Amanda Hollis‐brusky
Biographic Data
| ID | 4115338 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amanda Hollis‐brusky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amanda |
| FAMILY NAME | Hollis‐brusky |
| SIGNATURE | BRUSKY A H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pomona College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 32 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Serviceable Instruments of His Authority” the Office of Legal Counsel, Donald Trump, and the Expansion of Executive Power
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), a tiny office in the United States Department of Justice, was designed to hold the executive branch to the law. But in practice, the office has often played a role in the expansion of presidential power. We analyze the publicly available OLC opinions from Trump's first term to understand whether, to what extent, and how lawyers in OLC provided legal scaffolding for President Trump's expansion of presidential pow…
Making Fusionism Great Again: Authoritarian Means to Christian Nationalist Ends
Donald Trump and Trumpism have transformed the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two institutions at the heart of the conservative legal movement. In this article, I use the conservative philosophy of fusionism as a lens for understanding the causes and consequences of the transformation. The original fusionism of William F. Buckley and Frank S. Meyer brought disparate factions of conservatives together under the mantle of libertari…
How the Christian Right Slayed a Monster and Reframed the Religion Clauses in Bremerton
In the Mold of Justice Scalia”: The Contours & Consequences of the Trump Judiciary
This article reviews the causes, contours and potential consequences of President Donald J. Trump’s 234 appointments to the federal judiciary. The causes will be familiar to political scientists who are fond of reminding people that “elections have consequences” and that the “Supreme Court [and by extension entire federal judiciary] follows the election returns.” The contours of the Trump Judiciary are congruent with Trump’s campaign promise to a…
The Law: “Beyond the Torture Memos: How the Office of Legal Counsel Matters for Executive Branch Scholarship”
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the U.S. Department of Justice offers binding legal advice to the executive branch, including the president. Its advice touches most aspects of law, but it is especially influential for its interpretation of constitutional provisions that rarely, if ever, are subject to judicial scrutiny. While its importance is acknowledged by journalists, law professors, and legal practitioners, political science has yet to …
Plausible legality: Legal culture and political imperative in the global war on terror
‘I am, in like manner, inclined to believe that a monarch will always be able to convert legal practitioners into the most serviceable instruments of his authority. There is a far greater affinity between this class of individuals and the executive power than there is between them and the people’ (Democracy in America, chapter XVI). Almost two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that lawyers were predisposed to act as handmaidens of the…
Higher Law: Can Christian Conservatives Transform Law Through Legal Education
The allure of law schools as transformative institutions in the United States prompted Christian Right leaders to invest in legal education in the 1990s and early 2000s. The aspiration was to control the training of lawyers in order to challenge the secular legal monopoly on law, policy, and culture. In this article, we examine three leading Christian conservative law schools and one training program dedicated to transforming the law. We ask how …
Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency
Playing for the Rules: How and Why New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms Invest in Secular Litigation
This article catalogues and analyzes the litigating behavior of four of the leading New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms (NCR PILFs). Consistent with the finding from judicial politics that all PILFs seek first and foremost to have policy influence, we find that most of the litigation these PILFs invest in is either explicitly or implicitly religious or mission driven. However, we also observe a trend of increased participation in secula…
Lawyers for God and Neighbor: The Emergence of “Law as a Calling” as a Mobilizing Frame for Christian Lawyers
Drawing on movement framing, collective identity, and mobilization scholarship, this article examines the emergence and potential effects of framing “law as a calling” for the Christian Lawyering community. The article finds that the term should have strong resonance and salience in the broader Christian community. It also finds that because of its interpretive malleability, “law as a calling” has been discussed and actualized in three related, b…
The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber
Journal Article The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber Get access The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin. Nashville, TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. 304 pp. $35.00. Amanda Hollis-Brusky Amanda Hollis-Brusky Pomona College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Is…
Support Structures and Constitutional Change: Teles, Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement
This essay reviews two recent works in political science on the American conservative legal movement: Steven M. Teles's The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (2008) and Ann Southworth's Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008). It examines these books in the context of a larger debate over the variables that best explain constitutional change in general and the recent “cons…
Playing for the Rules: How and Why New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms Invest in Secular Litigation
This article catalogues and analyzes the litigating behavior of four of the leading New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms (NCR PILFs). Consistent with the finding from judicial politics that all PILFs seek first and foremost to have policy influence, we find that most of the litigation these PILFs invest in is either explicitly or implicitly religious or mission driven. However, we also observe a trend of increased participation in secula…
Higher Law: Can Christian Conservatives Transform Law Through Legal Education
The allure of law schools as transformative institutions in the United States prompted Christian Right leaders to invest in legal education in the 1990s and early 2000s. The aspiration was to control the training of lawyers in order to challenge the secular legal monopoly on law, policy, and culture. In this article, we examine three leading Christian conservative law schools and one training program dedicated to transforming the law. We ask how …
Lawyers for God and Neighbor: The Emergence of “Law as a Calling” as a Mobilizing Frame for Christian Lawyers
Drawing on movement framing, collective identity, and mobilization scholarship, this article examines the emergence and potential effects of framing “law as a calling” for the Christian Lawyering community. The article finds that the term should have strong resonance and salience in the broader Christian community. It also finds that because of its interpretive malleability, “law as a calling” has been discussed and actualized in three related, b…
How the Christian Right Slayed a Monster and Reframed the Religion Clauses in Bremerton
Making Fusionism Great Again: Authoritarian Means to Christian Nationalist Ends
Donald Trump and Trumpism have transformed the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two institutions at the heart of the conservative legal movement. In this article, I use the conservative philosophy of fusionism as a lens for understanding the causes and consequences of the transformation. The original fusionism of William F. Buckley and Frank S. Meyer brought disparate factions of conservatives together under the mantle of libertari…
