all the time: “Why do we need the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)?” “Doesn’t the Constitution already prohibit sex discrimination?” “What difference would it make to add explicit sex discrimination protections in the Constitution as the 28th Amendment?
About Time: Master Scheduling and Equity
Get PDFMaster schedules are used to structure time, people, resources, and space within a school. This report provides school and district leaders advice about how to use the master schedule to advance equity in their communities. It illuminates ways the schedule can both undermine and advance equity and provides a framework to help schools and districts pivot from technical to strategic scheduling to expand access and opportunity for all student
Partnering for Change: Lawyer-Leadership in the Manhattan DA\u27s Office
Get PDFIn April 2021, the Manhattan DA’s Office announced that it would stop prosecuting theoffenses of prostitution and loitering for the purpose of prostitution. The Office shifted itspolicy, the first of its kind in New York State and one of the first in the nation, in an effort tominimize contact with the criminal justice system and the adverse consequences of arrest andconviction for these offenses. The Office promptly moved to dismiss nearly 6,000 pendingcases.
The policy shift was years in the making — the result of careful exploration of alternatives incollaboration with affected communities in the face of strong competing values and interests.At the center of the effort was Carolina Holderness (CLS ‘06), who in 2017 became the Chief ofthe Office\u27s Human Trafficking Response Unit. From the start, Carolina realized she could notresponsibly make and enforce policy in the area without learning from affected communitieshow different policies would impact them and working alongside them in her ongoing efforts.
Among those with whom Carolina met in the early stages of her learning journey was CeciliaGentili, an advocate for individuals engaged in sex work. Cecilia reframed the way Carolinathought about the Office’s approach to offenses of “prostitution” and “loitering for thepurpose of prostitution,” and together, Carolina and Cecilia generated a set of reforms thatpaved the way for the dramatic April 2021 policy shift
Corporate Finance for Social Good
Get PDFCorporations are under pressure to use their outsized power to benefit society, but this advocacy is unlikely to result in meaningful change because corporate law’s incentive structure rewards fiduciaries who maximize shareholder wealth. Therefore, this Essay proposes a way forward that works within the wealth-maximization framework and yet could result in dramatic social change. The idea is simple: Use private debt markets to provide incentives for public-interested corporate action. Specifically, individuals who value prosocial corporate decisions could finance them by contributing to corporate social responsibility (CSR) bonds that would offset the corporation’s implementation costs. To provide an incentive to depart from wealth maximization, the bond would stipulate that the contribution would be forgiven when the decision is implemented by the corporation — a key difference from existing prosocial financial instruments.
More broadly, the insight that the individuals with the strongest interest in seeing corporations act responsibly are not always the company’s shareholders has consequences for corporate law and corporate governance. In particular, it cautions that we should recognize the limits of shareholder activism to achieve socially optimal levels of corporate responsibility. The more difficult questions are whether and how to reorient our corporate law system away from shareholders and toward other constituencies. As that project forges on, this Essay describes a tool that would enable stakeholders to influence corporate behavior without any delay
Tribute to Dave Markell
Get PDFI first met Dave Markell around 1988, when he moved to New York to direct the Division of Environmental Enforcement of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). This was an era when the federal Superfund and its state equivalents were rapidly growing in importance; the laws passed in the wake of the Love Canal disaster of the late 1970s were finally growing teeth. Dave led New York\u27s efforts to drive the cleanup of contaminated sites by using both civil and criminal remedies. He established DEC\u27s criminal enforcement unit and doubled the number of criminal cases developed and referred annually to prosecutors. His work was so effective that for a time he was called upon to direct DEC\u27s Office of Environmental Remediation, which ran the nation\u27s largest state-level hazardous waste cleanup program. Massive amounts of money were at stake in this program, together with legions of lawyers and consultants, and Dave handled it masterfully
DTP 00
No full textPhoto of Michael B. Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/defending_the_planet_podcast/1003/thumbnail.jp