bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Common Election Day for the Euro Zone?
Authors: Breuss Fritz 
Published: January 2008

SUMMARYThis paper tests for the Euro zone the hypothesis put forward by Sapir and Sekkat (1999) that synchronizing elections might improve welfare. Implementing political business cycle features into a politico‐macroeconomic model of the Euro zone allows us to simulate the effects of adopting a common election day in the 12 Euro zone member states. The results support most of the theoretical predictions by Sapir‐Sekkat: (i) Synchronizing the elections could enhance GDP growth, reduce unemployment, but leads to increased inflation and in some countries to a deterioration of the budget; higher inflation could force the ECB to monetary restrictions. (ii) If the synchronization happens asymmetrically – either only in the large or only in the small Euro zone countries – the result depends on the size of the spillovers. (iii) As anticipated in Sapir‐Sekkat a common election day is a further step towards the desired ‘European business cycle’, however, at the cost of increasing its amplitude. Harmonizing elections is another method of policy coordination. Whether this leads to higher welfare is a matter of weighting the different macroeconomic outcomes and it also depends on the model applied.
Two Views on Institutions and Development: The Grand Transition vs the Primacy of Institutions
Authors: Paldam Martin , Gundlach Erich 
Published: January 2008

SUMMARYThe Grand Transition (GT) view claims that economic development is causal to institutional development, and that many institutional changes can be understood as transitions occurring at roughly the same level (zone) of development. The Primacy of Institutions (PoI) view claims that economic development is a consequence of an exogenous selection of institutions. Our survey of the empirical evidence and our own estimates reveal that it is easy to find convincing evidence supporting either of the two views. Property rights do affect development as suggested by the PoI view. However, democracy is mainly an effect of development as suggested by the GT view. We conclude that the empirical results are far too mixed to allow for a robust assessment that one of the two views is true and the other false. This finding implies that focusing on institutional development is unlikely to be successful as the key strategy for the economic development of poor countries.
PARENTAL REFUSAL OF LIFE‐SAVING TREATMENTS FOR ADOLESCENTS: CHINESE FAMILISM IN MEDICAL DECISION‐MAKING RE‐VISITED
Authors: HUI EDWIN 
Published: January 2008

ABSTRACTThis paper reports two cases in Hong Kong involving two native Chinese adolescent cancer patients (APs) who were denied their rights to consent to necessary treatments refused by their parents, resulting in serious harm. We argue that the dynamics of the ‘AP‐physician‐family‐relationship’ and the dominant role Chinese families play in medical decision‐making (MDM) are best understood in terms of the tendency to hierarchy and parental authoritarianism in traditional Confucianism. This ethic has been confirmed and endorsed by various Chinese writers from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Rather than giving an unqualified endorsement to this ethic, based more on cultural sentimentalism than rational moral reasoning, we warn that a strong familism in MDM, which deprives ‘weak’ family members of rights, represents the less desirable elements of this tradition, against which healthcare professionals working in this cultural milieu need to safeguard. Specifically for APs, we suggest that parental authority and family integrity should be re‐interpreted in terms of parental responsibility and the enhancement of children's interests respectively, as done in the West. This implies that when parents refuse to consent to necessary treatment and deny their adolescent children's right to consent, doctors, as the only remaining advocates of the APs' interest, have the duty to inform the state, which can override parental refusal to enable the doctors to fulfill their professional and moral obligations. In so doing the state exercises its ‘parens patriae’ power to defend the defenseless in society and the integrity of the medical profession.
SELF‐CONSCIOUS INTEREST AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS: The Case of Citizens, Regulatory Agencies, and Federal Courts
Authors: STEWART CHARLES V. 
Published: January 2008

Federal courts play an increasingly overt role in the American policy process. The implications of this judicial activism have attracted considerable scholarly attention, with recent literature casting doubt on the capacity of courts to be productive in this role. This article draws out some of these concerns as well as posits a few counterpoints.After raising both sides of the issue, the article focuses on one complex Supreme Court decision, United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedure (SCRAP I, 1973) and its sequel, Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad v. SCRAP (SCRAP II, 1975), as vehicles for illustrating and evaluating major questions posed by an active judiciary.
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND SAGECRAFT IN THE DEBATE OVER GUN CONTROL
Authors: TONSO WILLIAM R. 
Published: January 2008

