First Professors Elmendorf and Schleicher examine the role of the law in enabling an electorate comprised of mostly ignorant voters to obtain meaningful representation and to hold elected officials accountable.

Next, Professor Robinson tests Hobbes’ view that government and law are the wellspring of social order by examining “absent-law” groups that have developed under various conditions throughout history. Professor Robinson’s findings illustrate that despite the wide variety of situations, common patterns of social cooperation and a commitment to justice emerged among the groups in their responses to their often difficult circumstances.

Following, Professor Zaring examines the revolving door between jobs in the public and private sector which supposedly incentivizes government regulators to regulate on behalf of the industry interests for whom they will eventually work.

Further, Professor Alexander examines the three phases in the government’s approach to the legal aspects of detainee policy in the “war on terrorism” in the decade since 9/11.

The issue concludes with notes by Dannia Altemimei, Kerri Eble, and Elena P. Vekilov.

The University of Illinois Law Review invites you to join us in congratulating the following members who have been elected to the 2013-2014 Board of Editors:

Editor-in-Chief: Jackie Waldman

Managing Editor: Whitney Merrill

Executive Editor: Andrew Barrios

Executive Production Editor: Benjamin Sunshine

Managing Articles Editor: Laura Miller

Articles Editors: Nick Battey, Joe Bozdech, Conor Craft, Kristen Hosack, and Kristen Isaacson

Managing Notes & Comments Editor: Kathryn LaCoste

Notes & Comments Editors: Marissa Meli, Dave Pattee, Yeji Suh, Marisa Young, and Kristen Sweat

First, Professor Sperino demonstrates the theoretical and practical difficulties of importing proximate cause principles into employment discrimination law.

Next, Professor Morag-Levine offers an alternative reading of the origins of the Brandeis Brief and of its relation to the constitutional conflicts of the Lochner era.

Following, Professor Tabb demonstrates how the financial world for which the 1978 Bankruptcy Code was written has fundamentally changed, with the rise of dominant secured creditors.  This has upset the balance of power, rendering the Code’s scheme obsolete with regard to credit bidding.

Next, Professor Lewinsohn-Zamir challenges the conventional wisdom that monetary remedies are usually a satisfactory substitute for in-kind redress.

Further, Professor Kairys reveals stark differences between the Court’s treatment of modes of speech available to people of ordinary means, and modes available to corporations and the wealthy, and argues that this disparate treatment skews, corrupts, and undermines the democratic process.

The issue concludes with notes by Thomas Berghman, David M. Cummings, and Caitlin T. Harrington.

First, Professor Emens proposes using framing rules to target the moments when nondisabled people make decisions that implicate their future relationship to disability. The Article examines several domains to which the inside framing perspective could be applied—including thinking about the kind of children we want, injury prevention campaigns, and contingency planning—in which disability is frequently presented in negative terms.

Next, Professors Garoupa and Morriss argue that a focus on legal systems’ ability to cheaply identify efficient rules, restrain rent-seeking in the formulation and application of rules, adapt rules to changed conditions, reveal the law to those affected by it, and enable contracting around inefficient rules would be more appropriate than the current emphasis on labels such as Common Law and Civil Law.

Following, Professor Kar draws upon and develops contemporary findings in in a broad range of cognate fields around the understanding of human prehistory to reconstruct the most plausible genealogical shape of Western legal prehistory, and suggests a number of important but underappreciated relationships that obtain between our modern Western traditions and a range of other Eurasian traditions with which the West has typically been contrasted.

Next, Professor Pushaw demonstrates the historical evidence reveals that the Founders understood “commerce” as including only commercial interactions—voluntary sales of products and services and accompanying activities intended for the marketplace, such as manufacturing goods for sale, paid transportation, and banking.

The issue concludes with notes by Scott A. Cromar, Max H. Deleon, Megan McMillen, and Elizabeth L. Rowe.

Click here to download David Kairys’s Essay.