Legislative Record Research Articles

Protection of the best interests of a child in the medical field (According to the legislation in force in Georgia)

International and Georgian legislation recognises the priority of protecting a child's best interests. While discussing any issues related to a minor, the discussion starts by considering the best interests. The present article relates to protecting the best interests of a child in the field of healthcare when receiving medical services and the exact allocation of functions and duties of the involved decision-making parties to provide guaranteed protection of the best interests of a child. Protection of the best interests of a child includes both the immediate identification of the possible child abuse fact and any long-term interest that may influence the child’s development and psycho-emotional state. A legal representative acting on behalf of a child mainly decides on the medical services provided to the minor. Each case will be evaluated individually to guarantee the protection of a child’s rights and best interest. However, before assessing the protection of a child’s best interests in the medical field, the concept of the child’s best interests will be discussed in general. Acting within the framework of the medical legislation, medical workers play the leading role in the process of providing medical services to minors. That is why the constant involvement of the healthcare system is necessary to eliminate the gaps and barriers under consideration. To ensure the balance between parental authority and the child’s autonomous decision-making, the individual case must be evaluated, and a unified objective must be established using a multidisciplinary approach. The standard research method of the record of medical legislation clearly shows the conflict of interest occurring when considering the best interests of a child and the inevitable violation of the child’s unconditional right to be heard.

AGING AND FOREIGN POLICY: EXPERIENCING THE GLOBAL TRACK OF THE HEALTH AND AGING POLICY FELLOWSHIP

Abstract The Health and Aging Policy Fellowship includes a Global Track that provides fellows with the opportunity to shape global policy or U.S. foreign policy for an aging society. The author, a global health expert and 2022-2023 fellow, sought a fellowship placement with a member of Congress with jurisdiction over U.S. global health policy. Although global health is a significant foreign policy priority for the U.S. government, U.S. global health programs do not include dedicated funding for activities designed to benefit older adults or help development partners adapt to population aging. The result is that US-funded programs on issues from infectious disease to health systems strengthening to disaster relief lack a focus on older adults, despite their many links to this growing population. To help address this policy gap, the author secured a fellowship placement with Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Chair of the SFRC Subcommittee overseeing the State Department, US Agency for International Development, and bilateral development assistance. With his track record of legislation and oversight on issues such as Medicare, health disparities, medical research, oral health, health systems strengthening, and retirement security, Senator Cardin is well positioned to help integrate the needs of older adults into U.S. development assistance. The author used his fellowship year to help advance the global health-related legislative priorities of Senator Cardin and his Health Team, bringing his expertise and perspective on aging to the policy table while gaining invaluable skills in the policy process.

Understanding European Union Climate Change Governance through Political Parties Euromanifesto

This study offers a novelty specifying climate change as the legislation results in the European Parliament (EP) as an indicator of the consistency of political groups in realising their Euromanifestos. The article aims to investigate precisely the prospects and future of climate change policies in the EU post the 2019 general election. This study adopted qualitative legal research methods by studying the Euromanifestos of political groups in the European Union that competed in the 2019 European elections. Environmental issues, particularly climate change, were a significant focus in the study of these manifestos. Based on data from Euromanifesto, this study selected five EU Regulations as indicators of realising such political promises. In addition, the record of legislation and the results of voting during the establishment of the regulation was also applied as a data source in this study. In general, the cohesion between political groups in the EP is excellent. Based on a manifesto study, there are three essential findings; namely, most political groups in the EP make environmental issues, especially climate change, a politicised issue in elections. The second finding is that there are specific intersections between political groups, so it has implications for making the issue of climate change a common interest, and the results of the vote showed that a majority of Member of European Parliament members supported the establishment of the regulation. Finally, the solidarity of the EP political group cohesion in establishing regulations related to climate change is the last finding in this research.

