cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Departing Ways: Uniformity, Disparity and Cooperation in Federal Drug Sentences

The current "war on drugs" began in the 1980s, when Congress passed stiff mandatory minimum drug sentences and created the federal Sentencing Guidelines. Since then, the average federal drug sentence has more than doubled and the number of federal prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses has grown by more than 400%. And despite frequent criticism of these drug sentences, drug war policy-makers remain devoted to incarceration. Yet prosecutors-the front-line soldiers in this war-may be less devoted to stiff prison sentences than the policy-makers in Washington. Indeed, in many federal prosecutors' offices, uniformity (at least the kind of uniformity envisioned by the federal Sentencing Guidelines) is a myth. In some federal districts, the drug defendant who is given the sentence mandated by the Guidelines is the exception rather than the rule. This Article will first summarize the extent to which drug sentences fall below the mandatory minimums established by statute and outside the ranges established by the Sentencing Guidelines. The argument from these statistics will be two-fold. First, the disparity in federal drug sentences (both within districts and across districts) demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of the federal drug sentencing system. Second, and somewhat inconsistently, the Article will argue for more disparity. In particular, I will argue that-at least until Congress fixes the dysfunctional system of mandatory minimums and related Guidelines- federal prosecutors should give more defendants the opportunity to receive a reduced sentence by cooperating with the authorities.
Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia

Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia
IFRS monopoly: the Pied Piper of financial reporting

The links among better financial reporting, better markets, and better economy and society are arguable, but they remain poorly understood. The addition of IFRS to the set of available alternatives may improve these linkages, but granting them monopoly status does not. Claims that the universal adoption of IFRS as a single set of high-quality principles-based standards will yield global comparability are overblown. Accounting standards operate less like a uniform system of weights and measures and more like a single currency, in that both play multiple roles in modern economies. An IFRS monopoly is evolutionarily disadvantageous in that it eliminates the opportunity to compare alternative practices and learn from them. It also disallows the tailoring of financial reporting to local variations in economic, business, commercial, legal, auditing, regulatory and governance conditions across the globe. Empirical studies of statistical covariation across financial reports produced by IFRS have yielded mixed res...
Free Trade or Sustainable Development? An Analysis of the WTO Appellate Body's Shift to a More Balanced Approach to Trade Liberalization

This essay examines the evolution of the Article XX General Exceptions provision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT 1994”) from its drafting history in 1946, to increasingly narrow interpretations by the GATT panels, and ultimately to the more expansive interpretations by the World Trade Organization Appellate Body (“Appellate Body”) in United States-Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline (“Reformulated Gasoline”) and United States-Import Prohibition of Certain Shrimp and Shrimp Products (“Shrimp-Turtle”) in 1996 and 1998. Interpretation of Article XX by the Appellate Body indicates that the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) has taken the policies and interests that are outside the realm of trade liberalization, such as the environment, much more seriously than its GATT predecessor. In its decisions, the Appellate Body has recognized that it is no longer possible for the WTO to uphold the free trade goals of the GATT 1994, such as promoting market access, above all other goals and concerns - e.g., health, the environment, and the objectives of sustainable development. This essay maintains that although the Appellate Body held in Reformulated Gasoline and Shrimp-Turtle that the environmental measures at issue were not justified under Article XX, the final holding of the Appellate Body should not overshadow the positive and important implications of its analysis for the future of Article XX. After narrow interpretation by GATT panels, the Appellate Body has expanded the scope of Article XX through the application of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. As a result, it is now within the realm of possibility that a governmental measure, otherwise inconsistent with a substantive provision of the GATT 1994, can be justified as an Article XX exception.This essay is divided into three parts. Part I reviews the drafting history of Article XX of the GATT 1994 and the important role the United States played in that process. Part II traces the evolution of Article XX by looking at selected GATT panel and Appellate Body decisions that interpret Article XX exceptions both under the GATT 1947 panel procedure and the current WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (“DSU”). The analysis is limited to the discussions of Article XX in each decision. Part III concludes by briefly addressing the growing importance of Article XX exceptions within the framework of the WTO Agreement and the unique and increasingly important role of the Appellate Body.
Reality's Bite

