cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Indigents in the Federal Courts: The in Forma Pauperis Statute - Equality and Frivolity

The main provision of the modem federal in forma pauperis statute enables indigents to file civil actions in the federal courts without paying a filing fee. Thus, the federal courts are at least theoretically open to even the most impoverished litigants. The in forma pauperis statute, however, is conditional: a court may dismiss an in forma pauperis complaint "if satisfied that the action is frivolous." This nebulous condition has spurred considerable disagreement. This Article explores the restrictions and controls that district courts can legitimately place on unpaid actions. The ambiguous language and the unhelpful legislative history of the statute have created four problems for the courts. First, how should the courts define "frivolous" in section 1915(d)? Second, should the courts allow any financially eligible person to proceed in forma pauperis under section 1915(a), or should the courts also examine the merits of an action under section 1915(d) before granting in forma pauperis status? Third, should the courts require issuance and service of process whenever an in forma pauperis complaint is filed? Fourth, when should the courts allow an in forma pauperis plaintiff to amend a frivolous complaint? The last part of the Article explores the constitutional ramifications of treating in forma pauperis plaintiffs differently from paying plaintiffs.
Project financing versus corporate financing under asymmetric information

In recent years, financing through the creation of an independent project company or financing by non-recourse debt has become an important part of corporate decisions. Shah and Thakor (JET, 1987) argue that project financing can be optimal when asymmetric information exists between firms’ insiders and market participants. In contrast to that paper, we provide an asymmetric information argument for project financing without relying on corporate taxes, costly information production or an assumption that firms have the same means of return. In addition, the model generates new predictions regarding asset securitization.
Measuring the perceived effectiveness of decision support systems and their impact on performance

This study investigates decision support systems (DSS) by assessing the factors that enhance their perceived effectiveness and their impact on performance. This was achieved by using a simulation exercise with 652 senior graduate students who developed DSS and reported on the systems created. Our analysis shows that DSS users who perceive the system as effective correlate to improved company performance. However, investing significant human resources in developing a system does not necessarily guarantee enhanced performance. In addition, the study exemplifies how user traits can impact perceived effectiveness.
Price Stabilization as a Bonding Mechanism in New Equity Issues

Abstract Underwriters have an incentive to overstate investor interest in order to persuade some investors to purchase shares at a price in excess of their initial estimate of the fair value. We show that this incentive is eliminated when the underwriter commits to secondary market price stabilization. Destroying the underwriter's incentive to overstate interest reduces the total surplus captured by initial investors in initial public offerings. Further efficiency gains are associated with penalty bid systems that permit the underwriter to make the stabilization commitment selectively. Price stabilization can thus be viewed as a bonding mechanism that improves the efficiency of the primary equity market.
Reform from Below: Behavioral and Institutional Change in North Korea

Abstract The state is often conceptualized as playing an enabling role for economic development, providing public goods, such as the legal protection of property rights, with the political economy of reform conceived in terms of bargaining among elites or special interest groups. We document a case which turns this perspective on its head: efficiency-enhancing institutional and behavioral changes arising, not out of a conscious, top-down program of reform, but rather as unintended (and in some respects, unwanted) by-products of state failure. Responses from a survey of North Korean refugees demonstrate that the economy marketized in response to state failure with the onset of famine in the 1990s and subsequent reforms and retrenchments appear to have had remarkably little impact on at least some significant share of the population. There is strong evidence, however, of powerful social changes, including increasing inequality, corruption, and changed attitudes about the most effective pathways to higher social status and income. These assessments appear to be remarkably uniform across demographic groups. While the survey sample marginally over-weights demographic groups with less favorable assessments of the regime, even counterfactually re-calibrating the sample to match the underlying resident population suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the North Korean regime.
Team earnings forecasting

While brokerage houses use both teams of sell-side analysts and individual analysts to conduct earnings research, there is no empirical research examining whether teams and individuals differ with regard to their forecasting performance or purpose. We first examine the most-often researched dimension of forecasting performance, earnings forecast accuracy, and show that teams are less accurate than individual analysts in general and their own individual team members in particular. We conjecture that teams focus their efforts on an alternative dimension of forecasting performance, timeliness, and show that team forecasts are timelier than those of individual analysts in general and their own individual team members in particular. Consistent with the notion that teams trade-off forecast accuracy for timeliness to comply with a market research demand, we show that team forecast revisions are associated with larger market responses than those of individuals. Finally, we illuminate the nature of team assignments by documenting that the firms that teams follow are in greater financial distress and larger in size.
The Legal Profession as a Blue State: Reflections on Public Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Legal Ethics

