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At a time when campaign finance reform is widely viewed as synonymous with cleaning up Washington and promoting political equality, Bradley Smith, a nationally recognized expert on campaign finance reform, argues that all restriction on campaign giving should be eliminated. InUnfree Speech, he presents a bold, convincing argument for the repeal of laws that regulate political spending and contributions, contending that they violate the right to free speech and ultimately diminish citizens' power. Smith demonstrates that these laws, which often force ordinary people making modest contributions of cash or labor to register with the Federal Election Commission or various state agencies, fail to accomplish their stated objectives. In fact, they have worked to entrench incumbents in office, deaden campaign discourse, burden grassroots political activity with needless regulation, and distance Americans from an increasingly professional, detached political class. Rather than attempting to plug \"loopholes\" in campaign finance law or instituting taxpayer-financed campaigns, Smith proposes a return to core First Amendment values of free speech and an unfettered right to engage in political activity. Smith finds that campaign contributions have little corrupting effect on the legislature and shows that an unrestrained system of contributions and spending actually enhances equality. More money, not less, is needed in the political system, Smith concludes.Unfree Speechdraws upon constitutional law and historical research to explain why campaign finance regulation is doomed and to illustrate the potentially drastic costs of efforts to make it succeed. Whatever one thinks about the impact of money on electoral politics, no one should take a final stand without reading Smith's controversial and important arguments.

Few institutions have become as ferociously fought over in democratic politics as the courts. While political criticism of judges in this country goes back to its inception, today’s intensely ideological assault is nearly unprecedented. Spend any amount of time among the writings of contemporary right-wing critics of judicial power, and you are virtually assured of seeing repeated complaints about the “imperial judiciary.” American conservatives contend not only that judicial power has expanded dangerously in recent decades, but that liberal judges now willfully write their policy preferences into law. They raise alarms that American courts possess a degree of power incompatible with the functioning of a democratic polity. The Myth of the Imperial Judiciary explores the anti-judicial ideological trend of the American right, refuting these claims and taking a realistic look at the role of courts in our democracy to show that conservatives have a highly unrealistic conception of their power. Kozlowski first assesses the validity of the conservative view of the Founders’ intent, arguing that courts have played an assertive role in our politics since their establishment. He then considers contemporary judicial powers to show that conservatives have greatly overstated the extent to which the expansion of rights which has occurred has worked solely to the benefit of liberals. Kozlowski reveals the ways in which the claims of those on the right are often either unsupported or simply wrong. He concludes that American courts, far from imperiling our democracy or our moral fabric, stand as a bulwark against the abuse of legislative power, acting forcefully, as they have always done, to give meaning to constitutional promises.

\"Forgive me.\" How often have you said it? These are the words we when we arrive late to a date, when we need someone to repeat a phrase missed, or when we do something much more egregious. These words familiar in the prayers of religions; these words are steps toward repentance and redemption. Requests for forgiveness fill the lyrics of pop music detailing mistakes and apologies between lovers, parents and children, citizens governments, and individuals and their gods. Forgiveness is pivotal in 'Atlas shrugged', to 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'Ender's Game' and 'Wicked', Victor Hugo's classic novel, 'Les Miserables', and its musical adaptation illuminate the human costs of an unforgiving criminal defendant as well as on the law enforcer. In the story's escaped convict Jean Valjean mercifully spares the life of the police has spent years pursuing him, shocking the man of the law with forgiveness. Whether to forgive, and why, is a theme in entertainment, relationship advice, religious counseling, and political drama. When government official is caught in a personal or political scandal, philosophers, families, and friends discuss whether and when such should be forgiven and by whom. Forgiveness expresses generosity reconnection, and constructive focus on the future; forgiveness renewable and non-depleting resource, offering physical, psychological, practical relief for both wrongdoers and victims of wrongdoing.

Dean Martha Minow's wide-ranging and learned Jorde lecture 'Forgiveness, Law, and Justice' is characteristic in its unstinting ambition. lecture does not merely sweep in complex normative and empirical questions concerning the relationship of legal institutions and rules to a capaciously defined concept of \"forgiveness.\" It further reaches beyond the sublunary scholarly task of delimiting and describing. Unconfined to the desiccated philological minutia of a Casaubon, Dean Minow instead approaches her with dauntless optimism and eyes fixed firmly on empyrean-minded aspiration. To follow her argument is to be apprised of the possibility of a stronger loving world and to have one's own parochial and reflexive skepticism-the coin the realm in the law school workshop-put to shame.

