In 1995, the budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans forced the federal government to shut down. Two years later, the parties joined forces to pass the first balanced budget in a generation. In The Challenge of Legislation, John Hilley, the Clinton administration's chief liaison to the Republican-controlled Congress, tells the inside story of this dramatic turnaround. Hilley weaves together a detailed narrative and vivid portraits of the key players—including then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, and President Bill Clinton—in this comprehensive account of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Equally at home with the complexities of the legislative process and the realities of political combat, he offers unique insight into the highly charged relationship between party leaders and their rank-and-file, the interplay between elected officials and their professional staff, the delicate art of partisan negotiations, and the role of uncertainty and surprise. The result is a compelling look at how public policy is made, rich in enduring lessons for both policymakers and students of legislative politics. Ten years ago, bipartisanship triumphed against daunting odds. The Challenge of Legislation shows how it happened and what it will take for bipartisanship to succeed again.

This book is a snapshot of America's voting and electoral practices, problems, and most current issues. The book addresses a variety of fundamental areas concerning election law from a federal perspective such as the Help America Vote Act, lessons learned from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, voter identification, and demographic and statistical experts in election litigation, and more. It is a useful guide for lawyers as well as law school professors, election officials, state and local government personnel, and election workers.

In this book, an expanded version of The Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1966, Mr. Gower first looks at some of the legacies of colonialism inherited by those nations of Tropical Africa which recently gained independence from Britain.

This book explores why some members of Congress are more effective than others at navigating the legislative process and what this means for how Congress is organized and what policies it produces. Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman develop a new metric of individual legislator effectiveness (the Legislative Effectiveness Score) that will be of interest to scholars, voters, and politicians alike. They use these scores to study party influence in Congress, the successes or failures of women and African Americans in Congress, policy gridlock, and the specific strategies that lawmakers employ to advance their agendas.

European integration has been most successful at a legal level and European influences have left an indelible mark on English Public Law. These influences must be understood by students and practitioners if they are to understand our public law and its continuing development. This new book aims to cover the debate surrounding the influence of Community law on the public law of the United Kingdom in a thematic and analytical manner.

Examining eight case studies on the role of law in various arenas, this collection of essays addresses the reconfiguration of the relations between the state, the market, and the family caused by privatization.