Congressional staff assert that collaborative policy is more successful, especially if the collaboration is bipartisan: Policy letters gain additional attention, invitations have a broader appeal, and bills are more likely to pass. Chapter 7 tests that assumption by examining the outcomes of collaborative legislation. At every stage of the legislative process, collaborative bills are more successful than single-author bills. Collaborative legislation attracts more cosponsors and is more likely to be reported out of committee, pass the House, and be enacted. Bipartisan bills do particularly well, particularly for rank-and-file members with limited institutional power, but majority party members also benefit from partisan collaboration. By working together, members can signal that a bill has broad support – either within or across the political parties – and facilitate a smoother legislative process from introduction to enactment. Thus, collaboration is a valuable tool for members of Congress seeking to advance their agenda.

This chapter investigates the role of ‘crisis’ narratives in the incremental undermining of migrants’ rights. It argues that the right-wing populist politics of Sweden Democrats, not least in their narrative of migration as a ‘crisis’, have had a considerable impact on migration discourse and policy in Sweden. As radical-right ideas have become normalized, limitations on migrant rights appear to be regarded as much less problematic by mainstream political parties. At the same time, the Swedish constitutional system promotes a set of core values that, taken together, provide for legal resilience. Although there are weaknesses built into the system, such as the relatively limited system of judicial review and the limited scope of fundamental rights included in the Constitution, core values such as independence of the administration and transparency of the legislative process are powerful tools to prevent anti-democratic and anti-pluralist parties from pushing through their ideas. It is thus suggested that the inherent inertia of the administrative system and the legislative process is a key element of legal resilience against rights erosion, for migrants as well as for other vulnerable groups.

The author of this chapter is a member of the Upper House of Japan who proposed and established the Hate Speech Elimination Act: a philosophical law that includes no penalty provisions because if punishments were imposed on the grounds of the content of expression, then the government would have the authority to decide which expressions were to be subject to punishment – an obvious violation of the ‘freedom of expression’ provided for under the Constitution of Japan. In this chapter, the author discusses the importance of empowering a society in which everyone spontaneously raises their own voice and acts to eliminate hate speech, rather than prescribing a society in which people think, ‘Hate speech will not disappear unless it is punished.’ Through the effects of the Act, local governments and judiciaries were finally able to define hate speech as ‘unacceptable’ and use their own discretion to implement measures accordingly. Even though it is a philosophical law, the Act has therefore raised public awareness and inspired a mass movement seeking to eliminate discrimination voluntarily.

Some federal legislation is unambiguously incomprehensible, even to the lawmakers sponsoring the bills. Yet this legislation passes through both houses of Congress anyway. Part of the reason involves the benefits of legislative incomprehensibility; if hardly anyone understands what a bill means or how it might work, the bill may actually be able to pass more easily since it is hard to identify substantive flaws. Party leaders who are under pressure to pass some legislation can strongarm rank-and-file members to toe the party line and vote in favor. This chapter identifies the significance of this incomprehensible law problem and closes by offering preliminary suggestions for reform.

Consumer protection law is notoriously imbalanced with respect to the superior ability of sellers to process information as compared to their customers. Yet despite the resulting comprehension asymmetries, the design of consumer contract law and disclosure requirements regularly fail to encourage sellers to communicate meaningfully with the target audience. This chapter explores how consumer protection law tacitly encourages incomprehensibility and proposes reforms which would provide increased incentives for meaningful communication between buyers and sellers.