The realities of the workplace have been captured by years of socio-scientific, industrial organizational, and other psychological research. Human behavior and thought, interpersonal dynamics, and organizational behavior, with all of their nuances and fine points, are now better understood than they have ever been before, but unless they are used to inform and buttress the rules of law and interpretations promulgated by courts, Title VII’s ability to successfully regulate the workplace to rid it of discrimination will be threatened. This article expands upon that premise, lamenting judges, and specifically justices having eschewed available research and other insights into workplace realities, in favor of their own sense of workplace dynamics, tendencies, and trends. Further, this article observes an interesting asymmetry to how and when so-called “real-world” considerations have been taken into account by the Supreme Court: turning a blind eye to workplace realities that might aid in crafting legal standards and interpretations that do not render legal recourse practically inaccessible to plaintiffs, while overplaying workplace realities and reality-based concerns like those about litigation floodgates when it comes to defendant-friendly holdings and constructions. More balance and transparency is needed when courts weigh the policy considerations that underlie a given decision, and these considerations should be informed, wherever possible, by legitimate sources, and not by caricaturish and monolithic premises too often employed by the judiciary.
SECURING THE CARE OF CHILDREN IN DIVERSE FAMILIES: BUILDING ON TRENDS IN GUARDIANSHIP REFORM

The issue of childcare has been widely discussed and hotly debated in recent years. Discussions about mothers unequally burdened with childcare and fathers needing to take greater responsibility proliferate in magazine articles and on television shows. Searching deeper into this societal dialogue on child care reveals that the focus is on childcare within the normative nuclear family: a biological or adoptive family with a mother, a father, and a child. The needs of single parents living alone with their children or in diverse family forms are often not mentioned in the conversation. Yet, single parents have at least as much, if not more of a need to share their childcare duties with another adult. The notion that childcare can and should be shared within the normative family is represented in the legal concept of joint guardianship arising from natural law principles. Joint guardianship is a trust relationship created and recognized by law in which adults share the authority to make decisions for a ward. Biological or adoptive parents are the joint guardians of their children, and biological parents are referred to as natural guardians. In our national conversation about shared childcare, we do not acknowledge that while joint guardianship plays a critical role in facilitating shared childcare in the normative nuclear family, it impedes shared responsibilities in single-parent families where one parent is not sufficiently involved in the child's life to serve as the joint guardian. This Article proposes that a single parent, who cannot rely on the other legal parent to take responsibility for their child, be permitted to share joint guardianship rights with another adult. I term this proposal "concurrent guardianship." I use the term because it expresses the coterminous nature of the authority shared by the parent and guardian for a child in the new form of guardianship that I propose.
Optimality of the Friedman Rule in an Overlapping Generations Model with Spatial Separation

Recent models with spatial separation and limited communication suggest that the Friedman rule may not be optimal. This is important in light of the disparity between theory and practice concerning optimal monetary policy. We take a close look at these models and show that intergenerational transfers are key to the suboptimality of the Friedman rule. The Friedman rule is a necessary condition for achieving the efficient allocation in equilibrium. We also show that the Friedman rule is chosen whenever agents can implement mutually beneficial arrangements.
Manipulation in the VIX

At the settlement time of the VIX Volatility Index, volume spikes on SP editorial decision June 19, 2017 by Editor Robin Greenwood.
WELFARE PAYMENTS AND CRIME

Abstract Analysis of daily reported incidents of major crimes in twelve U.S. cities reveals an increase in crime over the course of monthly welfare payment cycles. This increase reflects an increase in crimes that are likely to have a direct financial motivation as opposed to other kinds of crime. Temporal patterns in crime are observed in jurisdictions in which disbursements are focused at the beginning of monthly welfare payment cycles and not in jurisdictions in which disbursements are relatively more staggered. These findings indicate that welfare beneficiaries consume welfare-related income quickly and then attempt to supplement it with criminal income.
For Jack, Man of the Book

It seems a little strange to be composing this tribute to my great friend and mentor Jack Hiller on a fancy macbook computer. Jack famously eschewed computers in favor of the hunt-and-peck system on an old typewriter. He could churn out letters (and God help you if you were on the receiving end of one in which a grievance was outlined in meticulous and lawyerly detail), articles, and class notes with speed and acuity. And what a wonderful writer Jack was. Some of his talent with the written word was no doubt innate, but it was also honed throughout his lifetime by his love of books. To coopt a phrase used to describe those whose religious beliefs and practices are grounded in a written text — that is, “people of the book,” — it seems to me that perhaps the best way to describe Jack is as a “man of the book.” As a reader, as a writer, and as an editor, Jack spent his life in the pursuit of academic excellence as manifested in the written word.
The real effects of share repurchases

Abstract We employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the real effects of share repurchases on other firm outcomes. The probability of share repurchases that increase earnings per share (EPS) is sharply higher for firms that would have just missed the EPS forecast in the absence of the repurchase, when compared with firms that “just beat” the EPS forecast. We use this discontinuity to show that EPS-motivated repurchases are associated with reductions in employment and investment, and a decrease in cash holdings. Our evidence suggests that managers are willing to trade off investments and employment for stock repurchases that allow them to meet analyst EPS forecasts.
The Reach of the Realm

