Some contemporary Congresses have lost sight of the original scope of their predecessors' assertions of privilege and now claim an absolute privilege to withhold both the originals and copies of subpoenaed papers. A few judicial opinions suggest as much or more. It is possible that even...

As the U.S. Supreme Court imposes federalism-based limits on congressional power under the Commerce Clause and Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress may be tempted to turn to the conditional spending power in order to achieve goals that it cannot realize directly. In this article I...

In most countries Parliamentary immunity protects lawmakers from civil or criminal charges while in office, and it shields them from prosecution for their political speech or political actions. This paper presents the first empirical analysis in the literature of the impact of Parliamentary...

By the end of 2009, Ireland, the Czech Republic, and Poland finally ratified the Treaty of Lisbon. This marked the end of a turbulent period that had seen the Laeken Declaration, a controversial and rejected proposal for a Constitution for Europe (in 2005), and the hard fight over the compromise...