Copyright (c) 2008 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/robert_tsai Recent documents in Robert L Tsai en-us Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:39:45 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/robert_tsai/8 http://works.bepress.com/robert_tsai/8 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:17:26 PDT This Article proposes a speech-based right of court access. First, it finds the traditional due process approach to be analytically incoherent and of limited practical value. Second, it contends that history, constitutional structure, and theory all support conceiving of the right of access as the modern analogue to the right to petition government for redress. Third, the Article explores the ways in which the civil rights plaintiff's lawsuit tracks the behavior of the traditional dissident. Fourth, by way of a case study, the essay argues that recent restrictions - notably, a congressional limitation on the amount of fees counsel for prisoners may recover - violates the right of access to the courts. Robert L. Tsai Constitutional Law Politics http://works.bepress.com/robert_tsai/7 http://works.bepress.com/robert_tsai/7 Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:22:19 PDT This is a review of Steven M. Teles's book, Whose Welfare? AFDC and Elite Politics (University Press of Kansas, 1996), which argues that welfare policy reflects a dynamic of elite dissensus, in which public policy fails to reflect popular opinion. I make two central points in the review: first, there are reasons to believe that welfare policy does, in fact, reflect a deeply conflicted American electorate; and second, such a conflict may reveal a healthy deliberative order struggling to reconcile changing priorities with enduring values. Robert L. Tsai Constitutional Law Politics