HOPING FOR CHANGE: The Legislative Record of the Obama Presidency

HOPING FOR CHANGE: The Legislative Record of the Obama Presidency

The Opioid Crisis: The War on Drugs Is Over. Long Live the War on Drugs

A closer examination of media coverage, the response of law enforcement and policy makers, the legislative record, and the availability of proven, high-quality treatments for substance abuse casts doubt on claims that the country pivoted toward public health and harm-reduction strategies to address the opioid crisis because its victims were disproportionately white people. Law enforcement solutions directed at people who use and sell street drugs continue to far outpace public health and harm-reduction strategies. Government support for expanding access to proven treatments for opioid use disorder that save and rebuild lives remains paltry given the scale of this public health catastrophe. And although the rhetoric has been somewhat more sympathetic, at times it rivals the excesses of the crack era. The article examines the various phases of the opioid crisis as they have unfolded over the past 25 years; related geographic and racial shifts in overdose fatalities with each new phase; media coverage of the crisis; the federal government's response, including by the US Congress and presidents from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden; punitive developments at the state and local levels; and the country's poor record on prevention and making effective treatment widely available for people with substance use disorder.

Tracing the historical construction of a vocational training, adult education and lifelong learning policy space in the European Union from 1951 to present

The purpose of this study is to trace and document the emerging contours of a Vocational Training, Adult Education and Lifelong Learning (VTAELL) space in the EU via an examination of the policy framework built over time in this area over more than six decades, from the inception of today’s European Union to the present day. Nineteen key primary sources were selected from the EU’s legislative record forming the growing overarching legal framework on VTAELL from 1951 to present. These were subjected to a discourse and content analysis, utilizing a process tracing approach to systematically record the gradual construction of VTAELL policy. The narrative shows that policy evolution in this field can be grouped into three distinct stages: policy groundwork; programmatic operationalization; consolidation, integration and expansion. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that the convergence and cross-referencing of EU’s VTAELL policy across education sectors validates the importance and consolidation of this policy space.

Algonquin Provincial Park as Policed Space

This paper explores the creation of Algonquin Park, and its social and economic exclusion of local people, including the people after which the park was named, in favour of industrial resource exploitation. The very foundation of the park in 1893 was a form of exclusion, though Aboriginal people were so socially marginalized that their existence was only subsequently recognized through the casting of their everyday behaviours as deviant. Non‐Aboriginal trappers were also confronted with the prohibition of their primary economic activity. Surveillance and law enforcement became important as hunting and simply entering the space without permission were criminalized. Official publications and brochures highlight the public and recreational aspects of the park, but industrial resource extraction, particularly clear cut logging by private lease‐holding companies, was deemed a legitimate activity. This reflects the related capitalist and colonial values of the provincial government and suggests that the creation of Algonquin Provincial Park was hegemonic and economic. The record of legislation, policy construction and enforcement in the park provide an excellent testimony of this reality.8