In The Realm of Criminal Law, Antony Duff argues that the criminal law’s realm is bounded by territory. This is because a polity decides what it cares about in crafting its civic home, and it extends its rules and hospitality to guests (non-citizens). I question whether the most normatively attractive conception of a Duffian polity would be bounded by territory, or whether it would exercise far more extensive jurisdiction over its citizens wherever in the world they may be (active personality) and over harm to its citizens/interests wherever in the world the attacks occur (passive personality).
Civil Rights in a Desegregating America

The law largely has overlooked one of the most important sociological developments of the last half-century: a sharp decline in residential segregation. In 1970, 80% of African Americans would have had to switch neighborhoods for blacks to be spread evenly across the typical metropolitan area. By 2010, this proportion was down to 55%, and was continuing to fall. Bringing this striking trend (and its causes) to the attention of the legal literature is my initial aim in this Article.My more fundamental goal, though, is to explore what desegregation means for the three bodies of civil rights law — housing discrimination, vote dilution, and school segregation — to which it is tied most closely. I first explain how all three bodies historically relied on segregation. Its perpetuation by housing practices led to disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act. It meant that minority groups were “geographically compact,” as required by the Voting Rights Act. And it contributed to the racially separated schools from which segregative intent was inferred in Brown and its progeny.I then argue that all of these doctrines are disrupted by desegregation. Fair Housing Act plaintiffs cannot win certain disparate impact suits if residential patterns are stably integrated. Nor can claimants under the Voting Rights Act satisfy the statute’s geographic compactness requirement. And desegregating homes usually result in desegregating schools, which in turn make illicit intent difficult to infer.Lastly, I offer some tentative thoughts about civil rights law in a less racially separated America. I am most optimistic about the Fair Housing Act. “Integrated and balanced living patterns” are among the statute’s aspirations, and it increasingly is achieving them. Conversely, I am most pessimistic about the Voting Rights Act. One of its objectives is minority representation, which is threatened when minorities are politically distinctive but spatially dispersed. And a mixed verdict seems in order for school desegregation law. Rising residential integration eventually should produce rising school integration. But it has not done so yet, and even when it does, this improvement may not reach schools’ other racial imbalances.
SFAS No. 123 Disclosures and Discounted Cash Flow Valuation

One of the cornerstones of financial statement analysis is the discounted cash flow valuation. Despite the broad use of this valuation technique, and the economic importance of employee stock options to firm values, there is little guidance on how employee stock options should be incorporated in a valuation. This paper provides a comprehensive approach to doing so, including consideration of the income tax implications of option exercises, the simultaneity of equity and option valuation, and the use of the disclosures that were mandated recently by Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123. The paper provides a comprehensive example using Microsoft's fiscal 1997 financial statements and employee stock option disclosure. This paper should be of interest to academics and practitioners involved in corporate valuation and financial statement analysis.
Does the raising IQ-raising g distinction explain the fadeout effect?

Abstract Previous investigations into raising IQ show that after an intervention ends, the effects fade away. This paper is an attempt to understand one possible reason for this fadeout; the idea that the effects fade because they were not to the underlying construct g . A large (N = 985) randomized controlled trial is re-analyzed to investigate whether the intervention, which began at birth and lasted for the first three years of the children's life, raised the underlying cognitive factor of IQ tests. This was done under strict measurement invariance. The intervention indeed raised the g factor at age three. No effects were seen at follow-up assessments at ages five and eight after the intervention ended. Therefore, the raising IQ/raising g distinction is insufficient as an explanation for the fadeout effect, as changes to the environment can improve g and still fade.
Making Sense of Whistle-Blowing's Antecedents: Learning from Research on Identity and Ethics Programs

Despite a significant increase in whistle-blowing practices in work organizations, we know little about what differentiates whistle-blowers from those who observe a wrongdoing but chose not to report it. In this review article, we first highlight the arenas in which research on whistle-blowing has produced inconsistent results and those in which the findings have been consistent. Second, we propose that the adoption of an identity approach will help clarify the inconsistent findings and extend prior work on individual-level motives behind whistle-blowing. Third, we argue that the integration of the whistle-blowing research with that on ethics programs will aid in systematically expanding our understanding of the situational antecedents of whistle-blowing. We conclude our review by discussing new theoretical and methodological arenas of research in the domain of whistle-blowing.
Spirituality and Leadership: An Empirical Review of Definitions, Distinctions, and Embedded Assumptions

