Early in my career as a federal prosecutor I discovered that corruption in government remains a serious problem in the U.S. and, as the Ethics Director for the City of Jacksonville, I’ve come to understand that temptations to use government offices for private ends are subtle and widespread.... Read more about Practical Tools to Fight Government Corruption
Kudos to Maggie McKinley, Climenko Fellow and former Lab Fellow, and to Network Fellow Thomas Groll for an impressive blogpost. They argue in a mixed-methods design—drawing on both qualitative data and formal analysis—that much of what lobbyists do isn't really quid pro quo corruption, notwithstanding the appearances.... Read more about Can Proportionality Distinguish Quid Pro Quo Corruption?
The 114th Congress is exceptional in many ways—it includes the youngest woman ever elected to the House, for one—but its first day looked like the first day of any other new Congress: much like the first day of school.... Read more about The Relationship Market: How Modern Lobbying Gets Done
Lab Fellow Eugen Dimant discusses his exciting new paper on the impact of migration flows on institutional quality and corruption in this new blog post.1
Rick Piltz passed away on Saturday, October 18, 2014. He spent decades working in the federal government and state government in Texas, and was a prominent whistleblower during the Bush administration. He later founded Climate Science Watch.
For over seven years, I've been gallivanting across the fruited plain holding mini Constitutional Conventions with motley Americans. Many participants in these “Constitution Cafés” have joined the growing hue and cry across the political spectrum for a new Constitutional Convention to introduce amendments to enact campaign finance reform and do away with corporate personhood.
The crisis of democracy in the United States is not a crisis of partisanship, said Zephyr Teachout, but a crisis of corruption. Happily, reform is within reach. It starts with reclaiming some history.... Read more about Teachout Talks Corruption
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of James M. Landis, one of the most pivotal entrepreneurs in regulatory history. A key architect of the Securities and Exchange Commission, established eighty years ago, and former Dean of Harvard Law School (1937-1946), Landis and his conception of regulatory purpose has largely been relegated in part because of an investigation into his personal tax affairs that did much to besmirch his legacy. In advance of a major panel discussion at Harvard Law School on November 24, 2014, Justin O’Brien evaluates the abiding strength of the approach to regulatory design advanced by Landis, drawing on a major article on “too big to fail” just published in Law and Financial Markets Review and his monograph The Triumph, Tragedy and Lost Legacy of James M Landis (Hart Publishing, 2014).
HarvardEthics@kate_manne And what about families with two male parents who can't lactate, or foster and adoptive parents of infants? Or grandparents who are primary caregivers to their grandchildren? There are so many family configurations where natural breastfeeding is not on the table