Many conservative commentators view the legal profession as a Blue State—as a captive of the Democratic Party and political liberalism.1 They assert that most lawyers vote for Democratic presidential candidates.2 They attack the American Bar Association for supporting abortion rights and equal rights for lesbians and gays and argue that it gives preferred treatment to Democratic nominees to the federal courts.3 Many opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court on the ground that she lacks “‘the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.’”4 They create law schools
Excise Tax Setting in a Dynamic Space-time Framework:

This study develops a simple model for analyzing excise tax setting in a competitive framework. Specifically, the model predicts that tax rate competition will vary for different goods based on the relative ease of cross-border shopping. To test the model, this study utilizes a dynamic space-time panel econometric model to quantify the horizontal response function for cigarette, beer, and gasoline tax rates for US states from 1960 to 2007. The empirical findings support the model predictions. Only cigarette tax rates have a horizontal response function statistically different from zero.
The Efficiency of Summary Judgment

Summary judgment provides several efficiencies essential to a smoothly running litigation system. Perhaps the most important feature of summary judgment is the “settlement premium” set forth in this Essay. When a motion for summary judgment is denied, the nonmoving party achieves a form of premium that enables a case to settle for an additional amount. Put simply, the settlement value of a case increases when a motion for summary judgment is denied. Thus, denials of summary judgment up the ante in the litigation game. This dynamic is underappreciated by summary judgment critics who over-focus on grants of summary judgment. The summary judgment premium would disappear if a Rule 56 device was discouraged or eliminated and possesses additional positive features. The possible denial of the motion discourages weak or frivolous requests. The substantial cost of a summary judgment motion supplements the efficient deterrent value of the summary judgment premium. A party will be reluctant to file a Rule 56 motion if the risk of loss is unacceptable. Other efficiencies make summary judgment the single most useful pretrial device. Rule 56 efficiencies produce both clarification of the factual dispute and the legal issues presented. Without summary judgment a case would appear to be less certain, making settlement less likely. Summary judgment motions also help jump start the involvement of the trial judge, who until the motion might be the prototypical uninvolved “umpire,” a relatively passive participant in the litigation process and one awaiting a call to a more active role in the case. A similar “premium” should deter frivolous motions to dismiss. Once the motion to dismiss is denied, the plaintiff should demand a premium in the form of enhanced consideration if the case is settled.
The Law of Yards

Property law regimes have a significant impact on the ability of individuals to engage in freedom of expression. Some property rules advance freedom of expression, and other rules retard freedom of expression. This Article examines the inhibiting effects on expression of public land use regulations. The focus is on two types of aesthetic regulations: (1) landscape regulations, including weed ordinances, that regulate yards; and (2) architectural regulations that regulate the exterior appearance of houses. Such regulations sometimes go too far in curtailing a homeowner's freedom of expression. Property owners' expressive conduct should be recognized as “symbolic speech” under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court developed the symbolic speech doctrine in contexts other than land use, but the rationale for the doctrine supports its extension to aesthetically based land use regulations. The clearest case of protected speech is a homeowner's conduct that conveys a political message, such as a yard display that protests a decision made by a local government. Other conduct, however, that is nonpolitical in nature can convey a particularized message, and thus can merit First Amendment protection. Examples are a homeowner's decision to plant natural landscaping, motivated by ecological concerns, or to install a nativity scene at Christmas. A regulation that restricts an owner's protected speech is unconstitutional unless the government proves both that the regulation is narrowly tailored and that it protects a substantial public interest. If the public interest is solely based on the protection of aesthetic values, ordinarily it is not substantial enough to justify the restriction on speech. The government must come up with a plausible justification other than aesthetics to prevail. When the justification consists of an interest in addition to aesthetics, the balancing rules developed by the Supreme Court for symbolic speech should apply. If the regulation restricts expressive conduct, it may survive scrutiny only if it protects the community from conduct that causes significant economic or other non-aesthetic harm, while minimizing infringement on expression.
Bend It like Beckham and Real Women Have Curves: Constructing Identity in Multicultural Coming-of-Age Stories