Spirituality and its relationship to workplace leadership is a compelling issue for management practitioners and researchers. The field of study is still in its infancy and as such is marked by differences in definitions and other basic characteristics. Much of what has been written on this subject has appeared in general, rather than academic publications and consequently may lack rigor. The purpose of this study is to analyze known academic articles for how they characterize workplace spirituality, explore the nexus between spirituality and leadership, and discover essential factors and conditions for promoting a theory of spiritual leadership within the context of the workplace. An emergent process was used to identify and validate eight areas of difference and/or distinction in the workplace spirituality literature: 1.) definition, 2.) connected to religion, 3.) marked by epiphany, 4.) teachable, 5.) individual development, 6.) measurable, 7.) profitable/productive, and 8.) nature of the phenomenon. Eighty-seven scholarly articles were coded for each of these areas. Findings conclude that most researchers couple spirituality and religion and that most either have found, or hypothesize a correlation between spirituality and productivity. The emergent categories offer provocative new avenues for the development of leadership theory.
Kennedy, King, Shuttlesworth and Walker: The Events Leading to the Introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

On April 1, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was firmly opposed to the introduction of a civil rights bill. Seven weeks later, on May 20, he directed the DOJ to draft a bill. This article discusses the direct action campaign in Birmingham Alabama that led President Kennedy to change his mind. That campaign, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in association with Rev. Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth and Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, was a turning point in American legal and social history.
Why Do Employers Retrain At‐Risk Workers? The Role of Social Capital

Why are some employers willing to retrain workers who are at risk of layoff for new jobs in their organization, whereas others "churn" their workforce through layoffs and outside hiring? The question seems central to understanding why some employers and some jobs are "good," whereas others are not and, more generally, for understanding employment security. The arguments herein use national probability data to examine this question and find that the retraining option is associated with preserving the social capital among current employees. Employers who make greater use of work systems that rely on social capital are more likely to retrain their workers. Alternative explanations—that retraining is an employee benefit associated with employee-friendly policies or is part of overall strategy to invest in training—receive no support. These results extend our understanding of the role that social capital can play in organizations. They also suggest that being a "good" employer may have a great deal to do with other choices about systems of work organization.
Conscience Wars: Complicity-Based Conscience Claims in Religion and Politics

Persons of faith are now seeking religious exemptions from laws concerning sex, reproduction, and marriage on the ground that the law makes the objector complicit in the assertedly sinful conduct of others. We term claims of this kind, which were at issue in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, complicity-based conscience claims. Complicity-based conscience claims differ in form and in social logic from the claims featured in the free exercise cases that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) invokes. The distinctive features of complicity-based conscience claims matter, not because they make the claim for religious exemption any less authentic or sincere, but rather because accommodating claims of this kind has the potential to inflict material and dignitary harms on other citizens. Complicity claims focus on the conduct of others outside the faith community. Their accommodation therefore has potential to harm those whom the claimants view as sinning. Today complicity claims are asserted by growing numbers of Americans about contentious “culture war” issues. This dynamic amplifies the effects of accommodation. Faith claims that concern questions in democratic contest will escalate in number, and accommodation of the claims will be fraught with significance, not only for the claimants, but also for those whose conduct the claimants condemn. Some urge accommodation in the hopes of peaceful settlement, yet, as we show, complicity claims can provide an avenue to extend, rather than settle, conflict. We highlight the distinctive form and social logic of complicity-based conscience claims so that those debating accommodation do so with the impact on third parties fully in view. We show how concern about the third-party impact of accommodation structured the Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby and demonstrate how this concern is an integral part of RFRA’s compelling interest and narrow tailoring inquiries. At issue is not only whether but how complicity claims
Red Tape and Public Employees: Does Perceived Rule Dysfunction Alienate Managers?

This study explores the relationship between organizational red tape and work alienation. While bureaucratic controls have long been considered sources of worker detachment, the relationship between red tape and managerial alienation has not been explicitly tested. When managers encounter rules, regulations, or procedures that seem pointless yet burdensome, these encounters may simultaneously trigger the key psychological ingredients of alienation - powerlessness and meaninglessness. These in turn are expected to reduce organizational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction, alienation indicators used in this study. To test these expectations, the study uses data from the National Administrative Studies Project (NASP-II). NASP-II surveyed managers in state health and human service agencies, producing a response rate of approximately 53 percent. Statistical analyses indicate that perceived personnel red tape is a consistently negative and statistically significant influence in all alienation models. Perceived organizational red tape is statistically significant and negative in all but the job involvement model. Other bureaucratic control mechanisms included in the models also appear to be sources of alienation, including centralization and technology routineness. However, formalization appears to be a mitigating, not exacerbating, influence on alienation. Considered together, these results suggest that red tape and other forms of bureaucratic control have adverse effects on the psychological attachment felt by public managers to their workplace.
THE KEPLER CATALOG OF STELLAR FLARES

A homogeneous search for stellar flares has been performed using every available Kepler light curve. An iterative light curve de-trending approach was used to filter out both astrophysical and systematic variability to detect flares. The flare recovery completeness has also been computed throughout each light curve using artificial flare injection tests, and the tools for this work have been made publicly available. The final sample contains 851,168 candidate flare events recovered above the 68% completeness threshold, which were detected from 4041 stars, or 1.9% of the stars in the Kepler database. The average flare energy detected is ~$10^{35}$ erg. The net fraction of flare stars increases with $g-i$ color, or decreasing stellar mass. For stars in this sample with previously measured rotation periods, the total relative flare luminosity is compared to the Rossby number. A tentative detection of flare activity saturation for low-mass stars with rapid rotation below a Rossby number of ~0.03 is found. A power law decay in flare activity with Rossby number is found with a slope of -1, shallower than typical measurements for X-ray activity decay with Rossby number.
New models for measuring the R&D performance and identifying the productivity of public research institutes

Research evaluation of public institutes is important for measuring the performance of the science sector and improving the cost effectiveness and efficiency of public resource allocation. The purpose of this article is to construct a means of classifying publicly-funded R&D institutions and their performance (high or low). The main findings are two research performance functions, created using discriminant analysis with direct and Wilks methods, which have been successfully applied to 200 public research institutes belonging to the Italian National Research Council. The large number of indicators used within the models creates a macro index that produce, as output, the research performance score. The data analysed is from the 2001 period. The results show that 22.5% of public labs fall into the ‘high performance institute’ bracket and that they have a site larger than ‘low performance institutes’. The models are useful tools for decision making within the research bodies and for reducing X-inefficiency.
The Supreme Court in Bondage: Constitutional Stare Decisis, Legal Formalism, and the Future of Unenumerated Rights

This essay advances a formalist conception of constitutional stare decisis. I shall argue that instrumentalist accounts of precedent are inherently unsatisfying and that the Supreme Court should abandon adherence to the doctrine that it is free to overrule its own prior decisions. These moves are embedded in a larger theoretical framework - a revival of formalist ideas in legal theory that I shall call "neoformalism" to distinguish my view from the so-called "formalism" caricatured by the legal realists (and from some other views that are called "formalist"). In Part II, The Critique of Unenumerated Constitutional Rights, we set the stage by briefly recalling why the unenumerated rights precedents are under theoretical (and political) siege. Then, in Part III, Neoformalism, Stare Decisis, and the Rule of Law, we examine the jurisprudential roots of a formalist revival that would create theoretical space for the idea that the Supreme Court should regard itself as bound by precedent. In Part IV, A Neoformalist Conception of Constitutional Stare Decisis, that theoretical framework is deployed to develop the outline of a neoformalist theory of constitutional stare decisis. This conception is brought down to earth in Part V, which answers the question posed by its title: Does the Neoformalist Conception of Constitutional Stare Decisis Support Contemporary Unenumerated Rights Jurisprudence? We wrap it all up in Part VI, Unenumerated Rights and the Future of Constitutional Doctrine.
Airplanes and Comparative Advantage

Abstract Airplanes are a fast but expensive means of shipping goods, a fact which has implications for comparative advantage. The paper develops a Ricardian model with a continuum of goods which vary by weight and hence transport cost. Comparative advantage depends on relative air and surface transport costs across countries and goods, as well as stochastic productivity. A key testable implication is that the U.S. should import heavier goods from nearby countries, and lighter goods from faraway counties. This implication is tested using detailed data on U.S. imports from 1990 to 2003. Looking across goods the U.S. imports, nearby exporters have lower market share in goods that the rest of the world ships by air. Looking across exporters for individual goods, distance from the US is associated with much higher import unit values. These effects are large, which establish that the model identifies an important influence on specialization and trade.
Spatial econometric panel data model specification: A Bayesian approach