This article is not about the gun control issue per se; instead, it considers the way in which this issue has been treated by social scientists. The article points to some of the shortcomings in what is commonly referred to as the conventional social scientific approach to controversial social matters. While the subject examined in the article is gun control, other equally controversial issues, such as school busing or the legalization of marijuana, could have been used as well to make the same points.SUMMARYUsing the gun control issue as a case in point, this article has argued that the conventional social scientific treatment of controversial social phenomena often has much more in common with sagecraft than it does with social science. The social scientific treatment of the gun issue passed on to the general public through magazine articles, the published findings of various social‐science‐assisted commissions, and social science textbooks, is generally identical to the pro‐gun control argument accepted by that segment of American society with which the more prominent social scientists are more likely to identify—namely urban, college educated, philosophically and politically liberal, upper‐middle class, or cosmopolitan America. It would appear that cosmopolitan ethnocentrism and the sage orientation that it fosters do little to encourage the intellectual curiosity and skepticism so vital to the social scientific enterprise.
Testing Peltzman's Theory of Driver Intensity
Authors: KELLEY HUBERT 
Published: January 2008

The 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act empowers the federal government to set motor vehicle safety performance standards. By passing the Act, Congress intended to lower the motor vehicle crash and death rates.Sam Peltzman has since challenged the assumption that safer cars lead to fewer crash‐related deaths. His theory is that safer cars instill a feeling of protection in motorists that encourages them to drive more recklessly than in unsafe cars. Peltzman has devised a regression equation that predicts what the motor vehicle death rate would be without auto safety regulation. According to it, the total motor vehicle death rate without regulation is not much different from what we have experienced with regulation. Thus Peltzman concludes the auto safety regulation was ineffective.But Peltzman's equation should not be looked upon as absolute. Other predictive equations of statistical quality equal to Peltzman's model contradict its findings. A series of regressions constructed solely on the basis of maximizing statistical quality with no underlying theory consistently predicts a higher motor vehicle death rate without auto safety regulation than with it. Thus Peltzman's theory lacks the statistical foundation he claims for it.
Suing the Philadelphia Police: The Case for an Institutional Approach
Authors: Anechiarico Frank 
Published: January 2008

Note: The comments of Alan Snyder, Eugene Lewis and the Editor and anonymous reviewers of Law and Policy are gratefully acknowledged.This article examines the merits of two alternative briefs in Equal Protection litigation on police misconduct. The several suits brought against the Philadelphia Police Department illustrate the shortcomings of the judicially preferred intentionality brief and indicate the need for a more completely specified institutional brief. The background of the two briefs is traced to a dialectical conflict between discretion and control in the idea of law enforcement.The use of force is not a philosophical issue for a policeman. It is not a question of should or whether, but when and how much (Rubinstein 1973:323).
Law Centres, Citizenship, and Participation
Authors: STEPHENS MIKE 
Published: January 2008

It's difficult to redirect things once we'd started up as a casework agency. It's difficult to keep casework under control. Cases can only be related to one another; if you justify taking on one case, it's difficult to avoid taking on similar cases. There is still not sufficient priority given to educational and community work. This is so because of the demands of [individual] casework … It's difficult to change approach from casework to educational and community work. (Lawyer at the Urban Community Law Centre)From the beginning we have attempted to do work with people rather than for them. This has meant that wherever possible we have brought people with similar problems together so that they learn how to cope with different establishment bodies … more important, they realize they can exercise control over their own lives. Whether we help an individual deal with his or her own personal problem, or help a group of people get to grips with whatever is oppressing them, our main aim is to inculcate a practical philosophy of self‐reliance. (Statement of aims of the Northern Neighbourhood Law Centre1)
A Court Quietly Rewrote the Federal Pesticide Statute: How Prevalent is Judicial Statutory Revision?
Authors: MACINTYRE ANGUS 
Published: January 2008

Author's Note: My thanks to Lloyd Musolf, Paul Sabatier, Martin Shapiro, John M. Thomas and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also acknowledge the generous support of the Energy and Environmental Policy Research Program at the Institute of Ecology, University of California at Davis.The resurgence in policymaking by American courts has revitalized the longstanding debate over judicial activism. Yet much of that debate addresses judicial interpretations of the Constitution, as distinct from statutory law. When interpreting vague statutes, judges can make inconspicuous but fundamental policy reforms. This paper discusses the political circumstances encouraging this form of judicial intervention. The enormous subtlety in judicial capabilities is illustrated. The paper concludes that by focusing primarily on obvious features of court activism, the contemporary debate may be seriously under representing the extent of judicial contributions to our fragmented form of governance.
Means Discrimination: An Investigation into the Ideology of Constitutional Equality
Authors: BRIGHAM JOHN 
Published: January 2008

