Norming in Administrative Law

How do regulatory agencies decide how strictly to regulate an industry? They sometimes use cost-benefit analysis or claim to, but more often the standards they invoke are so vague as to be meaningless. This raises the question whether the agencies use an implicit standard or instead regulate in an ad hoc fashion. We argue that agencies frequently use an approach that we call “norming.” They survey the practices of firms in a regulated industry and choose a standard somewhere within the distribution of existing practices, often no higher than the median. Such a standard burdens only the firms whose practices lag the industry. We then evaluate this approach. While a case can be made that norming is appropriate when a regulatory agency operates in an environment of extreme uncertainty, we argue that on balance norming is an unwise form of regulation. Its major attraction for agencies is that it minimizes political opposition to regulation. Norming does not serve the public interest as well as a more robust standard like cost-benefit analysis

Unravelling Secularization: an International Study

The current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and at some stage of their life left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as ‘no religion’. A battery of explanatory variables (countryspecific ones, personal attributes and marriage variables) was employed to test for the determinants of this decision. It was found that the tendency of individuals to leave their religion is strongly correlated with the degree of strictness of their country and with their spouse's religious characteristics. Moreover, personal socio-demographic features seem to be less relevant.religion, convert-out, church attendance, prayer, parental religiosity,Europe.

The Dutiful Conscript: An Originalist View of Justice Wilson’s Conception of Charter Rights and Their Limits

During her relatively short time on the Supreme Court, Justice Wilson constructed an independent and distinct approach to the relationship between rights and their limits under the Charter. To Justice Wilson, judicial review was a duty imposed on the courts by the Charter through a deliberate and high-profile democratic process. Her conception of the judicial role under the Charter draws its sustenance from a strong historical claim about both the purpose and the process of rights entrenchment under the Charter. Properly understood, Justice Wilson’s vision of the relationship between rights and their limits under the Charter is an originalist one — one that is based on the assertion that the legitimacy of the judicial interpretative role finds its source in the events of 1980-82, when the Charter was enacted. In this paper, I analyze Justice Wilson’s conception of rights and limits under the Charter and demonstrate how it is anchored in a normative vision of the events of 1980-82. I the n demonstrate how this originalist conception of the Charter permeated Justice Wilson’s model of the relationship between rights and their limits, mostly, but not exclusively, through her section 1 jurisprudence. In this part, I distinguish between the multiple meanings of R. v. Oakes — the case, the framework and the test — and show how Justice Wilson focused on the much stricter Oakes framework while her colleagues were relaxing the Oakes test. This part further shows how Justice Wilson’s fidelity to the strictness of the Oakes framework translated into her staunch insistence on section 1 as the sole source of limits on rights, her fixation on onus and evidence and her understanding of the relationship between section 1 and other sections of the Charter. Finally, this paper ends with a brief conclusion on the the mes of constitutional duty and destiny

An Attempt to Update Edward Dembowski’s Philosophy of Creation

The article mainly discusses Edward Dembowski's philosophy of creation in connection with his Hegelian influences, leftist associations and the ongoing discussion in nineteenth century romantic polish philosophy. The nineteenth century, with its German Idealism and French tendency to act in the name of social rights, had introduced new ideas to work with during harsh historical times. Dembowski, amongst other Poles, was the closest to constructing a coherent metaphysical system for the philosophy of creation (filozofia twórczości). In the paper, I try to show a part of his intellectual evolution, stretching from defining philosophy as knowledge itself in the form of a Hegelian system, through his critique of Hegel's and Cieszkowski's systems, up to his own established system – the philosophy of creation and its social connections. I also speculate about which of his philosophical ideas can remain relevant today

The PER model of abstract non-interference

Abstract. In this paper, we study the relationship between two models of secure information flow: the PER model (which uses equivalence relations) and the abstract non-interference model (which uses upper closure operators). We embed the lattice of equivalence relations into the lattice of closures, re-interpreting abstract non-interference over the lattice of equivalence relations. For narrow abstract non-interference, we show non-interference it is strictly less general. The relational presentation of abstract non-interference leads to a simplified construction of the most concrete harmless attacker. Moreover, the PER model of abstract noninterference allows us to derive unconstrained attacker models, which do not necessarily either observe all public information or ignore all private information. Finally, we show how abstract domain completeness can be used for enforcing the PER model of abstract non-interference

A Backward Analysis for Constraint Logic Programs

One recurring problem in program development is that of understanding how to re-use code developed by a third party. In the context of (constraint) logic programming, part of this problem reduces to figuring out how to query a program. If the logic program does not come with any documentation, then the programmer is forced to either experiment with queries in an ad hoc fashion or trace the control-flow of the program (backward) to infer the modes in which a predicate must be called so as to avoid an instantiation error. This paper presents an abstract interpretation scheme that automates the latter technique. The analysis presented in this paper can infer moding properties which if satisfied by the initial query, come with the guarantee that the program and query can never generate any moding or instantiation errors. Other applications of the analysis are discussed. The paper explains how abstract domains with certain computational properties (they condense) can be used to trace control-flow backward (right-to-left) to infer useful properties of initial queries. A correctness argument is presented and an implementation is reported.Comment: 32 page

Association between depression and perceived parental traits : results from a nationally representative South African survey

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-79).With a growing burden of disease and disability stemming from mental disorders in South Africa, additional research into this area may be justified, with specific reference to depression. The effects of parental influences have been explored in the literature as a relevant and valid risk factor in the development and presence of depression. The literature has suggested two main underlying themes of parental styles that included parental overprotection and care. The concept of overprotection has been associated with depression. This thesis explored these constructs in their association with depression whilst highlighting the influence of control. Furthermore the influences of parental depression were also included

What drives the international transfer of climate change mitigation technologies?: empirical evidence from patent data

Technology transfer plays a key role in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we characterize the factors that promote or hinder the international diffusion of climate-friendly technologies using detailed patent data from 96 countries for the period 1995-2007. The data provide strong evidence that lax Intellectual Property regimes have a strong and negative impact on the international diffusion of patented knowledge. Restrictions on international trade and foreign direct investment also hinder the diffusion of climate-friendly technologies. Surprisingly, local technological capabilities tend to discourage transfers. While broad indicators of technology capabilities are expected to facilitate transfers, this latter result stems from our technology-specific definition of local capabilities, which makes it possible to capture a substitution effect between local and foreign inventions

Immigration to the Land of Redistribution

Negative perceptions about migrants in Europe, the Continent with the largest social policy programmes are driven by concerns that foreigners are a net fiscal burden. Paradoxically instruments of social inclusion are becoming a weapon of mass exclusion. Increasing concerns of public opinion are indeed pressing Governments, in the midst of the recession, to reduce welfare access by migrants or further tighten migration policies. Are there politically feasible alternatives to these two hardly enforceable (and procyclical) policy options? In thispaper we look at economic and cultural determinants of negative perceptions about migrants in Europe. Based on a simple model of the perceived fiscal effects of migration and on a largely unexploited database (EU-Silc), we find no evidence that legal migrants, notably skilled migrants, are net recipients of transfers from the state. However, there is evidence of " residual dependency" on non-contributory transfers and self-selection of migrants more likely to draw on welfare in the countries with the most generous welfare state. Moreover, redistribution does not find much support among those who are in favour of immigration. A way out of the migration into the welfare state dilemma facing Europe involves i. coordinating safety nets across the EU, ii. adopting explicitly selective migration policies, and iii.improving activation programmes. Other options -- such as restricting migration or welfareaccess by migrants -- are however on the agenda of national governments