Abstract Taking a Bayesian perspective on model uncertainty for static panel data models proposed in the spatial econometrics literature considerably simplifies the task of selecting an appropriate model. A wide variety of alternative specifications that include various combinations of spatial dependence in lagged values of the dependent variable, spatial lags of the explanatory variables, as well as dependence in the model disturbances have been the focus of a literature on various statistical tests for distinguishing between these numerous specifications. A Bayesian model uncertainty argument is advanced that logically implies we can simplify this task by focusing on only two model specifications. One of these, labeled the spatial Durbin model (SDM) implies global spatial spillovers , while the second, labeled a spatial Durbin error model (SDEM) leads to local spatial spillovers . A Bayesian approach to determining an appropriate local or global specification, SDEM versus SDM is set forth here for static panel variants of these two models. The logic of the Bayesian view of model uncertainty suggests these are the only two specifications that need to be considered. This greatly simplifies the task confronting practitioners when using static panel data models.
Constitutions and crisis

Abstract A crisis is an unexpected event that creates uncertainty and poses a direct or perceived threat to the goals and norms of an organization or society. While crises are ubiquitous, how societies respond to crises, and the way crises affect societies, is largely a matter of constitutional political economy. Drawing on a variety of insights from James Buchanan's research, this paper develops the political economy of crisis. Focus is placed on understanding: (1) how existing rules influence how societies cope with crises, (2) how crises can affect rules, and (3) the potential for the reform of rules in the wake of crises.
COMPETITION AND DISCLOSURE

There are many laws that require sellers to disclose private information about the quality of their products. But the theoretical justification for these laws is not obvious: economic theory predicts that a seller will voluntarily disclose such quality information, however unfavorable, as long as it is costless to do so. Here we show that competitive pressures between firms can undermine this full disclosure result, and explain why it may be the case that only high-quality firms choose to disclose. In this setting, mandatory disclosure laws can promote competition and raise consumer surplus at the expense of firm profits, potentially increasing the efficiency of the market.
Beyond Nightmare and Hope: Engineering Electoral Proportionality in Presidential Democracies

This Article aims to reappraise the current academic debate on the prospects of proportional representation in presidential systems. Based on the case study of electoral reforms in the United States and Taiwan, this article confirms that governability and representativeness are the central concerns of electoral engineering. After a close examination of the relevant normative arguments and empirical evidence, it argues that neither the nightmare of constitutional breakdown nor the hope of consociational democracy should dictate our political judgment in designing the legislative electoral system. Instead, we should make the inevitable trade-offs on the grounds of pragmatic considerations as well as philosophical reflection.
Estimating the Long-Run Relationship Between Interest Rates and Inflation: A Response to McCallum

Abstract This note demonstrates that Bennett McCallum's recent critique of low-frequency estimates of macroeconomic relationships is of little empirical significance. It also demonstrates that readily available and frequently used techniques can be used to diagnose the problem McCallum raises. Finally, it shows that the standard critique of expectational distributed lags is not warranted once the role of learning by economic agents is recognized.
Rewarding regulatory compliance: the pursuit of symmetry in products liability.

This essay, which is part of a symposium about the government standards defense for FDA-regulated products, generally argues in favor of the recognition of a rule that would make compliance with agency regulations conclusive evidence of non-defectiveness. Although they are not formally obligated to adopt such rules as particularizing the standard of care in tort litigation (at least absent federal preemption), judges should take them far more seriously than they do at present. As the decision-makers empowered by the citizenry to set safety standards, legislatures and regulatory agencies select levels of product risk that they deem appropriate, based on scientific, economic, and political considerations. But when the courts treat these standards as presumptively sub-optimal, they arrogate such important societal decisions for themselves. As a result, often unsophisticated jurors in different parts of the country will make their own judgments about appropriate prescription drug and medical device labeling and design, thereby second-guessing the far more expert, politically accountable, and uniform determinations made by the FDA in the course of promulgating a rule. When their arguments fail to move agency officials, consumer activists should not get to keep waging what they regard as the good fight in the more congenial arena of tort litigation, addressing their evidence to often receptive panels of jurors who are accountable to no one for decisions that have undoubted regulatory effects. If federal safety requirements appropriately set the standard of care (through a negligence per se instruction) when that helps plaintiffs (notwithstanding fears of regulatory obsolescence or ambiguity that are emphasized by opponents of the government standards defense), then compliance with those very same safety requirements should satisfy the standard of care in products liability cases even though that happens to help defendants.
The social side of ‘cyber power’? Social media and cyber operations