Constitutional “equal protection” has a technical meaning that orients legal thinking. Its roots are in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the relationship between separation of the races in schools, theaters, and other public places and the guarantee of material or physical equality. Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), in eliminating separation from constitutional protection also eliminated the constitutional promise of material equality.The approach to this ideology turns away from outcomes in order to get to the meanings, standards and conceptual parameters that influence the application of constitutional discourse to discrimination against those with inadequate means.
Free Trade: Problematic Theory and Anachronistic Faith
Authors: ALBERT LEE A. 
Published: January 2008

Despite disruptive and costly impacts of imports, the U.S. maintains adherence to an ideal of free trade as the goal of trade policy. This article questions that axiomatic preference in arguing that goods from low‐wage and non‐market economies pose significant trade policy issues.It sets forth the costly effects of such imports on workers and producers and asks whether trade benefits are commensurate. It addresses the fairness of competition between American and non‐market producers as well as the viability of U. S. fair trade safeguards.The article ultimately observes that there is a basic conflict of interest between comparatively less developed low‐wage countries and high‐cost, high‐employment nations and that free trade theory does not produce an acceptable resolution of this conflict. At stake for the U.S. is its standard of living and its social values as well. Management of trade thus is not a vestige but an essential part of this nation's commitments.
Reforming Public Safety: An Evaluation of the 1983 British Seat Belt Law
Authors: LEGGE JEROME S. 
Published: January 2008

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the 1983 British seat belt law in England and Wales. The methodology employed is interrupted time series analysis.In terms of a lasting impact, the seat belt legislation for automobiles compares favorably with other interventions designed to decrease deaths and injuries on the road, such as legislation to control drinking and driving. Typically, such legislation is effective only in the short term. In contrast, the seat belt law thus far shows a stronger and more lasting shift in the reduction of serious and fatal car casualties. The post intervention decline in this variable is stronger than a control series that consists of the number of fatal and serious non‐car casualties. A more marginal reduction is found for non‐serious car casualties even though this drop in injuries is slightly stronger than a control category of nonserious non‐car casualties. The paper suggests also that the seat belt legislation may have had a short term effect on the number of fatal and serious accidents on weekend nights, the period of time during which alcohol‐related crashes are most likely to occur.The policy implications of this study suggest that with comparable compliance, such an intervention may similarly be effective in the United States and other Western countries which up to now have used primarily deterrence‐based approaches to reduce highway casualties.
Case Processing Times in Three Courts
Authors: LUSKIN MARY LEE , LUSKIN ROBERT C. 
Published: January 2008

The time it takes a court to process its cases, a critical aspect of court performance, varies widely from case to case, from court to court, and within a given court as the court and its environment change over time. The sources of this variation, however, have remained largely obscure.This paper examines the structural and case‐level influences on processing times in three criminal courts experiencing structural changes, including a number of administrative reforms designed to reduce processing times. We find both similarities and differences between courts, but in general both many structural arrangements and many case characteristics affect processing times, with some case characteristics having different effects under different structural arrangements, and some structural arrangements affecting different sorts of cases differently. We conclude with a discussion of implications for court management.
Regulatory Culture: A Theoretical Outline*
Authors: MEIDINGER ERROL 
Published: January 2008

Although recent scholarship on regulation has seen a significant increase in discussions of regulatory culture, little has been done to develop the theoretical implications of the concept. This article seeks to help focus discussions of regulatory culture by explicating the general nature of cultural analysis, relating it to traditional approaches to regulation, reviewing the sources of regulatory culture, and suggesting strategies for future research.SUMMARYCulture has become a central construct in recent studies of administrative regulation (e.g., Bell, 1985; Hawkins, 1984; Jasanoff, 1986; McGarity, 1985; Meidinger, 1985; Vogel, 1986). But the meaning and import of this development remain quite unclear. Culture has not traditionally played a significant role in regulatory discourse. Consequently, scholars and analysts picking up on the idea tend to use it in diffuse, inconsistent, and often simplistic ways.This paper is an effort to lend some focus to discussions of regulatory culture by developing a useful theoretical framework for comprehending it. That framework must be broad enough to encompass the complexities of regulatory activity, flexible enough to adapt to its continuous changes, and still focused enough to suggest particular lines of inquiry. In pursuing such a conception, this paper draws heavily on scholarship outside the substantive area of regulation, for culture has a long and instructive history as a primary construct in other fields of inquiry. At the same time, it attempts to tailor the concept of culture to regulatory arenas, and to offer examples from them where possible.
Judicial Reform and Rationalization: The Diffusion of Court Reform Policies Among the American States
Authors: SCHEB JOHN M. , MATHENY ALBERT R. 
Published: January 2008

