Houses Of Congress Research Articles

U.S. State Legislation to Limit Use of International and Foreign Law

International law is no stranger to controversy in the U.S. court system. The Supreme Court’s occasional citations to international law and foreign laws have generated debate in Congress, academia, and civil society, and between the justices themselves. In 2004 and 2005, “Constitution Restoration Act” bills were introduced into both houses of Congress that would have, inter alia, subjected federal judges to impeachment for any citation to international or foreign law (other than the English common law) when interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Neither bill was adopted, but they attracted five senatorial cosponsors and thirty-four in the House of Representatives.

The Policy Role of Sub-Party Coalitions

This is a progress report on a study of the policy role of subparty coalitions in nine U.S. Senates between 1959 and 1988 and ultimately both houses of Congress since 1948. Our hypothesis is that policy is determined by the actions of a small number of subparty coalitions that combine in various ways to form larger policy determining 'voting' coalitions. The subparty coalitions were identified by applying complete-link hierarchical clustering (Baker and Hubert, 1976) to a matrix of Senators over contested bills. Significant groups were defined by the location of stress elbows after computing gamma goodness-of-fit statistics for each possible clustering, a computation that was practical only with the aid of a supercomputer. The result identified groups with memberships substantially overlapping those of subparty coalitions long observed by journalists and other close observers of the Congress. These groups became the unit of analysis for examining the treatment of all contested bills and amendments within each Senate, the consistency of subparty coalition membership across Senates. Subparty coalitions were active in over ninety percent of the winning voting coalitions, and membership remained stable through the period investigated. The implications of these and other findings for using formal coalition theory and interpreting the policy roles of political parties, ideology, policy dimensions and individualistic behavior on public policy are explored.

Feminists Differ in Second and Third Waves

Feminists Differ in Second and Third Waves

Divine Operating System

This Foreword to a Tennessee Law Review symposium on the implications of a federal constitutional convention surveys a number of proposals for reining in the growth of federal government power and spending, ranging from the creation of a new house of Congress with the sole power to repeal bills, to more mundane proposals such as a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

The United States of the People of America

A few authors have suggested re-introducing random selection in politics. In the United States, Callenbach and Phillips have proposed replacing the House of Representatives by a Representative House. In this article, the author suggests that perhaps, in the specific US context, it would be worthwhile considering replacing both Houses of Congress by randomly selected Houses.

The Republicans and Pre-World War II Foreign Policy

We live in a bitterly partisan era. In Washington, party-line voting in both houses of Congress has reached levels unseen since the late nineteenth century. The unprecedented degree of GOP filibustering has created a de facto constitutional amendment by procedure, with sixty senators required to approve even the most mundane matters. Outside of Washington, public opinion polls show yawning gaps between Democrats and Republicans not only on political questions, but in how party members obtain information about public policy issues. And so it might be timely to look to the past for guidance about today's environment, to examine a period populated by “a group of congressional Republicans who supported an opposition president's foreign policy at a time of extreme partisanship” (p. xii). Robert Jenner's book does not deliver on this promise, though it does force readers to ponder how our current political climate would respond to a crisis comparable to the coming of World War II.

Impact Of Race, Ethnicity, And Immigration Policy: A Politico-Economic Perspective

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Recent proposals for a comprehensive immigration bill in the Senate may be based on political expediency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Sound bites about border security, worksite enforcement, <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and</span> the status of about 12 million people who are currently in the United States illegally are salient issues to many politicians and various ethnic groups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There are over 12 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally and the majority of them are from Mexico due to their connected borders, thus making it easier access. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The government wants to form new policies and laws to control the immigration to the United States. The House of Congress passed a bill that would make illegal immigration a criminal offense and would also make it a crime to help illegal immigrants migrate to the United States. For years now, the government has been trying to form new ways to improve immigration laws and assist illegal immigrants on gaining citizenship in the United States.</span></span></p>