Evaluating an actor's ‘cyber power’ is an inherently complex problem involving a laundry list of military, normative, and technical variations. However, one important but under-theorised factor is the relationship between military social media operations and cyber operations. Policymakers, journalists, and even some academics often treat social media activity as a proxy variable for an actor's latent technical proficiency and even cyber capability, in other words, its cyber power. Actors that are extremely successful at engaging in social media activities are assumed to be technically proficient and even capable of engaging in cyber operations. This paper argues that an actor's social media use is a poor proxy for its technical and cyber security competency. In fact, under certain conditions social media activity may actually magnify the vulnerability of that actor. This paper synthesises cross-disciplinary research from strategic studies, political science, and technologists to develop a theoretical framework for better understanding the role of social media in cyber operations. It outlines the similarities and differences between social media and cyber security, and categorises different military social media operations into three types: information-gathering (IGMO), defensive social media operations (DeSMO), and offensive social media operations (OSMO).
Foreword : the 'Constitutional Moment'

In 2004, the University of Pretoria sponsored an international education law conference to celebrate the tenth anniversary of multi-racial democracy in South Africa and the fiftieth anniversary of the US Supreme Court's decision in Brown v Board of Education. For three days, scholars from South Africa, the United States, and Europe discussed equal educational opportunities. The organisers of the Conference correctly recognised that the 1994 South African election and the 1954 American court decision were watershed events for each nation. After Brown and the election of Mandela, each nation reaffirmed the self-evident truth - all are created equal.
"Why Rebottle the Genie?": Capitalizing on Closure in Death Penalty Proceedings

Closure, though a term with great rhetorical force in the capital punishment context, has to date evaded systematic analysis, instead becoming embroiled in ideological controversy. For victims who have rubbed the rights lamp for years, inclusion in capital proceedings and accompanying closure opportunities are perceived as a force with the potential to grant wishes of peace and finality. Scholars, however, argue for rebottling the closure genie lest closure itself prove false or its pursuit violate a defendant’s constitutional rights. In order to effectively appraise the relationship of closure to criminal jurisprudence, however, and thus to decide whether and to what extent closure is an appropriate adjudicative goal, it is necessary to more thoroughly investigate the concept and develop a theory of closure. This article provides an argument against rebottling the closure genie, a task not only seriously implausible but unsound under principles of communicative theory. Proposing that closure is an authentic cultural and communicative construct that has become indelibly linked to capital proceedings, this article advocates a shift in focus to more practical questions. This article first summarizes how legal scholarship has described closure up to this point, and then examines how courts utilize the rhetoric of closure to effect change for victims’ families in a variety of contexts. It then reviews widespread scholarly opposition to utilizing criminal law to pursue therapeutic ends. Thereafter, this article seeks to broaden the contemporary understanding of closure by exploring how members of one victim population—Oklahoma City Bombing victims’ families and survivors—have described closure in intensive face-to-face interviews. These reflections provide the foundation for theorizing closure as a communicative concept composed of two interdependent behaviors: intervention and reflexivity. While intervention is an interpersonal component that urges victims’ families to take action to effect change and pursue accountability, reflexivity is an intrapersonal component that nudges them to contemplate and work through grief, emotion, and trauma after a loved one’s murder. Finally, this article considers the pragmatic ramifications of applying a communicative theory of closure.
Persons All the Way Up

This essay, written for the 2009 John F. Scarpa Conference at Villanova focusing on the work of Professor Joseph Vining, attempts to provide a sympathetic exposition of what might be described, as a translation and with apologies (because Vining would likely be horrified by the description), as Vining’s distinctively personalist methodology, epistemology, and ontology.
The New Federalism, the Spending Power, and Federal Criminal Law