This Article looks at the coming-of-age stories in two recent films, Bend It Like Beckham and Real Women Have Curves, as an avenue to explore the question of constructing identity. Both films, arising out of the filmmakers' experiences, aim to offer representations of particular individuals in minority groups that challenge dominant representations. They also offer aspirational visions of how such individuals might find a way to construct a hybrid identity that allows them to negotiate their place within the various groups that claim them and within the broader society. How, the article asks, do the heroines in these films find ways to construct their identity in context, and what sort of cultural, social, and institutional arrangements facilitate, on the one hand, and hinder, on the other, their capacity to do so? Cultural norms and practices concerning women are often at the core of what a particular community deems to be essential components of its culture that must be transmitted from one generation to the next. Thus, debates about women and culture and about cultural assimilation versus cultural survival at their core implicate children and efforts by families and communities to socialize children. The article title also intentionally refers to a second meaning of coming-of-age: coming to helpful understandings of how best to understand questions regarding the interplay between identity and culture and the dynamic between individual and group identity. Studying the coming-of-age stories of adolescents, on the threshold of adulthood, offers a chance to see how they construct a self from, as philosopher K. Anthony Appiah has put it, the "tool kit of options made available by our culture and society." The Article's approach to identity recognizes the tension between freedom and determination and the interplay of choice and constraint in the construction of identity. Another useful orienting idea is that "culture" is not monolithic, homogeneous, and static, but contested, fluid, and in a continual process of reinterpretation.
Tax liens: a novel application of asset pricing theory

Although relatively obscure, the market for distressed real estate tax liens exists in over 30 U.S. states, with a market size estimated to be around 20 billion dollars. While this niche asset class is relatively unknown to academics, internet advertising hypes tax liens to the populace as providing extraordinary returns. Not yet scientifically studied, this market provides a fertile and untouched arena for the application of asset pricing theory. Using insights from several areas of asset pricing, we formulate and test a pricing model for tax liens. The empirical evidence supports the pricing model, the (increasing) competitiveness of the tax lien market, and an unfair tax auction bidding mechanism for property owners that may provide extraordinary returns to investors, lending some credibility to the industry claims. We suggest avenues for extensions and further research.
Effects of law on corporate financing practices—international evidence from convertible bond issues

Abstract Firms can adjust their convertibles to be more debt-like or equity-like through several contract terms. In particular, by providing call protection, a convertible issuer can assure its convertible bondholders that it will not force them to become equity holders during the call protection period. The possibility of a forced conversion instituted by an early call should be more threatening to investors in an economy where local laws are biased against shareholders. I examine call protection terms in an international sample and find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that convertible bond design varies based on the features of local law.
Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Premium Puzzle

We offer an explanation for the forward premium puzzle in foreign exchange markets based upon investor overconfidence. In the model, overconfident individuals overreact to their information about future inflation, which causes greater overshooting in the forward rate than in the spot rate. Thus, when agents observe a signal of higher future inflation, the consequent rise in the forward premium predicts a subsequent downward correction of the spot rate. The model can explain the magnitude of the forward premium bias and several other stylized facts related to the joint behaviour of forward and spot exchange rates. Our approach is also consistent with the availability of profitable carry trade strategies.
Optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules

Welfare-maximizing monetary- and fiscal-policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices, money, and distortionary taxation. The Ramsey-optimal policy is used as a point of comparison. The main findings are: the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest-rate rule plays a minor role for welfare. It matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium. Optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output. Interest-rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses. The welfare gains from interest-rate smoothing are negligible. Optimal fiscal policy is passive. The optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the Ramsey-optimal policy.
Suicide, Concussions, and the NFL

The issue of concussions1 in football has risen to prominence in recent years, thanks in no small part to the efforts of intrepid investigative journalists at the New York Times.2 As media attention brought new interest to this topic, a variety of research institutions launched or accelerated efforts to understand the scientific aspects of brain injury.3 Concern about the long-term consequences of concussions has prompted notable rule changes and modifications, including greater “emphasis” on certain existing rules in college and professional football.4 Even at a lower level of competition, the link between concussions and football has prompted schools and leagues to change their
Visions of Public Education In Morse v. Frederick

