Legislating Without Experience

Legislating Without Experience provides an in-depth analysis of individual states experiencing state legislative term limits as well as apples-to-apples comparisons with states that are untermed. It is a valuable description of the legislative process in each state and a quasi-experimental study of term limits.

This book considers whether term limits help curb careerism in the US state legislatures. Term limits are popular among the public and have been overwhelmingly successful once on the ballot. Despite this, very little is known about the long-term effects of these institutional rules. If term limits were sold to the public to remove entrenched incumbents from office, how do they alter the careers of legislators and what are the implications? Butcher suggests that term limits do not end careers but instead, lawmakers have become more creative in their pursuits. She finds that the presence of term limits has created a new career system unique to those states that have limits. In each chapter, there is a quantitative analysis, followed by qualitative interviews to better understand the underlying motivations of members.

From 1716 to 1845, Scotland’s banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of adverse economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability. Eighteenth-century Scottish banks operated in a regulatory vacuum: no central bank to act as lender of last resort, no monopoly on issuing currency, no legal requirements for maintaining capital reserves, and no formal limits on bank size. These conditions produced a remarkably robust banking system, one that was intensely competitive and served as a prime engine of Scottish economic growth. Despite indicators that might have seemed red flags—large speculative capital flows, a fixed exchange rate, and substantial external debt—Scotland successfully navigated two severe financial crises during the Seven Years’ War. The exception was a severe financial crisis in 1772, seven years after the imposition of the first regulations on Scottish banking—the result of aggressive lobbying by large banks seeking to weed out competition. While these restrictions did not cause the 1772 crisis, Tyler Beck Goodspeed argues, they critically undermined the flexibility and resilience previously exhibited by Scottish finance, thereby elevating the risk that another adverse economic shock, such as occurred in 1772, might threaten financial stability more broadly. Far from revealing the shortcomings of unregulated banking, as Adam Smith claimed, the 1772 crisis exposed the risks of ill-conceived bank regulation.

America's moral decline is not secret. An alarming number of moral and cultural problems have exploded in our country since 1960--a period when the standards of morality expressed in our laws and customs have been relaxed, abandoned, or judicially overruled. Conventional wisdom says laws cannot stem moral decline. Anyone who raises the prospect of legislation on the hot topics of our day - abortion, family issues, gay rights, euthanasia - encounters a host of objections: As long as I don't hurt anyone the government s should leave me alone." No one should force their morals on anyone else." You can't make people be good." Legislating morality violates the separation of church and state." 'Legislating Morality' answers those objections and advocates a moral base for America without sacrificing religious and cultural diversity. It debunks the myth that morality can't be legislated" and amply demonstrates how liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike exploit law to promote good and curtail evil. This book boldly challenges prevailing thinking about right and wrong and about our nation's moral future.

Includes proceedings and papers of the American Association for Labor Legislation previously published in the two series: Proceedings and Legislative review.