Insulating Incumbent Judges from the Vicissitudes of the Political Arena: Retention Elections as a Viable Alternative

This Note proposes legislation that would cure many deficiencies in the present system of judicial tenure in New York. First, the Note examines the present retention system for trial court judges in New York State in light of the strict standards of judicial ethics the CJC imposes on sitting judges. Part II analyzes several problems in the current reelection process, focusing on the complex predicament a judicial incumbent faces as a result of having to return to the political arena. Part III then explores three possible alternatives to the present reelection system.\u27 Finally, the Note recommends that the New York State Legislature amend the state constitution and implement a method of retention that would allow a sitting judge to remain in office with the approval of the voters without being subject to a primary or general election

Regulatory Harmonisation - Issues for New Zealand

This paper discusses aspects of harmonisation of regulatory structures (occupational, product approval etc) between jurisdictions. The primary focus is on trans-national arrangements, but many of the issues also apply to relations between central and regional/local government, and between regional/local governments. The paper addresses a taxonomy of harmonisation approaches, who to harmonise with, how far and in what areas, and a range of implementation issues, before reviewing some relevant EU examples, outlining existing trans-Tasman regulatory relationships and current trans-Tasman harmonisation proposals, and noting some issues relevant to local government. It does not address wider economic integration issues or currency or political union.

Investment Management Code of Conduct for Endowments, Foundations, and Charitable Organizations

The Investment Management Code of Conduct for Endowments, Foundations, and Charitable Organizations represents best practice for the oversight of an entity's financial assets. Governing Body members should uphold the general principles of the Code in the management of the assets and the organization

Closing the loop: assisting archival appraisal and information retrieval in one sweep

In this article, we examine the similarities between the concept of appraisal, a process that takes place within the archives, and the concept of relevance judgement, a process fundamental to the evaluation of information retrieval systems. More specifically, we revisit selection criteria proposed as result of archival research, and work within the digital curation communities, and, compare them to relevance criteria as discussed within information retrieval's literature based discovery. We illustrate how closely these criteria relate to each other and discuss how understanding the relationships between the these disciplines could form a basis for proposing automated selection for archival processes and initiating multi-objective learning with respect to information retrieval

Exercising Authority, Restoring Accountability: AFL-CIO Proxy Voting Guidelines

[Excerpt] We are pleased to provide trustees of union benefit funds with revised AFL-CIO Proxy Voting Guidelines. These Guidelines have been updated to reflect major regulatory reforms enacted in 2002 and 2003, and to further raise the bar on corporate governance and accountability in the wake of recent corporate scandals

Money, Politics, and Impartial Justice

A centuries-old controversy asks whether judicial elections are inconsistent with impartial justice. The debate is especially important because more than 90 percent of the United States\u27 judicial business is handled by state courts, and approximately nine in ten of all state court judges face the voters in some type of election. Using a stunning new data set of virtually all state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998, this paper provides empirical evidence that elected state supreme court judges routinely adjust their rulings to attract votes and campaign money. I find that judges who must be reelected by Republican voters, especially in partisan elections, tend to decide cases in accord with standard Republican policy: they are more likely to vote for businesses over individuals, for employers in labor disputes, for doctors and hospitals in medical malpractice cases, for businesses in products liability cases and tort cases generally, and against criminals in criminal appeals. Judicial behavior is correspondingly liberal for judges facing reelection by Democrats. Moreover, I find evidence that judges change their rulings when the political preferences of the voters change. In addition, my analysis finds a strong relationship between campaign contributions and judges\u27 rulings. Contributions from pro-business groups, pro-labor groups, doctor groups, insurance companies, and lawyer groups increase the probability that judges will vote for the litigants favored by those interest groups. The results suggest that recent trends in judicial elections-elections becoming more contested, competitive, and expensive-may have upset the delicate balance between judicial independence and accountability. I discuss various policy solutions for reforming states\u27 systems

Joyce Foundation - 2004 Annual Report

Contains president's message, program information, project summaries, grantee profiles, grants list, financial statements, and list of board members and staff

Bridging the Organizational Divide -- The Making of a Nonprofit Merger

Nonprofit, community-based housing development organizations have only recently become significant players in the provision of affordable housing, at least in the United States. Historically, this job was left either in the hands of builders, developers, lenders and landlords of the business sector or in the care of agencies, planners and policymakers of the public sector. Only in the past 30 years has the provision of affordable housing moved beyond the familiar domains of the market and the state. A host of nonprofit organizations is now playing a larger role in constructing new housing, rehabilitating older housing, managing rentals and bringing home ownership within the reach of thousands of people for whom the American dream has proved elusive.The growth of these third-sector organizations has been both rapid and impressive, but it also has been uneven. Across the country, there are places where nonprofit housing development organizations are both plentiful and productive, supported by sophisticated networks of interorganizational collaboration, public funding, private financing and technical assistance. There are many other communities, however, where no nonprofits are engaged in affordable housing or where the ones that do exist are very new or very small, accounting for only a handful of new housing units every year.Lying between these two extremes are those communities where multiple nonprofits of varying size serve a similar geographic area, each producing a modest but respectable number of housing units; each competing for constituents, funding and development opportunities; each struggling to survive. The organizations that find themselves in this uncomfortable situation often confront a special set of challenges. They are productive, but not prolific. They are effective, but not efficient. They are successful, but not sustainable. Indeed, they are frequently quite precarious. The loss of a single staff person, the delay of a single project or the adverse decision of a single funder can threaten not only their short-term chances for success, but their long term prospects for survival.Those who sponsor and fund such organizations sometimes find themselves in a situation where competition among multiple nonprofits is weakening them all. In these cases, the sponsoring and funding organizations have taken different tacks to address this problem. In some cases, they have acted to strengthen every nonprofit, while working to increase the division of labor or the division of territory among them. In other cases, they have acted to strengthen one (or more) nonprofit at the expense of the others, culling weaker performers from the herd.While these have been the most common approaches for dealing with the weaknesses that organizational competition and duplication can sometimes create, a third alternative has been gaining ground. Multiple nonprofits, operating within the same jurisdiction, are being encouraged to collaborate -- even to the point of merging their programs, assets and hard-won identities.Why is collaboration gaining in popularity? A financial explanation would be that it is becoming harder to find enough resources to strengthen every nonprofit to the same degree, funding multiple nonprofits to serve a similar clientele in the same locale. There is also the political reality that public and private funders find it difficult to choose easily (or accurately) which nonprofits should live -- and which should die. There is a practical explanation as well. Collaboration is becoming a strategy of choice simply because it is proving to be an unusually effective way of achieving greater productivity, efficiency and sustainability. When a collaborative (or a merger) is carefully crafted, the nonprofit partners do a better job together than they did apart. This is not true in every case, of course.Read the full report for lessons in organizational matchmaking and the making of a nonprofit merger