The US Supreme Court held in Morse v. Frederick (2007) (the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case) that the First Amendment allows a public school principal to "restrict student speech at a school event, when that speech is reasonably viewed as promoting illegal drug use." The rule may be straightforward, but the reasoning that generated it is harder to follow. Supreme Court cases involving the free speech rights of public school students tend to accept two general premises. First, the constitutional right of free speech applies to students while they attend public schools. Second, the protection offered by the constitution may apply in a weaker form in schools than in other settings, if a different approach is mandated by educational necessity. This second premise means that the result in a given case will hinge on a Court's view of what a good education requires - which in turn hinges on a Court's view of what education is for. But unlike the earlier decisions, the majority opinion in Morse did not expressly link its legal discussion to a vision of the ideal public education. This article reviews the major Supreme Court cases involving the speech rights of public school students, with an eye toward identifying their beliefs about the proper purpose and methods of secondary education in a democracy. Beginning with the cases in the 1940's involving the rights of Jehovah's Witnesses to refrain from the Pledge of Allegiance, the Supreme Court typically aligns itself with one or another view of the ideal public education. When the Court believes that the purpose of education is to create a homogeneous populous with shared cultural values, it tends to affirm the authority of school officials to discipline nonconforming students. This occurred, for example, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), the decision upholding an expulsion of Jehovah's Witness children. When the Court believes that the purpose of education is to create autonomous citizens who use critical thinking skills to challenge orthodoxy, it tends to affirm the speech rights of students. The archetype of this type of case is West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which reversed Gobitis and announce a right against compelled speech. Morse differs from its predecessors in not acknowledging in any overt way its beliefs about the role of education. However, its decision indicates agreement with the homogenization principle of Gobitis.
CATALOG OF OBSERVED TANGENTS TO THE SPIRAL ARMS IN THE MILKY WAY GALAXY

From the Sun's location in the Galactic disk, one can use different arm tracers (CO, H I, thermal or ionized or relativistic electrons, masers, cold and hot dust, etc.) to locate a tangent to each spiral arm in the disk of the Milky Way. We present a master catalog of the astronomically observed tangents to the Galaxy's spiral arms, using different arm tracers from the literature. Some arm tracers can have slightly divergent results from several papers, so a mean value is taken?see the Appendix for CO, H II, and masers. The catalog of means currently consists of 63 mean tracer entries, spread over many arms (Carina, Crux-Centaurus, Norma, Perseus origin, near 3?kpc, Scutum, Sagittarius), stemming from 107 original arm tracer entries. Additionally, we updated and revised a previous statistical analysis of the angular offset and linear separation from the mid-arm for each different mean arm tracer. Given enough arm tracers, and summing and averaging over all four spiral arms, one could determine if arm tracers have separate and parallel lanes in the Milky Way. This statistical analysis allows a cross-cut of a Galactic spiral arm to be made, confirming a recent discovery of a linear separation between arm tracers. Here, from the mid-arm's CO to the inner edge's hot dust, the arm halfwidth is about 340?pc; doubling would yield a full arm width of 680?pc. We briefly compare these observations with the predictions of many spiral arm theories, notably the density wave theory.
Conscience in context: pharmacist rights and the eroding moral marketplace.

Our society has long esteemed the sanctity of conscience, and our legal system has reflected that esteem, effectively shielding the individual from state encroachment, especially in matters of religion. A rapidly expanding range of disputes, however, is not readily settled under the individual-versus-state paradigm; rather, the new battle lines are forming between consumer and provider, with both driven to live out the dictates of conscience in the marketplace. The legal community has been slow to adjust to this trend, presuming reflexively that resolutions are best reached by harnessing state power to defend some conception of individual conscience, as exemplified by pharmacists' well-publicized entry onto the center stage of our nation's ongoing culture war drama. One side invokes conscience to justify legislation that would empower pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions on moral grounds without the possibility of negative consequences; the other side invokes conscience on behalf of the consumer to justify legislation that would require all pharmacies to fill all valid prescriptions. Congress and the dozens of state legislatures to take up the issue have embraced the winner-take-all terms in which the combatants have framed the contest. This article asks us to step back from these two-dimensional terms of engagement and to contextualize the public relevance of conscience by outlining the contours of a marketplace where moral claims can operate and compete without invoking the trump of state power. Instead of making all pharmacies morally fungible via state edict, the market allows individual consciences to thrive through overlapping webs of morality-driven associations and allegiances, even while diametrically opposed consciences similarly thrive. The zero-sum contest over the reins of state power is replaced by a reinvigorated civil society, allowing the commercial sphere to reflect our moral pluralism.
Panel Composition and Voting on the U.S. Courts of Appeals over Time

This article investigates two issues unexplored in studies of the relationship between panel composition and voting on three-judge panels of the Courts of Appeals: how often will panel composition influence case outcomes, and how has the relationship between panel composition and panel voting changed over time? The author shows that while long stretches of single-party control of the presidency in the first half of the twentieth century often produced a high rate of panels with three judges from the same party, frequent turnover of White House control in the past half century has helped ensure that a majority of panels are composed of at least one judge from each party. The author also presents the first systematic longitudinal analysis of panel composition and judicial behavior, showing that the relationship between the two is a relatively recent phenomenon. These findings have important implications for understanding collegial behavior on the Courts of Appeals.
Platitudes about Product Stewardship in Torts: Continuing Drug Research and Education

This paper focuses on one emerging aspect of tort litigation against pharmaceutical manufacturers that, if it gained traction, portends a dramatic (and potentially counterproductive) expansion in the prescription drug industry's exposure to liability. A growing chorus of commentators would impose on pharmaceutical manufacturers a broader duty to test and educate (aspects of what they call an obligation of "product stewardship" or "informed choice"). This paper explains the serious flaws in such proposals, but it also suggests one novel basis for imposing liability (distribution restrictions) that might make some sense. Genuine product stewardship, at least if understood as an effort to make the most of a scarce resource, strikes me as far more defensible than the approaches suggested by other commentators.
Legal Theology: The Turn to Conceptualism in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Law

The nineteenth century was the age of legal science. Across the globe, numerous cultures began to think of their law in terms of an interlocking system of internally coherent rules. While the details differ, these movements shared the belief that numerous legal propositions were held together by a small number of core legal concepts, and that correct decisions could be determined via formal methods of legal deduction and analysis. This mode of legal thought gave increased importance to legal concepts and analytic categories. Duncan Kennedy has termed this mode of legal analysis Classical Legal Thought.This restructuring of legal analysis brought about changes in the understanding of what the law is and how it should be studied. In its American variant, the ascendance of Classical Legal Thought is usually associated with Christopher C. Langdell's tenure as dean of Harvard's law school. Langdell created the modern law school by shifting legal training away from apprenticeship and moving it to a university setting where students were trained as legal scholars. Underlying the Langdellian moment is the assumption that law is comprised of analytic concepts which can be apolitically applied through a series of deductions made from the core legal principal.
Capital Account Liberalization and Growth: Was Mr. Mahathir Right?

Much ink has been spilled over the connections between capital account liberalization and growth. One reason that previous studies have been inconclusive, we show, is their failure to account for the impact of crises on growth and for the capacity of controls to limit those disruptive output effects. Accounting for these influences, it appears that controls influence macroeconomic performance through two channels, directly (what we think of as their positive impact on resource allocation and efficiency) and indirectly (by limiting the disruptive effects of crises at home and abroad). Because these influences work in opposite directions, it is not surprising that previous studies, in failing to distinguish between them, have been unable to agree whether the effect of controls tilts one way or the other. And because vulnerability to crises varies across countries and with the structure and performance of the international financial system, it is not surprising that the effects of capital account liberalization on growth are contingent and context specific. We document these patterns using two entirely different data sets: a panel of historical data for 21 countries covering the period 1880–1997, and a wider panel for the post-1971 period like that employed in other recent studies. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. JEL CODE: F0; F3
Optimal reserves in financially closed economies

Abstract Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves differs from the measures often used in the literature. Second, under plausible calibrations the model is consistent with the rule of thumb that reserves should be close to three months of imports. Third, optimal linear rules can capture most of the welfare gains from optimal reserve management, but significantly differ from certainty equivalence. Fourth, policymakers should place more emphasis on how to use reserves in response to shocks than on the reserve target itself.
The legal-economic analysis of comparative civil procedure

