Military and Foreign Affairs Function Rule-Making Under the APA

There is an obvious need to conduct our governmental affairs effectively. expeditiously. and inexpensively. No administrative rule-making procedure is acceptable unless it fairly takes account of this consideration. Consequently, procedural requirements that unduly fetter agency action. or frustrate its purposes. are obvious!} unwise. What is needed, therefore. is a system of rule-making that will strike a sensible balance between the need for adequate public participation in that process. and the need for efficient government. In striking that balance. society\u27s interest in involving affected members of the public in administrative rule-making at an early stage is not so slight that it should be set aside solely on the basis of minor inconvenience or expense to government

Representation for the Poor in Federal Rulemaking

The ample personal economic resources and relatively well-financed organizations of middle and upper income Americans usually assure their particular interests adequate representation in federal administrative rulemaking. The norm is that middle and upper income individuals, or their personal or organizational representatives, directly or indirectly monitor all agency activities. These persons attempt to protect their interests through formal or informal participation in rulemaking affecting them. But federal rulemaking very frequently affects large numbers of individuals who lack the personal economic resources and organized associations of middle and upper income Americans. These economically underprivileged persons are usually unable to keep themselves adequately informed of the numerous actual or proposed exercises of rulemaking authority affecting their interests. Normally the poor are also unable to communicate effectively to the appropriate authority their views about proposed rules, or to petition in their own interest for new rules or for the amendment or repeal of old rules

The Dirksen Amendment and the Article V Convention Process

This article will concentrate on the legal issues facing Congress in the current effort to call a constitutional convention. Because all of the previous amendments to the Constitution were proposed to the states by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, the issues raised in the present situation have never been resolved. The appropriate course of action for the national legislature is especially in doubt. An attempt will therefore be made here to focus on proper decision-making by Congress in resolving these constitutional issues. The role of the judiciary will be considered only incidentally, since, as will be seen, the primary obligation to decide questions raised in the amending process rests with Congress. It is also possible that the final dispositive power on this subject rests effectively in Congress because the courts may consider all or most of the issues raised in the amending process nonjusticiable political questions. Nevertheless, in the exercise of that power, Congress . . . is [still] governed by the Constitution.\u27\u27 The following discussion of constitutional principles should, therefore, be considered as an appropriate guide for consideration by Congress when that body undertakes to perform its obligations respecting an article V convention

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead