Private Enforcement of Statutory and Administrative Law in the United States (and Other Common Law Countries)

Our aim in this paper, which was prepared for an international conference on comparative procedural law to be held in July 2011, is to advance understanding of private enforcement of statutory and administrative law in the United States, and, to the extent supported by the information that colleagues abroad have provided, of comparable phenomena in other common law countries. Seeking to raise questions that will be useful to those who are concerned with regulatory design, we briefly discuss aspects of American culture, history, and political institutions that reasonably can be thought to have contributed to the growth and subsequent development of private enforcement in the United States. We also set forth key elements of the general legal landscape in which decisions about private enforcement play out, aspects of which should be central to the choice of an enforcement strategy and, in the case of private enforcement, are critical to the efficacy of a private enforcement regime. We then turn to the business of institutional architecture, describing the considerations—both in favor of and against private enforcement—that should affect the choice of an enforcement strategy. We lay out choices to be made about elements of a private enforcement regime, attending to the general legal landscape in which the regime would operate, particularly court access, as well as how incentives for enforcement interact with the market for legal services, which has important implications for private enforcement activity. We situate these legislative choices about private enforcement in the context of institutions that shape them. Finally, we seek to demonstrate how general considerations play out by examining private enforcement in two policy areas: legislation proscribing discrimination in employment, and laws protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices. A long appendix containing our questionnaire addressed to scholars in other countries, with the respondents’ answers interpolated, has been omitted but is available online

A Coda on Supplemental Jurisdiction

Response to Thomas C. Arthur and Richard D. Freer, 40 Emory Law Journal 963, Fall 199

Teacher Observations Using Telepresence Robots: Benefits and Challenges for Strengthening Evaluations

Project SCOUT (School Classroom Observations Using Telepresence) details findings from a pilot project where observers used a telepresence robot designed to capture teaching episodes. The study examined: 1) participants’ ability to review classroom teaching and determine teaching quality using a telepresence format; 2) whether a telepresence robot allowed observers to review the specific teaching competencies they would otherwise evaluate during in-person observations; and 3) the success of the telepresence robot in evaluating specific pedagogical environments (i.e., Montessori classrooms). Survey and observation data from two focal classrooms highlight the benefits of telepresence tools by allowing flexibility and the potential for a wider audience of observers using real time data collection. Limitations of a telepresence robot include challenges in its ability to capture classroom nuances necessary for evaluation, coaching, or supervisory support. Those who use a telepresence robot must be particularly sensitive to using a technology that might cause privacy and safety concerns for children and their families, particularly for marginalized communities

’Team GB’ and London 2012: The Paradox of National and Global Identities

This article explores the problems associated with ’national identity’ in the UK and examines the tensions arising between the international and local dimensions of the games through examples of domestic (UK) and international (Brazil, Chicago) media coverage of the key debates relating to London’s period of preparation. The chapter proposes a conception of London 2012 as exemplar of an event poised to generate insights and experiences connected to a new politics of ’cosmopolitan’ identity; insights central to grasping the cultural politics of contemporary urban development-and the paradoxes of national identity in current discourses of Olympism. Properly speaking, cosmopolitanism suits those people who have no country, while internationalism should be the state of mind of those who love their country above all, who seek to draw to it the friendship of foreigners by professing for the countries of those foreigners an intelligent and enlightened sympathy. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

Topographic control of asynchronous glacial advances: A case study from Annapurna, Nepal

Differences in the timing of glacial advances, which are commonly attributed to climatic changes, can be due to variations in valley topography. Cosmogenic 10Be dates from 24 glacial moraine boulders in 5 valleys define two age populations, late-glacial and early Holocene. Moraine ages correlate with paleoglacier valley hypsometries. Moraines in valleys with lower maximum altitudes date to the lateglacial, whereas those in valleys with higher maximum altitudes are early Holocene. Two valleys with similar equilibrium-line altitudes (ELAs), but contrasting ages, are \u3c 5 km apart and share the same aspect, such that spatial differences in climate can be excluded. A glacial mass-balance cellular automata model of these two neighboring valleys predicts that change from a cooler-drier to warmer-wetter climate (as at the Holocene onset) would lead to the glacier in the higher altitude catchment advancing, while the lower one retreats or disappears, even though the ELA only shifted by ~120 m

Evaluating the Application of Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation Technique to Stabilize Expansive Soils

Expansive soils, also known as swell-shrink soils have been a problem for civil infrastructures including roads and foundations from ancient times. The use of chemical additives such as cement and lime to stabilize expansive soils is a common practice among geotechnical engineers, especially for lightly loaded structures. However, several occurrences of subgrade failures have been observed after stabilizing with chemical additives. Hence, engineers are in search of sustainable stabilization alternatives. Microbial Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) is gaining attention as an environmentally friendly soil improvement technique. Several researchers have successfully tested its feasibility in mitigating liquefaction-induced problems in sandy soils. In this research, the authors are evaluating its effectiveness in stabilizing expansive soils. For this purpose two natural expansive soils with high and low plasticity properties were subjected to MICP treatments. The soil samples were first augmented with bacterium Sporosarcina Pasteurii and then treated with Calcium Chloride and Urea. Variables such as microbial concentrations and curing times were studied in this research. Geotechnical testing including Atterberg limits and unconfined compression strength were performed to evaluate the efficacy of MICP treatments. Preliminary results indicate that there is a reduction in plasticity and swelling characteristics of the soils and increase in the unconfined compression strength

A theoretical study of the structural phases of Group 5B - 6B metals and their transport properties

In order to predict the stable and metastable phases of the bcc metals in the block of the Periodic Table defined by groups 5B to 6B and periods 4 to 6, as well as the structure dependence of their transport properties, we have performed full potential computations of the total energies per unit cell as a function of the c/a ratio at constant experimental volume. In all cases, a metastable body centered tetragonal (bct) phase was predicted from the calculations. The total energy differences between the calculated stable and metastable phases ranged from 0.09 eV/cell (vanadium) to 0.39 eV/cell (tungsten). The trends in resistivity as a function of structure and atomic number are discussed in terms of a model of electron transport in metals. Theoretical calculations of the electrical resistivity and other transport properties show that bct phases derived from group 5B elements are more conductive than the corresponding bcc phases, while bct phases formed from group 6B elements are less conductive than the corresponding bcc phases. Special attention is paid to the phases of tantalum where we show that the frequently observed beta phase is not a simple tetragonal distortion of bcc tantalum

The Regeneration Games: Commodities, Gifts and the Economics of London 2012

This paper considers contradictions between two concurrent and tacit conceptions of the Olympic ‘legacy’, setting out one conception that understands the games and their legacies as gifts alongside and as counterpoint to the prevailing discourse, which conceives Olympic assets as commodities. The paper critically examines press and governmental discussion of legacy, in order to locate these in the context of a wider perspective contrasting ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’ Olympics – setting anthropological conceptions of gift-based sociality as a necessary supplement to contractual and dis-embedded socioeconomic organizational assumptions underpinning the commodity Olympics. Costbenefit planning is central to modern city building and mega-event delivery. The paper considers the insufficiency of this approach as the exclusive paradigm within which to frame and manage a dynamic socio-economic and cultural legacy arising from the 2012 games