The comparative analysis of civil procedure examines dispute-resolution systems from different jurisdictions, with an eye toward identitying symilarities and differences, enhancing the understanding of particular systems, encouraging law reform, and facilitating harmonization. To date, comparative civil procedure has not drawn extensively from the literature on the economic analysis of procedural rules and methods. Yet economics has much to offer the comparative proceduralist. This paper models the trade-off between substance and procedure, and places different procedural systems in the model space. Systems such as the United States, which are procedurally intensive, may fail to achieve the optimum trade-off because too many resources are allocated to the effort to arrive at a correct result. Systems such as France, which are procedurally streamlined, may err in the other direction. Some systems may be inefficient in both senses; for example, they may utilize costly procedures that do not increase the likelihood of a substantively accurate result. This paper provides a simple scheme for analyzing and comparing procedural systems across countries.
The Decline of the Socratic Method at Harvard

This article shows how the traditional "Socratic Method" approach to law school teaching has become rare at the very institution at which is is most closely associated, Harvard Law School. Based on interviews in 1997 with a dozen Harvard Law School professors, the paper shows how Harvard Law professors teach and considers why they teach the way they do. It concludes that the Socratic Method today is more myth than reality.
Pre-Service Teachers' Perceptions of Global Citizenship Education in the Social Studies Curriculum.

Schools in the United States are becoming increasingly multiculturally diverse, therefore making it imperative to identify a means to implement global citizenship effectively into the social studies curriculum. This qualitative case study sought to gain insight into the perceptions of pre-service teachers on global citizenship education in social studies. Twenty students were purposively selected for this study. Data from multiple sources, including open-ended semi-structured focus group interviews, classroom observations, discussion posts, and essay questions, were analyzed. To increase the verisimilitude of the study, the researchers bracketed themselves and used member checking and outside readers. The findings of this study indicated that global citizenship should be incorporated by teachers for students to become culturally sensitive and to gain an awareness of global issues. As global citizens, students should possess the tools and resources to advocate for social justice, unity, and equity. Their knowledge of historical and current events, viewed through critical and analytical lenses, would expose the unjust/just and unfavorable/favorable outcomes and activities. Hence, this equips students with the wisdom to form economic, political, social, and environmental decisions that will create a better world.
Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government

Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the ‘science comprehension thesis’ (SCT), which identifies defects in the public's knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the ‘identity-protective cognition thesis’ (ICT), which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in numeracy – a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information – did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized – and even less accurate – when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these findings.
Putting an End to an Unconstitutional Result: Equal Protection and Due Process Analyses of the Requirement that Female Immigrants Receive the Gardasil Vaccine Prior to Becoming Permanent Residents of the United States

This Article concerns the recent (August 2008) CDC-sponsored requirement that female immigrants to the United States receive the Gardasil vaccine prior to changing their residency status and, eventually, becoming naturalized citizens. The Article provides a background of the Gardasil vaccine including its usage and development, highlights the vaccine's potential side-effects and other problems, and discusses potential social, economic, and constitutional issues raised by the Gardasil vaccine requirement in the immigration context. Finally, the Article argues that the requirement that female immigrants receive the Gardasil vaccine should be suspended.
Lessons for Religious Liberty Litigation from Kentucky

Most litigation in the religious liberty arena has focused on the Establishment Clause. At its heart, however, such litigation is about discrimination, and many of the most prominent recent cases concern ostracism of nonbelievers. Because the legal theory does not suit the harm, judicial interpretation of the Establishment Clause is inconsistent and unpredictable. Moreover, recent turnover on the Supreme Court has the potential to lead to a more permissive legal standard when it comes to the government itself conveying religious speech and symbolism. This creates a daunting legal landscape for nonbelievers and other increasingly ostracized groups seeking to challenge the divisive injection of God into government in the wake of 9/11 and in the age of terrorism. As a solution, nonbelievers and others seeking to utilize courts to protect the church-state divide should raise new constitutional challenges to government-sponsored religion, such as litigating under the Equal Protection Clause or the Religion Test Clause. New avenues need to be hewn to avoid inconsistent and additional regressive Establishment Clause jurisprudence.
State Building as a Source of Islamic Political Organization

