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Federalist democracies often hold concurrent elections for multiple offices. A potential consequence of simultaneously voting for multiple offices that vary with respect to scope and scale is that the personal appeal of candidates in a high-profile race may affect electoral outcomes in less salient races. In this article I estimate the magnitude of such coattail effects from governors onto other concurrently elected statewide executive officers using a unique dataset of county election returns for all statewide executive office elections in the United States from 1987 to 2010. I exploit the disproportionate support that candidates receive from geographically proximate voters, which is often referred to as the friends-and-neighbors vote, to isolate variation in the personal appeal of candidates. I find that a one-percentage-point increase in the personal vote received by a gubernatorial candidate increases the vote share of their party's secretary of state and attorney general candidates by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. In contrast, personal votes for a secretary of state or attorney general candidate have no effect on the performance of their party's gubernatorial candidate or other down-ballot candidates.

State attorneys general represent their citizens in aggregate litigation that bears a striking resemblance to the much-maligned damages class action. Yet while private class actions are subject to a raft of procedural rules designed to protect absent class members, equivalent suits in the public sphere are largely free from constraint. The procedural disconnect between the two categories of aggregate litigation reflects a widespread assumption that attorneys general will adequately represent the interests of their respective states' citizens, obviating any need for case-specific mechanisms for assuring the loyalty of lawyer to client. This Article challenges the presumption of adequate public representation. By conflating consent of the governed with consent of the client, the conventional wisdom ignores the important differences between political and adjudicative representation. Class action scholars have produced mountains of commentary detailing the agency costs of aggregate litigation, including substantial conflicts between the interests of class counsel and the members of the plaintiff class. I show that the same risks are present in state suits. Attorneys general may not be driven by the pursuit of attorney's fees, but their status as political representatives means that they must balance the interests of the public at large with those of the individuals they purport to represent in an adjudicative capacity. The potential for conflicted representation would not be troubling if citizens could easily monitor and control the work of the attorney general, but, as in the class context, they cannot. If anything, the costs of monitoring and control are higher in the public sphere because the only way to \"fire\" the attorney general is to vote her out of office — hardly a viable solution when the attorney general's political responsiveness is the source of the conflict. Thus, far from solving the problems that scholars have emphasized in the class action context, the fact that the attorney general may be an elected official should provide cause for heightened concern. That concern assumes a constitutional character when state litigation bars subsequent private claims for damages or other monetary relief. In order to protect the due process rights of the individuals whose interests are at stake in public aggregate litigation, courts must either ramp up the procedural requirements for state suits, or — better yet — hold that public suits cannot bind private claimants.

In 2003, the Botswanan Court of Appeal decided in Kanane v The State that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was not proscribed by the Botswanan Constitution because no evidence had been adduced showing that the society of Botswana was ready for gay individuals. After sixteen years, things changed: in 2019, in Letsweletse Motshidiemang and LEGABIBO (as amicus) v The Attorney General, the High Court held that the law criminalizing anal intercourse violated the fundamental rights of gay people. In 2021, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court decision. This commentary briefly examines these three decisions. It argues that Kanane gave too much weight to public opinion to the detriment of constitutional interpretation. Through a robust approach to generous interpretation of fundamental rights, the Motshidiemang decisions partly remedied the flaw in Kanane. However, judicial clarification is still required on some aspects of the decision.

In Online Citizen, the Court of Appeal’s first judgment on appeal under Section 17 of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, the Court addressed the constitutionality of POFMA’s provisions empowering the Minister to issue Correction Directions under Article 14 of the Constitution. The decision is the first application of the three-step framework set out in Jolovan Wham for Article 14 challenges, but the Court’s reasoning therein appears to differ quite considerably from that earlier decision, both on how courts should identify restrictions on free speech under Article 14(1) and how courts should assess justifications given for those restrictions under Article 14(2). This note unpacks the Court’s reasoning on the Article 14 challenge in Online Citizen, drawing out the implications that it may have for future challenges and constitutional adjudication more broadly.

This Note presents a novel defense of the Attorney General's authority to settle litigation against the United States and, in the process, make policy commitments. After canvassing the existing law and critiques of the settlement authority, the Note argues that the constitutional separation of powers does not forbid entering into policymaking settlements. The Note then proposes (1) new doctrine to make these settlements more consistent with administrative law norms, and (2) institutional norms and statutory changes that would improve the administration of settlement agreements.

This Note proposes a new litigation strategy for vindicating the rights of trafficked workers. It argues that class actions, an increasingly popular mechanism for holding traffickers liable, are insufficient. Through an original analysis of federal class actions predicated on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), I show that courts are reluctant to certify classes of trafficked workers and that class actions too often fail. As an alternative to class actions, this Note suggests that state attorneys general invoke their common-law parens patriae power to bring suits against traffickers under the TVPA. This strategy would preserve many benefits of the aggregatelitigation model while sidestepping the challenging procedural terrain of the modern class action.

The Attorney General for England and Wales is the Government's Senior Law Officer who, inter alia, initiates certain kinds of legal proceedings. She is also a politician: a member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords and appointed to Government by the Prime Minister. This paper considers the Attorney General's role in initiating contempt proceedings against fellow politicians. I detail a number of cases where politicians have been involved in potential contempts by publication. I argue that, in such cases, the Attorney General's position may amount to an actual or perceived conflict of interest and may breach the principle that justice should be seen to be done.

Constitutional law scholars in Singapore often wait for years in eager anticipation of a landmark decision from the Court of Appeal concerning the ambit of fundamental rights guaranteed in the Singapore Constitution. Unlike other areas of law, for instance tort law, there have been few such iconic decisions over the last couple of decades. On 8 October 2021, in The Online Citizen v The Attorney-General, a five-member full bench of the Singapore Court of Appeal, handed down a joint unanimous decision on whether the correction directions issued by the Minister of Home Affairs against allegedly false statements of fact under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 impermissibly restricted freedom of speech under Article 14 of the Singapore Constitution and were unconstitutional.

The appropriate test for identifying a restraint of trade has long troubled the courts. In Peninsula Securities Ltd v Dunnes Stores, the United Kingdom (“UK”) Supreme Court overruled a decision of the House of Lords that had stood for more than fifty years and adopted the ‘trading society’ test which had been put forward in a minority judgment of the House of Lords decision. Not long after this notable development, in Quantum Actuarial v Quantum Advisory, the English Court of Appeal found that the trading society test was not comprehensive as it could not apply to novel or unique provisions. The trading society test is also open to criticism for being vague and unhelpful. It is, however, supported here for its broad perspective, flexibility and synergy with the competing policies at stake: freedom to contract and freedom to trade.