Explaining the diffusion of judicial reform policies among the American states is an elusive task. Are such policies simply part of the larger policy process revealed in the comparative state policy literature? Or b court reform a policy arena unto itself, responding to factors uniquely legal or professional in nature? Our inquiry begins with Max Weber's sociology of law from which we adopt his concept of rationalization as a schema of policy development. According to Weber, the “rationalization” of legal institutions would accompany the advancement of capitalism in modernizing nations. Thus, we might expect specific judicial reform policies expressly aimed at rationalizing the structure and process of state court systems to be closely associated with each other and with commonly accepted indicators of economic development among the states. As part of our investigation, we relate court reforms to broader policy innovations among the states, drawing on earlier “diffusion of innovations” research.Our data indicate a strong connection between judicial reform and more general patterns of innovation diffusion among the states, but provide only modest support for Weber's assertions about the rationalization of legal systems under advancing capitalism. Three of the selected reforms cluster together and are largely explainable by indicators of economic development. Two other reforms do not fit this pattern, and their “behavior” requires additional discussion and research. Thus, the diffusion of judicial reform policy is partly accounted for by factors found in explanations of general policy innovations across states, but other, as yet unidentified, factors apparently influence certain aspects of judicial reform.The connection between Max Weber's legal sociology and policy development among the American states might at first blush seem remote or tenuous. However, this article attempts to use Weber's insights into modern legal systems to (1) examine a specific area of state policy making–judicial reform–and (2) establish a connection between policy development in the court reform area and the larger literature on general policy innovation in the American states. This inquiry is inspired by the lack of theoretical integration apparent in the literature on court reform, on the one hand, and the absence of empirical analyses connecting court reform data with “diffusion of innovation” policy studies, on the other.
Regeneration of Civil Society in Hungary: The Recodification of the Right of Assembly and Association
Authors: HALMAI GÁBOR 
Published: January 2008

Amid the stormy political events of 1988‐89, Hungary took a turn toward becoming a constitutional state and moved in the direction of re‐establishing the rule of law and having a real constitution.The process of establishing the rule of law began with the recodification, adopted in January 1989, of the right of assembly and association. This right must be understood in the context of the extremely fast paced regeneration of civil society. Analogous to what Habermas wrote about the emergence of civil publicity in Europe, at first it was nothing more than non‐political gatherings and associations, where one would spend one's leisure time. Later on, however ‐ similarly to the eighteenth century transformation of political publicity ‐ there was an increasing need for political meetings and demonstrations as well as for establishing trade and directly political unions.This development, of course, made it necessary to conceive of the right of assembly and association in a radically new manner. A conception not limiting these rights to politically neutral programs, festival marches, or to the possibility of setting up associations (e.g., for stamp collecting), but including the freedom to conduct antigovernment demonstrations, to establish parties, and to create coalitions.
Green Markets: Environmental Regulation by the Private Sector*
Authors: GRABOSKY P.N. 
Published: January 2008

The article begins with a review of recent trends in the devolution of state functions to nongovernment institutions, and discusses how private interests may be enlisted in furtherance of public policy. It then outlines a variety of institutions and instruments which might comprise a system of regulation for environmental protection, and suggests some of the forms of interaction between them.The focus then turns to commercial activity which can further the interests of environmental protection. It summarizes eight emerging trends in “green commerce” and concludes that in some settings, the constructive influence of commercial forces can exceed that wielded by government agencies.
From Both Sides Now: Informed Consent, Organ Transplantation, and Family‐Based Disclosure*
Authors: GROVER BONNIE KAE 
Published: January 2008

Drawing on the legal and social development of the right of individual patients to give informed consent to medical treatment, this article explores some implications of heroic life‐saving measures in medicine that are made possibly by unprecedented advances in medical technology. Talcing cardiac transplantation as its primary example, the article examines the broader effects, both short‐term and long‐term, on family members as well as on the patient of this and similar types of heroic treatment. The author then offers a novel legal theory: where the heroic measure holds the risk of serious or life threatening changes, not just for the patients themselves but for their intimately connected family members as well, those members ought to have a legal right to participate in the informed consent process. The author sketches the contours of such a right and defends it in the face of various objections that may be made to it.I've looked at life from both sides now from win and lose, and still somehow it's life's illusions I recall. I really don't know life at all.(“Both Sides Now,” on Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins, Electra Records 1972)