An Assault on Justice: John McKinley and the Affair at Jackson

An Assault on Justice: John McKinley and the Affair at Jackson STEVEN P. BROWN In April 1837, President Martin Van Bu­ ren nominated former Alabama senator John McKinley to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. A wealthy Kentucky attorney who moved to Alabama in 1819, McKinley was one of the state’s most notable men at the time of his appointment because of his legal acumen, property invest­ ments in northern Alabama, and service in both houses of Congress. His reputation as a leading land speculator, lawyer, and politi­ cian prompted Andrew Jackson to once refer to him as “the mostprominentman in allabama [sic].”1 Just prior to Jackson’s departure from of­ fice, his advisors encouraged him to appoint McKinley to the ninth seat on the newly ex­ panded Supreme Court. It was sound advice given McKinley’s reputation, his two-decadelong business and personal relationship with the President, and his recent service as one of Jackson’s key lieutenants in the House of Representatives. However, Jackson decided to nominate an old friend, former South Car­ olina Senator William Smith, instead. When Smith declined the appointment, the nomina­ tion fell to the recently inaugurated Van Bu­ ren, who promptly named McKinley for the slot. McKinley was thrilled with the opportu­ nity tojoin the Court. However, because ofhis previous congressional service and business interests throughout the South, he also under­ stood the difficulties of traveling to and from Washington and throughout the region em­ braced by the new Ninth Circuit—something he briefly noted in a letter to James K. Polk shortly after his nomination: I have accepted the appointment, al­ though it is certainly the most oner­ ous and laborious ofany inthe United States. Should I perform all the du­ ties of the office I shall have to hold eight circuit courts, and assist in holding the Supreme [C]ourt, and travel upwards offive thousand miles every year. These are four or five 84 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY times greater than many ofthejudges have.. ,2 During McKinley’s tenure, the Court met in Washington for just a few months. After their Term there was finished, the Justices would set offin their capacity as circuitjudges to hear legal disputes throughout the rest ofthe United States.3 From the earliest years of the Supreme Court itself, virtually every previous Justice had complained about the difficulties of his circuit duties, but McKinley’s were im­ possible to complete in their entirety.4 Well before the formation of the original Ninth Circuit, several members of Congress had already called attention to the serious physical challenges that would accompany the extension of the circuit-court system to what was then known as the old Southwest. In spite of these concerns, Congress created a sin­ gle circuit that included Alabama, Arkansas, the eastern portion of Louisiana, and Mis­ sissippi, all of which were among the top ten largest states in the Union at that time. McKinley’s was not only the newest and largest circuit, it was also the furthest from Wash­ ington and by far the most difficult to tra­ verse. Congress appeared to have organized the Ninth Circuit with little regard for the ac­ tual means of reaching the population centers in the old Southwest, for, with the exception ofNew Orleans, there was simply no easy way to reach the circuit-court sites it designated. Travel throughout the largely unsettled Ninth Circuit was time-consuming, hazardous, and costly, since McKinley, like all of the Justices, was required to pay his own expenses. These challenges, coupled with the congressionally mandated court schedule that required him to zigzag his way across the circuit, would sub­ sequently take a terrible toll on McKinley’s health. Because he was not confirmed until the last week of September, McKinley was unable to travel the 1,000 miles from Washington in time to make the fall 1837 session of circuit court in Mobile, Alabama. However, he did arrive on schedule in Jackson, Mississippi for A former senator and representative of Alabama, John McKinley was also a wealthy land speculator renowned for his legal acumen. In 1837, President Martin Van Buren appointed him to...

Americans’ Conflicting Views About The Public Health System, And How To Shore Up Support

This analysis of national opinion polls shows that a majority of Americans support increased spending on public health in general and that they see public health interventions as saving money in the long term. At the same time, many do not favor increased federal spending in a number of areas that public health officials deem important. In addition, polls show striking partisan differences, with Republicans much less supportive than Democrats of additional spending on public health. This split may have political implications for the public health component of the new health reform law if there is a change in party control of one or more houses of Congress after the November2010 elections. As a result, in order to sustain public support for increased spending, it will be critically important to give examples of cost savings from public health programs and to highlight how they have reduced mortality from major chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS.

