Home Rules: The Case for Local Administrative Procedure

Administrative law is critical to the modern practice of governance. Administrative rules fill the gaps in statutes left open by lawmakers, allow agencies to exercise legislative grants of authority and discretion, and give agencies with subject-matter expertise and frontline experience the opportunity to promulgate detailed standards and requirements in their designated issue areas. Adjudication allows an agency to dispose of matters and disputes formally before it, whether under its rules or another source of law. While agencies at every level of government—federal, state, and local— engage in administrative action, legal scholarship on administrative law is almost exclusively focused on the federal realm, which is shaped by the Administrative Procedure Act. States can look to a Model State Administrative Procedure Act drafted by experts at the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, a document that was originally promulgated around the same time as the federal Administrative Procedure Act, for guidance on ordering the activities of their agencies. Local governments, however, have far fewer resources to draw upon. This Note argues that the time has come for localities to embrace the codification of administrative procedures. The governments and agencies of localities have always played a prominent role in the everyday lives of residents, as well as regional and national economic structures, and their work will benefit from procedural statutes. Cities, in particular, have taken on an increasingly central role as political agents and policy entrepreneurs and this shift underscores the need for greater procedural guidance. To make the case, this Note briefly examines the purposes and history of modern administrative law, analyzes approaches taken by exemplar cities, lays out and probes some of arguments for and against more rigorous procedures at the local level, and proposes three methods to help localities and states undertake this project

Banking on Cooperation: The Role of the G-20 in Improving the International Financial Architecture

Piling is expensive but often necessary when building large structures, for example bridges. Some pile types, such as steel core piles, are very costly and it is therefore of great interest to keep the number piles in a pile group to a minimum. This thesis deals with optimization of pile groups with respect to placement, batter and angle of rotation in order to minimize the number of piles. A program has been developed, where two optimization algorithms named Genetic Algorithm and Direct Search, and four objective functions have been used. These have been tested and compared to find the most suitable for pile group optimization. Three real cases, two bridge supports and one culvert, have been studied, using the program.  It has been difficult to draw any clear conclusions since the results have been ambiguous. This is probably because only three cases have been tested and the results are very problemdependent.The outcome depends, for example, on the starting guess and settings for the optimization. However, the results show that the Genetic Algorithm is somewhat more robust in its ability to remove piles than Direct Search and is therefore to prefer in pile group optimization

LGBTQ Grantmakers 2008 Report Card on Racial Equity

A research study examining how a subset of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) grantmakers addresses racial equity in grantmaking, governing documents, policies and practices, demographics and leadership, and strategic communications

Civil Rights News

Volume 1-2012 of Civil Rights News by the AFL-CIO Department of Civil, Human and Women\u27s Rights. This Issue covers: Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Immigration, LGBT Developments, Women’s Rights, and additional Resource

The ethical infrastructure of legal practice in larger law firms: values, policy and behaviour

The article examines the impact of the cultures and organisational structures of large law firms on individual lawyers' ethics. The paper suggests that large law firms in Australia should consciously design and implement 'ethical infrastructures' to both counteract pressures for misbehaviour and positively promote ethical behaviour and discussion. The paper goes on to explain what implementing ethical infrastructures in law firms could and should mean by reference to what Australian law firms are already doing and US innovations in this area. Finally, the paper warns that the 'ethical infrastructure' of a firm should not be seen merely as the formal ethics policies explicitly enunciated by management. Formal and legalistic ethical infrastructures that fail to support or encourage the development of individual lawyers' awareness oftheir own ethical values and ethical judgment in practice will be useless

Performance measurement for the strategic management of healthcare estates

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the role of performance measurement in current practices for strategic management of health-care estates. Design/methodology/approach The research adopts a constructivist grounded theory approach, combining different methodologies of a pan-European qualitative questionnaire, interviews with international health-care providers and a case study of National Health Services (NHS) Scotland. Here, documentation analysis, observations and in-depth interviews involving NHS stakeholders were undertaken. Findings The analysis shows evidence that measuring estate performance has limited value for individual NHS boards regarding strategic decisions related to long-term planning and investment. This was due to design issues and the prioritisation of clinical delivery, which contribute to the neglect of the estate as a consideration in long-term strategic planning. This misalignment results in a tool which is valuable for accountability but which is less helpful to NHS boards in shaping future decisions around the estate. Practical implications Responding to a gap in understanding of the application of performance measurement in the context of health-care estates, this research provides three recommendations to promote a more effective and relevant performance measurement system. These actively recognise the importance of the estate within strategic decision-making as helping to inform the long-term planning and management of the estate within the individual NHS boards. Originality/value This paper shows the current role of performance measurement for the strategic management of health-care estates and identifies issues related to its applicability and value. </jats:sec