Project Spotlight: Restatement of the Law, Charitable Nonprofit Organizations

A great deal of wealth in the United States is controlled by charitable nonprofit organizations. Yet, an authoritative statement of the law in charitable nonprofit organizations does not exist. The law of charities, drawn as it is from various other parts of the law, in many aspects remains confusing and incomplete. It is difficult for somebody who has not worked in this field to manage all these sources. This is the basis for the Restatement.

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Several Roads to Decarceration, All of Which Should Be Taken

As the year comes to a close, it is undeniably true that criminal justice reform is in the air. The federal First Step Act, even with critics on the left and right, heralds a less punitive approach than the “get tough on crime” policies of the past several decades. Recent elections yielded a number of prosecutors swept into office on platforms focused on confronting racial disparities and rethinking approaches to low-level offenses.

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October 2018 Council Updates

During its meeting in New York City on October 18 and 19, the ALI Council reviewed drafts for seven Institute projects. Drafts or portions of drafts for six projects received Council approval, subject to the meeting discussion and to the usual prerogative to make nonsubstantive editorial improvements.

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From International Law and International Relations to Law and World Politics

Political scientists — primarily in the discipline’s international relations subfield — have long studied international law. This article identifies five stages of political science research on international law, including the current interdisciplinary international law and international relations (IL/IR) stage, and it reviews three trends in political science research that constitute an emerging sixth stage of interdisciplinary scholarship: a law and world politics (L/WP) stage.

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The Perils of Voting by Mail

Bladen County, North Carolina, provides the latest object lesson for anyone genuinely interested in improving American elections. Each day this past week brought a new revelation about apparent absentee ballot fraud there, fraud that appears increasingly likely to lead North Carolina authorities (or the U.S. House of Representatives) to call for a new election for the state’s 9th Congressional District. But whether or not that entire congressional race must be rerun, the story that has emerged from Bladen County already makes clear the need for all states to be vigilant in how they manage their absentee voting processes.

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