Medical Leadership in an Increasingly Complex World

GREECE IS GOING BANKRUPT. THE EURO IS SHAKY. The oil inundating the Gulf Coast may eliminate one-third of the US seafood catch. In the midst of this chaos, the nightly news focuses on a medical breakthrough. At a cost of about $100 000, a man with metastatic prostate cancer can be treated with an infusion of his own cells and live, on average, a few months longer. The commentator questions whether insurance companies will pay for this therapy and wonders whether men who do not have metastatic cancer will demand access to the therapy, even if they have to pay for it themselves. Perhaps Yeats was right—“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” The United States spends more money per person on medical care than any other developed country in the world. But Americans are not the healthier for it. Life expectancy in the United States is lower than in virtually any other developed country, and variation in life expectancy, as a function of where a person lives or grows up, is high. In the context of this dismal reality, consider the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that every citizen has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What should be expected from a physician leader in this complex world? Physicians are found in leadership positions throughout US society but are rarely at the top. Physicians have been elected to both houses of Congress, but no physician has been elected president. Medical leaders are found in the executive branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, but virtually never at its highest levels. But physicians have extraordinary influence. They run the programs that spend large amounts of money to treat the elderly and the poor, at both state and national levels. They provide a moral compass when they serve as surgeon general. And most frequently, they are responsible for running large health care delivery systems and for training the future health workforce of the United States. Indeed, the teaching role has expanded from being a dean of a medical school to overseeing the entire health enterprise of an academic campus, including teaching hospitals and schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. Physicians also control all of the organizations that set professional standards in medicine, from individual specialty societies to organizations cutting across the entire medical establishment. What defines a successful leader of such organizations? That’s more than a rhetorical question. Medicine now makes up 17% of the US gross domestic product; thus, a large part of the country’s ability to ensure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is in the hands of medical leaders. There are several possible definitions of successful leadership. Is it an indication of success if the leader of an academic medical center keeps the institution financially solvent, constructs new buildings—especially those for basic science research—moves the institution higher on the National Institutes of Health grant list, and trains physicians to concentrate on the patient by using all tools at their disposal? Are leaders of professional societies successful when they persuade Congress that the society’s members provide great scientific value and thus merit higher salaries; or if those leaders convince philanthropies to donate a disproportionate amount of money to that specialty? Is the leader of a major program, such as Medicare, successful when bills are paid promptly, adequate reimbursement is made for services rendered, and services are provided with high quality and little waste? Is the medical leader of a pharmaceutical company successful when the company develops a product that increases life expectancy by 3 months at a price of $100 000 and then convinces the public and insurers that patients must have the product and that it must be paid for with public money? Many would answer yes in all of these cases. Who wants a leader of an academic medical center who builds nothing, does not attract research grants, and fails to maintain financial stability? Certainly not the center’s board of governance. But in this complex world, are these sufficiently inclusive definitions of a successful physician leader? There are 3 competing models for improving health in a population. The first, for which virtually all of the resources are used, is the medical model, in which an individual patient visits a physician who uses his or her clinical training to diagnose and treat the patient. The second is the

A Tale of Two Labor Laws

Come to Perth next year and give us a keynote address. That was the gist of an e-mail I got one July day in 2008 from the Australian Society for the Study of Labor History. At the time, both the United States and Australia were grappling with labor law reform. In America, it was the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) put forth by the AFL-CIO and endorsed by the Democrats. Come November, they would almost certainly be in charge—White House, both Houses of Congress, the whole works. In Australia, after a decade in the minority, the Labor Party under the leadership of Kevin Rudd was back in power and bent on dismantling the anti-union program of its neoliberal predecessor. Labor's alternative was still a work in progress, but it already had a name, Fair Work Australia.