Who Voted for Woman Suffrage: 1915 & 1917 New York State Suffrage Referenda

Who Voted for Woman Suffrage:1915 & 1917 New York State Suffrage Referenda Rusty C. Tobin (bio) On November 14, 1917 in the village of Andover, New York women representing suffrage clubs from all over Allegany County gathered at the home of Roxanna Bradley Burrows, the Assembly District Leader of the Allegany County Woman Suffrage Party. They came to celebrate their efforts in the successful passage the week before of a New York State referendum granting women full voting rights in New York State. The women processed to the local Methodist Church for a buffet luncheon and then marched to the library for further ceremonies. An American flag, a gift of the Lucy Stone Club, was presented to the village and raised. The women gave the flag salute and ended the ceremony with their suffrage "yell." At some point during the afternoon they probably sang their suffrage song "Its Coming, Its Coming, The Vote for Which We Pray."1 While a week earlier, suffragists in New York City held a much larger victory celebration in New York City's Cooper Union, rural women in New York were equally as jubilant and proud of their victory.2 Click for larger view View full resolution New York State was the first state east of the Mississippi to allow full voting rights to women and the victory occurred three years before women in the nation won the right to vote by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. [End Page 422] This was the result of a referendum in which male voters were simply asked yes or no to permit women the right to vote in all elections. Just two years prior, in 1915, however, the exact same referendum was put before the male voters and failed to pass. Some historians attribute responsibility for the victory in 1917 to the turnaround of New York City voters who had voted overwhelmingly against the 1915 referendum.3 Out of 1.3 million votes cast in 1917 the margin of victory was only 102,353 votes (see table 1). While New York City residents passed the referendum by 103,000 votes, the rest of the state defeated the referendum by only 1,510 votes and male voters upstate provided 49.7 percent of the "yes" vote total. Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. New York State 1915 & 1917 Referenda Source: County by county votes for the 1915 referendum are located in New York Legislative Record and Index. Albany: The Legislative Index Co., 1916, 854–55. The 1917 figures are in The New York Red Book, Albany, NY, 1918, 822. Referenda on the same issue just two years apart offers a unique opportunity to explore transformations in voting patterns. It is important to distinguish where woman suffrage support across the state came from before one can explain the reversal of sentiment between 1915 and 1917. This article examines the voting patterns apparent in the two New York State referenda and demonstrates that support for woman suffrage was statewide and that there was a mix of rural and urban regions among twenty-nine upstate counties that gave a majority vote in favor of woman suffrage in 1917. [End Page 423] Local political context is important in understanding most elections and the woman suffrage victory in New York is no exception. Other amendments as well as political offices that were on the ballot in both 1915 and 1917 strongly influenced voter turnout within different communities and this, in turn, affected the vote. In addition, some rural social groups provided strong organizational support for woman suffrage and the social makeup of each county also affected the vote. While the issue of which male voters changed their minds between 1915 and 1917 may never be known, the organizational work and strategies of upstate suffragists and their opponents is not thoroughly understood. An analysis of the state referenda is a place to begin. Advocacy for woman suffrage in New York State has a long history. Even before the 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in which a Declaration of Sentiments modeled on the Declaration of Independence was adopted, suffragists engaged in a variety of strategies to gain the...

Restoring the Legislative Framework for Patenting Applications of Scientific Discoveries

In Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. (2012), the Supreme Court triggered the most radical redefinition of patent-eligible subject matter in U.S. history by engrafting onto § 101 an inventive application requirement for patenting practical applications of scientific discoveries.The Nation’s patent statutes, stretching back to the founding era, unmistakably afford patent protection to technological innovations and practical applications of scientific discoveries. The legislative record contains no hint of a second, “inventive application” hurdle for patent-eligibility of scientific discoveries. To the contrary, statutory text and legislative history reflect the clear intention to encourage “inventors and discoverers” to reveal the “mysteries of nature,” whether or not they are inventively applied.The Supreme Court derived the “inventive application” requirement from Neilson v. Harford (1841). This brief explains the profound misinterpretation that led the Supreme Court astray and urges the Court to grant certiorari in Sequenom v. Ariosa Diagnostics so as to restore the patentability framework that Congress intended.

The Sherlock Holmes Canon

Many of the Supreme Court’s statutory interpretation cases infer meaning from Congress’s failure to comment in the legislative record. Colorfully referred to as the “dog that did not bark” canon, after a Sherlock Holmes story involving a watchdog that failed to bark while a racehorse was being stolen, the interpretive presumption holds as follows: if a statutory interpretation would significantly change the existing legal landscape, Congress can be expected to comment on that change in the legislative record; thus, a lack of congressional comment regarding a significant change can be taken as evidence that Congress did not intend that interpretation. Failure to comment arguments typically arise when the Supreme Court considers the meaning of a statutory provision that has been amended and an interpretation is advanced that arguably would change the status quo. Surprisingly, this canine canon of construction has received little theoretical attention — and what little attention it has received has tended to be positive, assuming that the canon leads courts to follow congressional intent. But there are several practical and theoretical problems with the assumptions underlying the canon. This essay examines how courts employ the Sherlock Holmes canon in practice and explores the canon’s normative and theoretical implications in detail. Ultimately, it argues that the Sherlock Holmes canon should be invoked only in rare cases, when there is special reason for courts to expect or require Congress to comment on a change in the law.