It is difficult in constitutional-law circles to avoid the observation that we are living through a "revival" of federalism. Certainly, the Rehnquist Court has brought back to the public-law table the notion that the Constitution is a charter for a government of limited and enumerated powers, one that is constrained both by that charter's text and by the structure of the government it creates. This allegedly "revolutionary" Court seems little inclined, however, to revise or revisit its Spending Power doctrine, and it remains settled law that Congress may disburse funds in pursuit of ends not authorized explicitly in Article I and may promote policy goals that might lie beyond the reach of its enumerated powers merely by attaching conditions to the money it spends. Thus, talk of "revolution" notwithstanding, the Spending Power continues to provide practically limitless opportunities for the national government to shape policy at the state and local levels of life and government. This Article considers whether and to what extent Congress may use its Spending Power - standing alone, or in conjunction with the Necessary and Proper, or "Sweeping," Clause - to create, prosecute, and punish federal crimes. In particular, it examines the challenges to a particular federal anti-corruption statute, and concludes that, even if the Commerce Clause is understood to convey to Congress almost plenary regulatory authority, the power of the purse is not the power to police. That is, a generally applicable federal criminal statute cannot be regarded as a spending condition, and not even the Sweeping Clause is a license for "hungry dog" criminal jurisdiction. What's more, the expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction through spending is inconsistent with the structures explicitly created and reasonably implied by our Constitution, with the values these structures were designed to advance, and with the liberties they were intended to protect. The Article's doctrinal claims cohere well with leading themes in contemporary constitutional law. There are, for example, rich connections between the Article's arguments about conditional spending, the Sweeping Clause, and criminalization, on the one hand, and contemporary debates in First Amendment law relating to government speech, forum analysis, and expressive association, on the other. In addition, the understanding of the Spending Power defended in the Article serves not only as a complement to, but a crucial component of, the renewed emphasis on mediating institutions and civil society that has been provocatively identified by Professor John McGinnis as the enduring legacy of the Rehnquist Court. The Article closes with the suggestion that whatever "formalism" might be found lurking in its arguments has a worthy pedagogical function as it helps to instill, perhaps, what the "settled disposition on the part of the people in favor of local diversity and prerogative" and the "disciplined love of liberty that transcends the desire for immediate gratification," both of which are required for a "truly robust federalism."
"How Can We Give Up Our Child?" A Practice-Based Approach to Teaching Legal Ethics

The preceding paragraph describes a critical moment in what is generally known as the “Baby Jessica Case,” one of the most famous American family law cases of the past 20 years. The clients are a couple who thought they had adopted an infant only to face a court ruling that they must return the child two years later to the biological father, who had not known about the adoption proceedings. The deadline for giving up Jessica is in seven days. Their only hope of ever regaining custody is a long-shot, protracted appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawyer believes that it would be best for them, for Jessica, and for the legal system not to pursue that appeal.
Redevelopment in California: The Demise of TIF-Funded Redevelopment in California and Its Aftermath

California was the first state to embrace the use of tax increment financing (TIF) for redevelopment and the first state to abandon it. Both the rise and fall of redevelopment are attributable to t...
Turning the Corner in Lima: The Language of Differentiation and the ‘Democratization’ of Climate Change Negotiations

The ‘Lima Call for Climate Action’ decision marked the conclusion of the 20th session of the Conference of Parties (COP20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It expresses how the 196 UNFCCC Parties intend to negotiate the elements of a new agreement to be opened for signature in Paris at COP21. This ‘Paris Agreement’ would govern Parties starting in 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol's second commitment period ends. The new agreement would also move Parties beyond the Kyoto Protocol's focus on mitigation to include adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building requirements. At COP20, Party delegates struggled to find consensus on how to act on the UNFCCC's core principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities’ when drafting the Call for Climate Action. In this article, we provide a detailed account of the evolution of the COP20 decision, to show how both its overall structure and specific language shifted in...
The Need For a Self-Sustaining Mobile Legal Clinic in Widespread Urban Centers

This note analyzes some of the problems plaguing the legal aid system in the United States, particularly in large, modern urban centers such as Southern California, and then discusses a workable solution to these problems. The first part of the note looks at the challenges facing the legal aid system in the United States, namely access to care, lack of funding, and inefficient provision of legal services. The second part of the note discusses why current legal aid models may be incomplete and ineffective, particularly at overcoming the challenges outlined in Part 1. The third and final part offers a potential solution to these problems in the form of a recently launched self-sustaining, mobile legal aid clinic focused on providing preventative legal care to individuals in Southern California.
The causal effect of option pay on corporate risk management

This study provides strong evidence of a causal effect of risk-taking incentives provided by option compensation on corporate risk management. We utilize the passage of Financial Accounting Standard (FAS) 123R, which required firms to expense options, to investigate how chief executive officer option compensation affects the hedging behavior of oil and gas firms. Firms that did not expense options before FAS 123R significantly reduced option pay, which resulted in a large increase in their hedging intensity compared with firms that did not use options or expensed their options voluntarily prior to FAS 123R.
Will the Web break

What is the Web? What makes it work? And is it dying? This paper is drawn from a talk delivered by Prof. Zittrain to the Royal Society Discussion Meeting 'Web science: a new frontier' in September 2010. It covers key questions about the way the Web works, and how an understanding of its past can help those theorizing about the future. The original Web allowed users to display and send information from their individual computers, and organized the resources of the Internet with uniform resource locators. In the 20 years since then, the Web has evolved. These new challenges require a return to the spirit of the early Web, exploiting the power of the Web's users and its distributed nature to overcome the commercial and geopolitical forces at play. The future of the Web rests in projects that preserve its spirit, and in the Web science that helps make them possible.