Gilded Age Statecraft

Gilded Age Statecraft Robert M. Calhoon (bio) Charles W. Calhoun. Minority Victory: Gilded Age Politics and the Front Porch Campaign of 1888. American Presidential Election series. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008. xi + 243 pp. Appendices, notes, bibliographical essay, and index. $29.95. Now more than a century in the past, the Gilded Age still has blurred historiographical boundaries, albeit ones being remapped quarterly, since 2001, in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. This reviewer wrestled with the distinction between Mugwumps and Gilded Age liberals while completing Political Moderation in America’s First Two Centuries. Evidence indicated that historic moderation in America coalesced during 1913, the first year of the Wilson presidency, only to dissipate in 1914 as Progressives demanded from Wilson more assertive leadership. But a wider consideration of the politics of industrialization from the late-1880s to 1917 suggested that Wilson’s carefully crafted moderate agenda of 1913 was simultaneously visionary and antique.1 As a volume in the new University Press of Kansas series on historic presidential elections, this book credits Benjamin Harrison, rather than Grover Cleveland, with “setting the stage for the creation of the modern presidency” (p. 190) under McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. Moreover, Calhoun carefully searches records of the 1888 campaign for self-inflicted wounds that would come back to haunt the Harrison administration in 1892 when Cleveland won re-election on his second try—postponing for four turbulent years the transformative electoral showdown of 1896. That said, Calhoun also shows that the political culture of the Gilded Age was no less fluid and volatile in the late-1880s than it would become in the mid-1890s. “The delicate balance of the national political equilibrium,” he posits, “required each party to be both intense and circumspect” (p. 3). The constricted social space between intensity and circumspection was a legacy of the Compromise of 1877. As Calhoun himself demonstrated in his magisterial book on The Republican Party and the Southern Question,2 the drafting of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution placed Congress in a paradoxical quandary. In the view of New Jersey Republican Frederick Frelinghuysen, [End Page 99] Democrats “who claim for themselves devotion to the principles of democracy, which is a government nearer to the people, . . . oppose an amendment which will give the power of manifesting sovereignty to four million native born, arms-bearing citizens of the United States.” Yet Frelinghuysen’s own Republican Party was torn between two rationales for the Fifteenth Amendment: conservatism (a simple declaration of the right to vote that did not further alter the federal principle) and republicanism (recognizing, in the words of Florida carpetbag Senator Adonijah Welch, that “intelligence and virtue,” while integral to voting, “are not peculiar to any race” and “not monopolized by nor wholly excluded from any people on the round earth.” Though satisfied that both houses of Congress had steered safely between this Scilla and Carybidis, Calhoun discerns that the Fifteenth Amendment had still been a harrowing passage to navigate because the debate had “limned the outer limits of the party’s notions of republicanism” while avoiding “fundamental damage to the principle of federalism.” The constitutional logic that Congressional Republicans employed in 1875 was that a high threshold for Congressional enactment and state ratification of amendments (two-thirds and three-quarters respectively) meant that amendments to the Constitution should alter the original document and its amendments as little as possible. The Fifteenth Amendment lacked teeth not only because a straightforward statement of republican principle was all the Congressional Republicans could muster but, more importantly, because statements of principle mattered as good faith gestures toward states that might in the future be persuaded to protect voting rights as part of the constitutional settlement of Civil War issues. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment was widely understood to be a high-water mark of constitutional change, undercutting the Tenth Amendment’s bolstering of states’ rights, firming up new prohibitions on the power of states to deny rights and immunities, due process, and equal protection, as well as banning states from defining for themselves either state or national citizenship. Implicit in the high-water-mark interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was an understanding that a...

Forging Ahead — Embracing the “Reconciliation” Option for Reform

The course of health care reform in 2009 resembled the silent movie series “The Perils of Pauline,” in which each episode began with a threat to the heroine's life but ended with her salvation. Despite repeated near-death experiences, reform legislation passed both houses of Congress. After so many obstacles had been surmounted, the remaining task of reconciling the House and Senate bills seemed doable. Then, a political earthquake hit. Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senatorial seat that had been held for 47 years by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, thwarting the capacity of the remaining 57 Democrats and . . .