Pamphlets, Legislators and the Irish Economy: 1727–49

A significant outcome of the revolution in the writing of Irish economic and social history in the 1960s and 1970s was the development among historians of a sceptical approach to contemporary pamphlets. With pamphleteers' comments on social and economic conditions no longer regarded as reliable, historians became reluctant to use the pamphlet literature. Now, almost half a century later, it is time to ask whether this scepticism has been carried too far. This article reassesses the value of contemporary pamphlets to the historian by analysing the political and economic pamphlets of the period between 1727 and 1749 in the context of other contemporary comment and practical political action. Using the correspondence of various leading political figures and the legislative record of the Irish parliament, the article seeks to evaluate the potential of the pamphlet literature as a guide to the preoccupations of the political elite and wider contemporary society. The article also re-examines the relationship between pamphlets and the political and economic realities, asking whether the pamphlet literature provides a better refection of contemporary political and economic trends than has previously been acknowledged.

Provider status effort engaged on Capitol Hill

Provider status effort engaged on Capitol Hill

Money, Reputation, and Incumbency in U.S. House Elections, or Why Marginals Have Become More Expensive

Since 1972, campaign spending by House incumbents has skyrocketed, particularly in those districts with marginal support for the incumbent's party. At the same time, parties in the House have become much more cohesive in the way they vote, producing more precise and informative party brands. We argue that these two phenomena are fundamentally linked. As parties have developed more precise reputations, incumbents in these districts must spend much more to attract voters in “marginal” districts, who would be willing to vote for a candidate with the particular incumbent's legislative record, but not the average member of his party. Increasingly precise party reputations provide voters with stronger priors that incumbents are just like the rest of their party, and incumbents in marginal districts must spend more to overcome these beliefs. We demonstrate this using a simple formal model and test it empirically using campaign-spending data from 1972 to 2008.

Less than Meets the Eye: Antidiscrimination and the Development of Section 5 Enforcement and Eleventh Amendment Abrogation Law Since City of Boerne v. Flores

In a series of cases beginning with Boerne v. City of Flores (1997), Supreme Court has adopted a new interpretation of Eleventh Amendment. This has been interpreted for a century to bar citizen law suits against unconsenting states, unless Congress validly exercises its enforcement powers under Section 5 of Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate state's sovereign immunity. It is widely thought that Boerne Doctrine significantly raises bar for Congress to validly exercise its Section 5 powers because it requires proof of a pattern of state violation of constitutional rights and suitability of remedy to problem (congruence and proportionality), not just, as previously, a clear statement of intent to abrogate. In Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents (2000), Court struck down application of federal age discrimination law (the ADEA) to states as involving invalid exercise of Section 5 powers because Congress did not show enough evidence of a pattern of state constitutional violations that this law might remedy. The Court did same in Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett (2001) for federal disability employment discrimination law. In both cases Court made a fine grained analysis of evidence in legislative record, discarding much of it irrelevant or not probative. Some constitutional law scholars warned that the sky is falling for federal antidiscrimination law.I show by close reading of pertinent cases that Boerne Doctrine is, or has become, far less restrictive than is widely thought. Properly understood, Doctrine now involves what I call an Inverse Relation Rule. This means that Court requires more evidence of a pattern of constitutional violations where standard of review for rights at question is lower (rational basis for age and disability in Kimel and Garrett respectively), but requires less evidence of such violations as rights in question involve more heightened review. That is, higher degree of scrutiny appropriate for right protected by legislation, lower degree of rigor with which Court will interrogate evidence.Thus in Hibbs v. Fla. Bd of Regents (2003), Court found that Congress had validly exercised its Section Five powers in enacting Family Medical Leave Act, which concerns sex discrimination (intermediate review). In Tennessee v. Lane (2004) Court found similarly that public access Title of ADA applied to states, because that case implicated fundamental rights such as access to criminal justice (strict scrutiny).Throughout development of Boerne Doctrine, Court expanded scope of usable evidence. In Hibbs and Lane, Court allowed as evidence supporting valid use of Section 5 powers facts of sort Court had rejected as inadequate in Kimel and Garrett. The Court increasingly brought in in evidence outside record and made its own factual findings. In United States v. Georgia (2006), a prisoner disability access rights case under Title II of ADA that court interpreted as coextensive with Eighth Amendment rights not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment (strict scrutiny), Court required no evidence at all of a pattern of state constitutional violations for valid Congressional exercise of Section 5 powers. Thus, way rights implicated in Congressional action are framed is crucial to successful abrogation of state sovereign immunity. If they are framed as rights involving heightened scrutiny, intensity of Court's examination of evidence for a pattern of discrimination, amount of evidence required, and appropriateness of remedy offered will be much reduced, and probability of finding of a valid use to Section 5 to abrogate state sovereign immunity will be increased. If rights at issue can be framed as requiring only rational basis review, intensity of Court's examination of evidence will rise and, likelihood that Congress will have successfully abrogated state sovereign immunity will fall. I show this by a hypothetical reconsideration of Kimel under Boerne Doctrine as it has evolved, among other things, reading ADEA as involving a remedy for deprivation of due process property rights (strict scrutiny), and showing how that might change outcome. Both plaintiffs and defendants, as well as judges, can use this analysis in developing theory of a case.An issue not discussed in paper, but now (2013) pertinent concerns states of Voting Rights Act (VRA). Throughout all Boerne Doctrine cases, and there are many, Court cites VRA as a model example of proper exercise of Congress' Section 5 powers. With Voting Rights Act itself now coming before Court, it may be important for Boerne Doctrine, and analysis and conclusions presented in this paper, how Court decides challenges to VRA.