Dean Martha Minow's lecture is so careful and eloquent that I aim to supplement rather than challenge her discussion of forgiveness. Minow's proposals for law's role in cultivating forgiveness are powerfully suggestive but intentionally ambivalent. As she recognizes, urging that victims forgive can mean forgoing the protections of justice for the weak, ultimately rendering the vulnerable yet more vulnerable.

Can we use legal institutions to cultivate forgiveness after mass violence, genocide, or pervasive group-based injustice? This is the question Dean Minow asks in her provocative and pathbreaking Jorde Lecture. Yet she poses a question that is simpler and broader in its reach: Should we attempt use law in a purposive way to shape or foster human feeling? Both questions, as Minow acknowledges, evoke skepticism from those who see law as a of objectivity and reason, or those who view law as ineluctably and exclusively bound to norms such as consistency, predictability, and the resolution discrete controversies. However, as I argue in this Essay, these questions also elicit doubts from a less probable group of critics: scholars view law and emotions as deeply intertwined. Although on this group of critics, their concerns merit close attention; important set of questions facing this emerging field of and emotions scholars agree that we can use a rich, understanding of human emotions to assess, critique, or institutions. But there is more ambivalence about whether we can or should use the instrumentalities of the law to encourage or shape emotions in socially ameliorative ways. Although Minow's primary focus is on probing the instrumentalities of repair following mass violence, her essay provides a clear model of how we might pursue this second possibility as well, using the law's potential to support, foster, or cultivate pro-social emotions.

The difficulty of quantifying benefits and costs is a recurrent one in both public policy and ordinary life. Much of the time, we cannot quantify the benefits of potential courses of action, or the costs, or both, and we must nonetheless decide whether and how to proceed. Under existing executive orders, agencies are generally required to quantify both benefits and costs, and (to the extent permitted by law) to show that the former justify the latter. But agencies are also permitted to consider factors that are difficult or impossible to quantify, such as human dignity and fairness, and also to consider factors that are not quantifiable because of the limits of existing knowledge. When quantification is impossible, agencies should engage in \"breakeven analysis,\" by which they explore how high the nonquantifiable benefits would have to be in order for the benefits to justify the costs. Breakeven analysis can be used and potentially disciplined in three different ways. (1) Sometimes agencies are able to identify lower or upper bounds, either through point estimates or through an assessment of expected value. (2) Agencies can often make progress by exploring comparison cases in which relevant values have already been assigned (such as for a statistical life). (3) When agencies cannot identify lower or upper bounds, and when helpful comparisons are unavailable, breakeven analysis requires agencies to identify what information is missing and to specify the conditions under which benefits would justify costs (\"conditional justification\"). In admittedly rare cases, regulators, no less than individuals, might have to \"pick\" or instead to \"opt.\"

On September 24, 2015, Justice Stephen Breyer delivered the annual Jorde Symposium lecture at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California. In his lecture, \"The Court and the World: The Supreme Court's New Transnational Role,\" Justice Breyer spoke about the many reasons why American judges must take ever-greater account of foreign events, law, and practices. An edited transcript of his Jorde Symposium remarks immediately precedes this summary. His remarks served to introduce and explain his recent book, 'The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities'.

This book-what's it about? Why did I write it? When I hear the words \"interdependent,\" \"globalization,\" \"a shrinking world,\" I think they range between cliches on the one hand and buzzwords on the other-but they aren't quite concrete. I thought it might be helpful to write very concretely about what these words mean in terms of the life of a Supreme Court justice. What have they meant at the Court? When I look back and compare twenty years ago to today, I think we have many more cases where those words concretely make a big difference.

This Essay explores the instrumental and normative considerations that prompt judges to publish separate opinions. After discussing the traditions of separate writing in American judicial practice, the author provides a contemporary judge's perspective on the aims of separate opinions and on the cost-benefit analysis that judges invariably undertake when contemplating whether to write a concurrence or dissent. Turning to her own work on the Seventh Circuit, the author then identifies three broad categories of dissents she has penned over the past sixteen years: \"principle-based dissents,\" \"process-based dissents,\" and \"accuracy-focused dissents.\" The Essay concludes by suggesting that a more forthright appraisal of the dynamics of decisionmaking on multi-member courts could benefit the judicial system as a whole.