An Examination of Legislative Roll-Call Voting in the Czech Republic Using Spatial Models

It is not clear from previous research if influential spatial techniques for analysing roll-data used in the Houses of Congress in the United States are appropriate in European multiparty systems. This is because the results of spatial analyses of roll-call data from the United States are interpreted in terms of ideological preferences. Within Europe party discipline is also a central feature of legislator behaviour. Consequently, spatial models of roll call behaviour in European legislatures should be explained in terms of party cohesion and discipline. This means that the correct interpretation of spatial models of roll-call data in places such as the Czech Republic requires access to additional sources of empirical evidence such as parliamentary survey data in order to make valid and reliable inferences about what motivates legislative behaviour. Using roll-call and parliamentary survey data from the sixth legislature in the Czech Republic (2006-2008), this research demonstrates that spatial models of roll-call data are not readily explainable in terms of party cohesion and discipline. The difficulty of making a substantive interpretation of dimensions extracted suggests the use of spatial models of roll-call voting where part discipline is strong requires more theoretical and methodological work.

The American Public and the Next Phase of the Health Care Reform Debate

Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama are moving ahead to develop a single piece of major health care legislation, which will be debated, voted on by both houses of Congress, and, if enacted, sent to the President for his approval and signature. Previous research suggests that public opinion will play an important role in the outcome of this process. Experience suggests that although the final legislation is likely to be complex, the public will form an overall view leading it either to support or to oppose enactment, but this view can change substantially over time. Multiple factors may contribute to . . .

Making political choices: Canada and the United States

Recent national elections in Canada and the United States have been exciting, consequential contests. In the 2004 federal election in Canada, the Liberal Party narrowly clung to power after a volatile and bitter battle with the new Conservative Party. In 2006, the Conservative Party won a fragile victory, replacing the scandal-ridden Liberal government. In the 2000 American presidential election, Republican George W. Bush became the first candidate in over 100 years to capture the presidency without a majority popular vote. Four years later, Bush finally attained a narrow popular mandate but only after a hard fought campaign. Then, in 2006, the Republicans suffered a stunning reversal of political fortune, losing control of both Houses of Congress, as public opinion turned massively against the president.In Making Political Choices: Canada and the United States, Harold Clarke, Allan Kornberg, and Thomas Scotto employ a wealth of new survey data to describe these elections and evaluate competing theories of party support and voter turnout. While examining various arguments, the authors contend that a valence politics model provides a powerful explanation of voting behavior in Canada, the United States, and other mature democracies.

The Turn of a Phrase: “Habilitative/Rehabilitative Services” Is Heart of Health Reform

The Turn of a Phrase: “Habilitative/Rehabilitative Services” Is Heart of Health Reform

Winds of change: growing demands for transparency in the relationship between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry

The relationship between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is undergoing rapid and momentous change; US Senator Grassley has alleged inadequate disclosure of earnings from industry and lack of acknowledgement of conflicts of interest by leading academics. This article is based on the premise that it is not the relationship per se that is the problem, but rather how that relationship is enacted. The influential 2008 report of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has provided detailed recommendations on appropriate interactions between academic physicians and industry (eg, proscribing receipt of gifts including travel support, and proscribing speaking at industry-sponsored educational programs). Contrary to expectations, there has been widespread acceptance of such guidelines. In Australia, details of all industry-sponsored educational events are now listed on the Medicines Australia website. Australian doctors have no alternative but to drastically improve the transparency of their interactions with industry, both in terms of the remuneration received and disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Australian universities should seriously consider developing recommendations similar to those of the AAMC.

Riding Obama's Coattails: The Democrats Finally Take the Ohio 1st

In 2006 the Democratic Party swept both houses of Congress. It was a tidal wave. For the first time since 1994, both branches of the legislature were under Democratic Party control. While many of his Republican colleagues lost in 2006, Steve Chabot survived by narrowly defeating Cin-cinnati City Council member John Cranley by roughly 9,000 votes. The political environment favored the Democrats again in 2008, and this year the Democrats believed that Steve Driehaus, the Minority Whip in the Ohio state legislature, was the person to unseat Chabot.

Recovery Bill Directs $150 Billion to Health Care

Recovery Bill Directs $150 Billion to Health Care