Making Law with Lawsuits: Understanding Judicial Review in Campaign Finance Policy

Campaign finance law presents quite a puzzle: it is an area of federal policy very closely tied to the interests of incumbents in the political branches, and yet it is controlled to a great extent by unelected federal court judges. While we tend to assume that First Amendment considerations drive judicial review here, scholars have yet to account for political leaders’ decisions to establish federal court jurisdiction in the first place, allowing lawsuits that either challenge or enforce the law. Can it be that Congress went to great lengths to write statutes regulating the use of money in elections, but had nothing to say about how and to what extent courts would review the law? This article examines the role of political leaders in judicializing campaign finance policy. In a survey of nearly a century of law, and in a close analysis of the legislative record, I make a number of surprising findings. I discover that there has been great variation in judicial review over this history and that it correlates directly with the choices activists and political leaders have made to mobilize legal institutions in the making of campaign finance policy. Moreover, I find that political leaders have maintained the upper hand in this: where the efforts of independent policy activists ran counter to their interests (as they did for a brief period prior to Watergate), legislators quickly changed jurisdiction rules to foreclose the groups’ access to federal courts. But, even as they restricted public interest litigation in the field, legislators actually moved to judicialize the policy still more – and continued to do so even after the Supreme Court substantially altered the law with its Buckley v. Valeo ruling. In fact, from 1974 onward, the judiciary’s power to interpret, enforce and, ultimately, remake policy has been deliberately delegated to it by Congress. This history reveals that campaign finance reform has long been a process of making law with lawsuits, where courts enjoy significant discretion to revise policy not primarily because of their own activism, but because political leaders have given them the job.

DISCUSSION OF Do Debt Constraints Influence Firms' Sensitivity to a Temporary Tax Holiday on Repatriations?

A lbring, Mills, and Newberry (2010) (hereafter, AMN) study the relation between proxies of debt constraints and firms’ responses to the repatriation tax holiday in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA). Specifically, they investigate whether the existence of a public debt rating and the number of covenants in private debt agreements are associated with the amount of foreign earnings repatriated. Ultimately, AMN find evidence that firms’ repatriations are increasing in the existence of a debt rating and decreasing in the number of private debt covenants. Given the ongoing debate regarding the efficacy of the AJCA, which reduced the maximum tax rate on the repatriations to 5.25 percent, AMN address a research question that will be of interest to academics and policy makers alike.