Support Structures and Constitutional Change: Teles, Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement
This essay reviews two recent works in political science on the American conservative legal movement: Steven M. Teles's The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (2008) and Ann Southworth's Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008). It examines these books in the context of a larger debate over the variables that best explain constitutional change in general and the recent “cons…
In the Mold of Justice Scalia”: The Contours & Consequences of the Trump Judiciary
This article reviews the causes, contours and potential consequences of President Donald J. Trump’s 234 appointments to the federal judiciary. The causes will be familiar to political scientists who are fond of reminding people that “elections have consequences” and that the “Supreme Court [and by extension entire federal judiciary] follows the election returns.” The contours of the Trump Judiciary are congruent with Trump’s campaign promise to a…
The Law: “Beyond the Torture Memos: How the Office of Legal Counsel Matters for Executive Branch Scholarship”
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the U.S. Department of Justice offers binding legal advice to the executive branch, including the president. Its advice touches most aspects of law, but it is especially influential for its interpretation of constitutional provisions that rarely, if ever, are subject to judicial scrutiny. While its importance is acknowledged by journalists, law professors, and legal practitioners, political science has yet to …
Plausible legality: Legal culture and political imperative in the global war on terror
‘I am, in like manner, inclined to believe that a monarch will always be able to convert legal practitioners into the most serviceable instruments of his authority. There is a far greater affinity between this class of individuals and the executive power than there is between them and the people’ (Democracy in America, chapter XVI). Almost two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that lawyers were predisposed to act as handmaidens of the…
Support Structures and Constitutional Change: Teles, Southworth, and the Conservative Legal Movement
This essay reviews two recent works in political science on the American conservative legal movement: Steven M. Teles's The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (2008) and Ann Southworth's Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008). It examines these books in the context of a larger debate over the variables that best explain constitutional change in general and the recent “cons…
Lawyers for God and Neighbor: The Emergence of “Law as a Calling” as a Mobilizing Frame for Christian Lawyers
Drawing on movement framing, collective identity, and mobilization scholarship, this article examines the emergence and potential effects of framing “law as a calling” for the Christian Lawyering community. The article finds that the term should have strong resonance and salience in the broader Christian community. It also finds that because of its interpretive malleability, “law as a calling” has been discussed and actualized in three related, b…
The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber
Journal Article The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber Get access The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liber by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin. Nashville, TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 2013. 304 pp. $35.00. Amanda Hollis-Brusky Amanda Hollis-Brusky Pomona College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 129, Is…
Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency
Playing for the Rules: How and Why New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms Invest in Secular Litigation
This article catalogues and analyzes the litigating behavior of four of the leading New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms (NCR PILFs). Consistent with the finding from judicial politics that all PILFs seek first and foremost to have policy influence, we find that most of the litigation these PILFs invest in is either explicitly or implicitly religious or mission driven. However, we also observe a trend of increased participation in secula…
Higher Law: Can Christian Conservatives Transform Law Through Legal Education
The allure of law schools as transformative institutions in the United States prompted Christian Right leaders to invest in legal education in the 1990s and early 2000s. The aspiration was to control the training of lawyers in order to challenge the secular legal monopoly on law, policy, and culture. In this article, we examine three leading Christian conservative law schools and one training program dedicated to transforming the law. We ask how …
Plausible legality: Legal culture and political imperative in the global war on terror
‘I am, in like manner, inclined to believe that a monarch will always be able to convert legal practitioners into the most serviceable instruments of his authority. There is a far greater affinity between this class of individuals and the executive power than there is between them and the people’ (Democracy in America, chapter XVI). Almost two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that lawyers were predisposed to act as handmaidens of the…
In the Mold of Justice Scalia”: The Contours & Consequences of the Trump Judiciary
This article reviews the causes, contours and potential consequences of President Donald J. Trump’s 234 appointments to the federal judiciary. The causes will be familiar to political scientists who are fond of reminding people that “elections have consequences” and that the “Supreme Court [and by extension entire federal judiciary] follows the election returns.” The contours of the Trump Judiciary are congruent with Trump’s campaign promise to a…
The Law: “Beyond the Torture Memos: How the Office of Legal Counsel Matters for Executive Branch Scholarship”
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the U.S. Department of Justice offers binding legal advice to the executive branch, including the president. Its advice touches most aspects of law, but it is especially influential for its interpretation of constitutional provisions that rarely, if ever, are subject to judicial scrutiny. While its importance is acknowledged by journalists, law professors, and legal practitioners, political science has yet to …
How the Christian Right Slayed a Monster and Reframed the Religion Clauses in Bremerton
Making Fusionism Great Again: Authoritarian Means to Christian Nationalist Ends
Donald Trump and Trumpism have transformed the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two institutions at the heart of the conservative legal movement. In this article, I use the conservative philosophy of fusionism as a lens for understanding the causes and consequences of the transformation. The original fusionism of William F. Buckley and Frank S. Meyer brought disparate factions of conservatives together under the mantle of libertari…
Serviceable Instruments of His Authority” the Office of Legal Counsel, Donald Trump, and the Expansion of Executive Power
The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), a tiny office in the United States Department of Justice, was designed to hold the executive branch to the law. But in practice, the office has often played a role in the expansion of presidential power. We analyze the publicly available OLC opinions from Trump's first term to understand whether, to what extent, and how lawyers in OLC provided legal scaffolding for President Trump's expansion of presidential pow…
Law (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Judicial and Constitutional Studies (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (5 works) · Federalist (4 works) · Law, Rights, and Freedoms (4 works) · Democracy (3 works)