Previous research on political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa has been limited in providing a generalizable theory of its origins and systematically account for the cross-national variation in the prevalence of Islamic movements. Following a state-centered approach, this study argues that state-building activities are a primary origin of Islamic movements. Regimes adopt religious symbolism and functions that legitimate the role of Islam in the public sphere. State incorporation of religion thus creates Islam as a frame for political action, with increased access to mobilizing resources and better able to withstand repression and political exclusion. To provide an explicit and systematic test of cross-national variation, data on 170 political and militant organizations across the region are analyzed. Results indicate that state incorporation of religion is a crucial factor in the religiosity of movement organizations. Mixed effects of political exclusion and repression are found. No support is found for theories of economic grievances or foreign influence as causes of Islamic mobilization. In sum, analysis suggests that a state-centered perspective is the most fitting account of political Islam.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie: California's Section 11135 Fails to Provide Plaintiffs Relief in Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission

The article focuses on the case Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which dealt with the issue of transportation inequality and the disproportionate funding practice of metropolitan transportation agencies. Information is provided on funding allocation practices and the discriminatory patterns in transportation in the U.S. Part I discusses the factual background of Darensburg and relevant federal and state law concerning claims of both intentional and disparate-impact discrimination. Part II examines disparate-impact jurisprudence in the context of the unequal distribution of municipal services as background to the complexity of the issues presented in Darensburg. Part III analyzes the Darensburg opinion in light of that background and shows that the burden-of-proof issues faced by plaintiffs are illustrative of the lack of effective guidance to plaintiffs seeking relief from institutional disparities.
Targeted, Direct-Mail Solicitation: Shapero v. Kentucky Bar Association Under Attack

Attorneys have been reluctant to take part in advertising and solicitation since the United States Supreme Court specifically allowed their use sixteen years ago. Of those attorneys who have advertised or solicited, most have used the traditional forms of advertising such as television, radio, and print media. Attorneys have been particularly averse to direct-mail solicitation, which may be the most effective form of advertisement. Prior to 1988, the scarcity of attorney solicitation could be explained by the unsettled nature of the governing law. In that year, however, the Supreme Court finally clarified the law regarding targeted, direct mail solicitation by attorneys, or so it appeared. In Shapero v. Kentucky Bar Ass'n, the Supreme Court held that a state may not "categorically prohibit" targeted, direct-mail solicitation by lawyers. Over the last two years, state courts have begun to erode the constitutional protection afforded targeted, direct-mail solicitation in Shapero. In particular, three state supreme courts have held that targeted, direct-mail solicitation of victims or their families immediately after an accident does not deserve First Amendment protection. In their zeal to punish what they perceive as distasteful conduct, these state courts have essentially ignored the plain meaning of Shapero and have instead concluded that the vulnerability of certain potential clients justifies a partial ban on targeted, direct-mail solicitation. Disturbingly, those who oppose granting First Amendment protection to direct-mail solicitation are beginning to rely upon these cases for precedent. If this trend continues, the First Amendment protection that the Shapero Court intended to grant to targeted, direct-mail solicitation by attorneys will vanish. Section II of this Article explores the impact that the First Amendment has had on the history of attorney advertising and solicitation, with particular emphasis on its impact on direct-mail solicitation. Section III analyzes the state court decisions that have limited this First Amendment protection. Finally, Section IV of this Article explains why these state court decisions are inconsistent with Shapero and therefore should not be followed.
Seller Over-Pricing and Listing Contract Length: The Effects of Endogenous Listing Contracts on Housing Markets

This paper examines how seller pricing decisions influence listing contract length and how these decisions affect price and liquidity in housing markets. Because list price affects broker effort required to sell the property, brokers respond to seller overpricing by increasing the negotiated listing contract length. At the same time, sellers respond to longer listing contracts by adjusting their list price strategy. Both list price and length of marketing time affect broker sales effort and therefore a property’s realized selling price and liquidity. Analysis of house transaction data from Virginia indicates that greater over-pricing by sellers prompts brokers to pursue longer listing contracts, which subsequently lengthen marketing time but increase selling price. The results reveal a novel transmission mechanism from higher list price (which induces longer contracts) to selling price and liquidity.
Sanctions and Civil Conflict