Globalization, Obsolete and Inhumane Migratory Policies, and Their Impact on Migrant Workers and Their Families in the North and Central American/Caribbean Region

The 1970s marked the beginning of a great and continuing migration of people from Mexico and Caribbean and Central American nations to the United States. This movement has been driven by a confluence of factors leading to a systematic social and economic displacement of millions of people, including the asymmetrical social and economic relationship between the United States and countries in this region, the restructuring of local economies and labor markets through neoliberal free trade and structural adjustment policies promoted by the global north, the civil wars of Central America, and the long history of U.S. economic and political domination and military interventions in the region. In addition, technological developments in transportation and telecommunications have facilitated travel and ongoing communication among family members and migratory networks across political borders, while making visible the relative conditions of exclusion and poverty to the people in Latin America, while providing a powerful incentive to migrate to United States where the good life appears to be attainable. Growing xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies in the United States has also marked this period. In response, immigrant communities and supporters will have to continue fighting back against anti-immigrant ordinances and legislative initiatives and record deportations, informing about the humanity and contributions of immigrants, and building leadership and capacity to influence policy outcomes in the interest of the majority, making the United States a better, more equitable, democratic, and sustainable nation and international actor.

Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (review)

Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts. By Johann ?. Neem. Harvard Historical Studies, 163. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. 259. Cloth, $49.95.)Reviewed by Robert A. GrossIn 1817, well before Alexis de Tocqueville set foot on American shores, Rev. Samuel Worcester, a leading figure in missionary movement, exulted that the present is an age of benevolent associations; of combined counsels and labours, for improvement and happiness of mankind. Two decades later, Tocqueville famously discerned same thing, putting voluntary associations at heart of his enduring account of Democracy in America. In immense assemblage of associations flourishing in new republic, visiting Frenchman detected a defining feature of and a remedy for its defects. On their own in a marked by equality of condition, individuals were isolated and ineffective; acting together in voluntary concert, they exercised considerable power. Cooperative effort widened horizons, built social bonds, achieved practical goals, and shaped public opinion. It made for democratic citizens, reliant upon themselves and not government and capable of resisting the tyranny of majority. And, as Rev. Worcester would surely have added, it enabled Christians to do Lord's work of advancing millennium and redeeming world from sin.So deep has been evangelicals' impress upon American culture and so compelling Tocqueville's logic that it is easy to assume voluntary associations have been vital agents of popular self-government since beginning of republic. Not so, argues Johann Neem in this valuable inquiry into democracy and civil society in new nation. Far from embracing civic activism, Americans were uneasy about becoming a nation of joiners and accepted it only when other options had failed (3). Attentive to interdisciplinary conversations about civil and public sphere, Neem, associate professor of history at Western Washington University, brings a much needed historical perspective to a subject long clouded by nostalgia for a lost world where supposedly nobody bowled alone. In his telling, landscape of associations that greeted Tocqueville in early 1830s was antithetical to social vision animating Revolutionary generation. Its efflorescence constituted an inadvertent achievement, marking eclipse of founders' world view and rise of a competitive, pluralistic nobody had foreseen.Creating a Nation of Joiners focuses on experience of Massachusetts, state leader in chartering business corporations and nursery of moral reformers. Drawing on a rich public record of legislation, judicial decisions, organizational reports, and commentary from pulpit and press, Neem builds a powerful case against notion that voluntary associations sprang up, as if spontaneously, in free air of New World and from imperatives of democratic life. In keeping with recent work by sociologist Theda Skocpol and historians John Brooke and Albrecht Koschnik, he stresses dependence of civil on state. That was proper blueprint for a republic, as envisioned by leaders of Revolution. Hostile to concentrations of wealth and power that Old World monarchies vested in privileged bodies, republican statesmen were determined to keep corporations on a tight leash. Some states, notably Jefferson's Virginia, resisted award of corporate charters. But not Massachusetts, whose leaders took seriously its designation as a commonwealth under Constitution of 1 780. Article VI of that frame of government placed tight restrictions on grant of charters and other particular and exclusive privileges; such advantages were conditional on services rendered to public. The Federalists at helm on Beacon Hill took provision as warrant for enlisting energies of private groups for common good. …

New York, written on election day

And so, done. The former fighter pilot, at odds with his own party, faced a newcomer with no legislative record, the latter riding the crest of disapproval of the incumbent...

