Environmental Law - Northcoast Environmental Center v. Glickman

In Northcoast Environmental Center v. Glickman, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a less deferential standard of reasonableness applied to its review of legal questions that determined the applicability of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA,). Thus, when no facts are in dispute, an agency\u27s decision not to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will be upheld unless it is unreasonable. When facts are in dispute, however, the Supreme Court decision of Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council, which applied an arbitrary and capricious standard of review, controls. The Ninth Circuit also decided that district court had not abused its discretion by declining to follow an exception to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which allows a judge to look beyond the administrative record in an appeal. The district court refused to look at documents outside the record based on a finding that they were unnecessary and cumulative. The Ninth Circuit agreed even though Northcoast Environmental Center\u27s documents fit within an exception to the APA

Operative Treatment of Cervical Myelopathy: Cervical Laminoplasty

Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) is a degenerative process which may result in clinical signs and symptoms which require surgical intervention. Many treatment options have been proposed with various degrees of technical difficulty and technique sensitive benefits. We review laminoplasty as a motion-sparing posterior decompressive method. Current literature supports the use of laminoplasty for indicated decompression. We also decribe our surgical technique for an open-door, or “hinged”, laminoplasty

A Summer Internship with U.S. Senator Patty Murray - Regional Office, Everett, Washington

During the summer of 1996,1 participated in the US Senate internship program in the Everett Regional office of Senator Patty Murray. This was a fairly new office, having begun only five months before I started in July, as well as a small office. (It had one part- time person, my supervisor, which became two upon my arrival.) There was no precedent for what my job entailed so it was designed as the summer progressed. My supervisor was Jill McKinney, a very friendly and helpful woman who had been in the “political industry of staffing for various Congress-people over the years. She was very knowledgeable in her work, however, being in charge of the northwestern counties of Washington was a fairly new situation for her. I feel this was beneficial to my learning experience because sometimes she wasn’t able to help me and I was forced to go into some situations without forewarning. This provided some very exciting and very stressful events over the summer