Mussels as Biomonitors of Lake Water Microcystin: A Final Report for the Summer 2000 Microcystin Monitoring Study

Mussel surveys performed in Baboosic, Depot, Little Squam, Squam, Lovell, North River, Northeast, Townhous

Competing for Refugees: A Market-Based Solution to a Humanitarian Crisis

The current refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summoning the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already exist. In short, international law can and should give refugees a legal asset, give host nations incentives to accept them, and give oppressive countries of origin the bill

Numerical aerodynamic simulation facility

Critical to the advancement of computational aerodynamics capability is the ability to simulate flows about three-dimensional configurations that contain both compressible and viscous effects, including turbulence and flow separation at high Reynolds numbers. Analyses were conducted of two solution techniques for solving the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations describing the mean motion of a turbulent flow with certain terms involving the transport of turbulent momentum and energy modeled by auxiliary equations. The first solution technique is an implicit approximate factorization finite-difference scheme applied to three-dimensional flows that avoids the restrictive stability conditions when small grid spacing is used. The approximate factorization reduces the solution process to a sequence of three one-dimensional problems with easily inverted matrices. The second technique is a hybrid explicit/implicit finite-difference scheme which is also factored and applied to three-dimensional flows. Both methods are applicable to problems with highly distorted grids and a variety of boundary conditions and turbulence models

International Delegation and State Sovereignty

Hathaway rebuts the claim that state sovereignty almost always suffers when states delegate authority to international institutions. Critics of delegation err, she contends, by overemphasizing the costs but losing sight of some of the substantial benefits of cooperation. She considers the challenge to sovereignty posed by international delegation by focusing on recent debates over the influence of international legal commitments on domestic governance

Presidential Power over International Law: Restoring the Balance

The vast majority of U.S. international agreements today are made by the President acting alone. Little noticed and rarely discussed, the agreements are concluded in a process almost completely hidden from outside view. This state of affairs is the result of a longterm transformation. Over the course of more than a century, Congress gradually yielded power to the President to make international agreements. Each individual delegation of authority relinquished only a small measure of power, while freeing members of Congress to focus on matters that were more likely to improve their reelection prospects. But the cumulative effect over time left Congress with little power over international lawmaking. As a result, the President is now able to make law over an immense array of issues—including issues with significant domestic ramifications—by concluding binding international agreements on his own. This imbalance of power violates democratic principles and may even lead to less effective international agreements. To correct this imbalance, this Article proposes a comprehensive reform statute that would normalize U.S. international lawmaking by reorganizing it around two separate tracks. International agreements that are now made by the President alone would proceed on an administrative track and would be subject to what might be called the “Administrative Procedure Act for International Law.” This new process would offer greater openness, public participation, and transparency, but not overburden lawmaking. A legislative track would include two existing methods for concluding international agreements: Senate-approved Article II treaties and congressional-executive agreements expressly approved by both houses of Congress. In addition, it would include an expanded “fast track” process that would permit streamlined congressional approval of agreements. Together, these proposals promise to create a more balanced, more democratic, and more effective system for international lawmaking in the United States

Path Dependence in the Law: The Course and Pattern of Legal Change in a Common Law System

Part I of this Article provides an overview of path dependence theory. It outlines the theory and briefly describes three separate strands of the theory: increasing returns path dependence, evolutionary path dependence, and sequencing path dependence, which are rooted in the economics, biological, and rational choice theory literatures, respectively. Although each of these strands has specific and unique characteristics, they are linked by a central insight: In each, an outcome or decision is shaped in specific and systematic ways by the path leading to it. Each of these strands of path dependence in turn has important implications for the course and pattern of change in the common law system. Accordingly, Part II applies path dependence theory to the common law. At the core of the common law system is the requirement that courts adhere to the body of principles and rules of action that derive their authority solely from usages and customs of immemorial antiquity, or from the judgments and decrees of the courts recognizing, affirming, and enforcing such usages and customs. Under the doctrine of stare decisis, higher courts\u27 previous decisions are controlling, courts give their own decisions significant weight, and courts look to non-binding decisions for persuasive precedent. Consequently, although there is some flexibility in the system, precedent remains central to legal deliberation. The doctrine of stare decisis thus creates an explicitly path-dependent process. Later decisions rely on, and are constrained by, earlier decisions. More important, the way in which history shapes legal outcomes corresponds to the three-fold division introduced in Part I. Because each legal decision increases the probability that the next will take a particular form, the common law exhibits increasing returns path dependence. Because the law changes through a process of punctuated yet historically constrained evolution, the common law exhibits evolutionary path dependence. And because the legal process involves sequential decisionmaking in a process marked by competing alternatives and multiple actors, the common law exhibits sequencing path dependence. Therefore, just as biological and social processes are constrained by history, the law is firmly guided by the heavy hand of the past. Finally, Part III turns from the descriptive to the normative. It analyzes the implications of path dependence theory for the doctrine of stare decisis. Path dependence theory reveals that significant costs may arise out of the reliance on precedent in a common law system. The Article concludes with the claim that, all other things being equal, where the costs of path dependence are expected to be especially significant, courts should consider relaxing the doctrine of stare decisis. This prescription not only supports modifying existing practices of reliance upon precedent, but also provides a theoretical basis for some existing distinctions in the degree that judges rely on certain categories of precedent