Using a formal general equilibrium framework, this paper analyses how sanctions imposed on the contestants in civil conflict affect the welfare of these contestants and the allocation of resources to conflict. It is shown that weak sanctions can hurt the contestant they are supposed to help, while strong sanctions augment the expected welfare of their intended beneficiaries. Moreover, sanctions are more likely to be successful if the contestant who is subject to sanctions can expect to derive a positive income in case of compliance. The likelihood of success rises as this income increases.
Love or Money? The Effects of Owner Motivation in the California Wine Industry

Models that assume only consumer tastes determine the characteristics of supply are restrictive; producers can gain utility from aspects of production and pay for deviating from demand by accepting lower financial returns. We model and measure motivations of California winery owners, and analyze their effects on quality and price. We find utility–maximizers are more likely to produce high quality and set higher quality–adjusted prices. Profit–oriented owners are less likely to produce high quality wines. These results suggest that the presence of hobbyists who enjoy producing high quality may lower financial returns in the segment and discourage profit–maximizers from locating there.
Executive Discretion, Judicial Decision Making, and Separation of Powers in the United States

Existing work on the U.S. separation of powers typically views the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional and statutory disputes. By contrast, much comparative work explicitly recognizes the role of executives in enforcing and implementing court decisions. Drawing on that work, this study relaxes the assumption that executives must comply with Supreme Court rulings, and instead allows the propensity for executive compliance to depend upon indirect enforcement by the public. We develop a simple model of Supreme Court decision making in the presence of executive discretion over compliance and demonstrate that such discretion can restrict substantially the Court’s decision making. Using data collected for the Warren and Burger courts, we find evidence consistent with the argument that the Supreme Court’s ability to constrain exective descretion depends critically upon the public.
A Positive Programme for Laissez-Faire Capitalism

We argue in this paper that the last best hope for economic prosperity is a system based on private property rights, capitalism and limited government. One of the reasons for this claim is that, in such a system, in contrast to one in which the state plays a large role, when mistakes are made, those responsible for them automatically tend to go bankrupt; those who remain in operation at any given time have thus passed a stringent market test. The same cannot be said for government bureaucracies, FEMA being only one recent example. We apply this insight to examples ranging widely over the economy, and including money, infrastructure, welfare and poverty, crimes, labour relations and the environment, where we consider air pollution, forests, sanitation, species extinction and renewable and non-renewable resources. l Laissez-faire capitalism
A Probability Model of Credibility: Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Deterrence Systems

Credibility plays a central role in the classical theory of strategic nuclear deterrence, as well as in many types of social and international relations. This article presents probability models of credibility for survival-retaliation, Wohlstetter-type, and generalized “chain” deterrent threats. Both scenario and systems analysis of these models indicate that (1) only moderate credibility occurs even when very high levels of performance are insured in actions necessary to implement the threat; (2) variations in performance levels induce a destabilizing, more than proportional, amplified variation on overall credibility; and (3) this hyperweakening effect is largest in complex threats. In sum, intuitive estimation of deterrence credibility is severely unreliable, since credibility is weaker than the weakest link in a deterring chain of events. The models are extended and generalized to calculate the credibility of complex systems of deterrent threats, such as the “strategic nuclear triads” deployed by the ...
The Source of the Problem of Sources: The First Amendment Fails the Fourth Estate

It is a great honor to have this article appear in this Symposium, Are Journalists Privileged?, because of the identity of the principal participants. Anthony Lewis almost singlehandedly invented the genre of journalism about law;1 Victor Kovner has been a pioneer in fashioning the law=s protection of journalism and journalists; Max Frankel, prize-winning reporter and editor at the New York Times, supplied the professional understanding and rationale for why journalism needs and is entitled to claim the law=s protection.2 There are many intersections of law and journalism—the modern era of defamation law and its becoming subjected to First Amendment restraints,3 questions of media ownership and concentration of power,4 issues of protection of media content especially in this digital age,5 and occasionally even questions of prior restraint and the press—the crucible which gave rise to the underpinnings of the First Amendment originally.6 The intersecting issue that is the subject of this Symposium has bedeviled law and journalism for a generation. Fifty years ago this year, the first prominent decision attempting to reconcile the First Amendment claim of a right to protect confidential sources with the judicial system=s demand to discover and disclose all legally relevant evidence was handed down in the well-known case of Garland v. Torre.7 In that case, then-Circuit Judge Potter Stewart fashioned a careful balancing approach to reconcile these conflicting demands in a way which the intervening years have not necessarily much improved.