Blogs

They said it couldn't — or, at least, wouldn't — be done, but you can see it for yourself, in living Internet color:  non-required disclosures made by Chicago officials and employees.

These are not annual disclosures, but mostly disclosures of gift offers, accepted and rejected. There are dozens of them for 2012 and 2013, and 9 already for 2014. It's...

Human Rights Watch has just published a harrowing report entitled "Profiting from Probation," which shows how the privatization of probation has led to conflicts of interest that have seriously harmed many individuals, and how probation companies have not been sufficiently supervised by the criminal justice system.

What role does humor play in a government ethics program? It looks like this is the principal issue in a Broome County, NY ethics case. According to an article put up yesterday afternoon on the Gannett Pressconnects website, the chair of the opposing party's county committee has written a letter to the county ethics board regarding the...

The draft of Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout's new essay, "The Forgotten Law of Lobbying," which will appear in Election Law Journal, looks at the history of how American courts have viewed lobbying. This history provides a valuable perspective on lobbying, making it more clear what it is about lobbyists that attracts bad feelings.

After all, when looked at in terms of First...

A dispute in Kansas raises the question:  which takes precedence, the First Amendment (free speech) or the Second Amendment?

On July 1, 2013, a Kansas state law became effective that prohibited the use of state funds to pay for promotion or lobbying on gun control legislation or regulation at any governmental level.

According to...

Updates: February 5 and April 16, 2014 (see below)

Here is a must-read Star-Ledger op-ed piece by Paula Franzese, a professor at Seton Hall Law School and former chair of the New Jersey Ethics Commission (2006 to 2010). She provides a short history of the selection process for the executive director of the state EC, and then looks more closely at the context of...