Thinking about Feminist Leadership

Thinking about Feminist Leadership Stephanie Y. Mitchem (bio) Because women's biblical studies have focused for too long on the canonical authority of the Bible, a feminist political interpretation for transformation must become canonically transgressive. . . . Because the ethos of a feminist critical interpretation is inclusive, ecumenical, and multicultural, it may not limit its scope to canonical writings, accept the [End Page 197] authority claims of the canon, or focus exclusively on the teachings of the Bible.1 —Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza was a presence throughout my theological education. I did not choose biblical scholarship as the focus of my studies, but theology. But that choice did not matter: Elisabeth would be a presence for any religious scholar with feminist leanings. I focus here not on Elisabeth's scholarship as such or even her impact on incoming, developing feminist scholarship in religious studies. Instead, I want to talk about something that is often neglected and more often misrepresented: feminist leadership. Feminist leadership is to be informed, first, by indisputable commitment to women. Of course, more than just a verbal commitment to women is needed; practical issues are involved. As contrast, we in the United States just experienced a presidential election. One of the vice presidential candidates was a woman, a governor, who some called a feminist. The candidate's legislative record did not demonstrate any of the usual leanings toward feminism, such as equality, protection of women, or justice. In fact, her record tracked her setting up policies that are antiwoman and pro-patriarch. In other words, in the end, feminism is demonstrated in leadership—through action, not in labels, not in words. I began this essay with a quotation from Elisabeth that succinctly outlines a shape and direction for feminist biblical scholarship. I use the points from this brief excerpt to map out a direction and methodology for those who want to lead as feminists. Let me clarify. In the excerpt, Elisabeth is writing about feminist interpretation of the Bible. Yet it must be understood that this interpretive process is inherently political. Established Western canonical structures—whatever the discipline—have been locked into white male frameworks. Elisabeth coined the term kyriarchal to underline the wedding of male power in society with religious thought. This marriage enforces Western imperialist canonical structures in which the middle class, specifically property-owning white males, receive preferred citizenship. Men charged themselves to begin seeking some of the authentic Truth that further supported its vision of itself. This is the structure of empire. As Joerg Rieger has explained, "empire seeks to extend its control as far as possible, beyond the commonly recognized geographical, political, and economic spheres, to include the intellectual, emotional, psychological, spiritual, cultural, and religious arenas. The problem with empire is, therefore, [End Page 198] that no one can escape its force field completely."2 Organized religions, then, do not escape the burden of empire but become partners in its maintenance. Deconstruction of established canons is never neutral because the status quo is challenged. Every person or group involved in liberation work must find ways to work over, under, around, and through the constructions that have fed oppressions. This is transgressive of the canons. Yet to make changes for justice is slow, tedious, thoughtful work. Change cannot be achieved by violence or by opting out of the system. More important, we cannot take incremental advances for granted, despite the fact that many scholars are quick to believe that since they themselves did not experience injustices, oppression must have ended. Ultimately, to take this route is to remove oneself from struggle for justice and to accept the status quo. This is not transgression but compliance. So what are those who lead as feminists, womanists, or mujeristas to do? Elisabeth's quote lays out at least two methods to deal with the political realities of biblical studies. Because of the political aspects of feminist biblical studies, I also apply these methods to feminist leadership. 1. Feminist leadership aims for transformation. As the previous discussion of political and imperial dimensions of the status quo indicates, to achieve transformation, transgressing canons is imperative. It follows that feminist leadership needs to be canonically transgressive. For...