Original Sin and Judicial Independence: Providing Accountability for Justices

The independence of the judiciary is an enduring and defining objective of the legal profession. Law depends on judges to observe and enforce it. To secure such virtuous judges, they must be protected from retaliation by those who disapprove their decisions and prevented from receiving rewards from those who benefit by them. Those having the greatest stake in shielding judges from intimidation or reward are the profession that shares their dependence on public acceptance and respect. And that task of protecting judicial independence stands today at the very top of the agenda of the American legal profession

Do We Know Why Earnings Fall with Job Displacement?

After being displaced from their jobs, workers experience reduced earnings for many years and are at greater risks of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the unemployment insurance system, and have spurred calls for wage insurance that would provide longer-run earnings replacement. However, while the average size and the individual characteristics associated with the losses are relatively clear, the theory of displacement-induced earnings loss is scattered. Much of the policy discussion appears to interpret displacement-induced losses through the lens of specific human capital theory, in which skills are specific to jobs, locations, industries, or occupations, and that model has considerable empirical support. Assistance for displaced workers may improve well-being in that model since it insures workers against the risk that their consumption of goods and services might fall for idiosyncratic reasons and, as a consequence, allows workers to make more productive but higher-risk career choices. But there are other credible theories of costly job displacement that have different causal mechanisms, different interpretations and different policy implications. This paper reviews theories of costly job displacement and discusses their consistency with the available empirical evidence. We find that while specific human capital is important, we cannot rule out important roles for other theories

Judicial Independence in Excess: Reviving the Judicial Duty of the Supreme Court

Independence from extrinsic influence is, we know, indispensable to public trust in the integrity of professional judges who share the duty to decide cases according to preexisting law. But such independence is less appropriate for those expected to make new law to govern future events. Indeed, in a democratic government those who make new law are expected to be accountable to their constituents, not independent of their interests and unresponsive to their desires. The Supreme Court of the United States has in the last century largely forsaken responsibility for the homely task of deciding cases in accord with preexisting law and has settled into the role of a superlegislature devoted to making new law to govern future events. Citizens who see our judges as primarily engaged in this political role are understandably less tolerant of their claim to independence and are more intent on holding them to account for unwelcome decisions. Such popular dissatisfaction, or even unrest, with our judiciary is a source of prudent concern expressed by Justices, among others. This Article responds to that shared concern with a proposal to restore the Supreme Court to a more purely judicial role by reviving the duty of Justices to decide cases. It would require the Court to decide numerous cases certified by a group of experienced lower federal court judges as the cases most in need of their judicial attention. This proposal is intended not only to strengthen the claim to independence of the Supreme Court, but also that of other courts subject to its leadership

KMS conditions for 4-point Green functions at finite temperature

We study the 4-point function in the Keldysh formalism of the closed time path formulation of real time finite temperature field theory. We derive the KMS conditions for these functions and discuss the number of 4-point functions that are independent. We define a set of `physical' functions which are linear combinations of the usual Keldysh functions. We show that these functions satisfy simple KMS conditions. In addition, we consider a set of integral equations which represent a resummation of ladder graphs. We show that these integral equations decouple when one uses the physical functions that we have defined. We discuss the generalization of these results to QED.Comment: 17 pages in Revtex with 2 figure

A General Expression for Symmetry Factors of Feynman Diagrams

The calculation of the symmetry factor corresponding to a given Feynman diagram is well known to be a tedious problem. We have derived a simple formula for these symmetry factors. Our formula works for any diagram in scalar theory ($\phi^3$ and $\phi^4$ interactions), spinor QED, scalar QED, or QCD.Comment: RevTex 11 pages with 10 figure

Generation of electron spin polarization in disordered organic semiconductors

The generation mechanisms of electron spin polarization (ESP) of charge carriers (electrons and holes, called "doublets") in doublet-doublet recombination and triplet-doublet quenching in disordered organic semiconductors are analyzed in detail. The ESP is assumed to result from quantum transitions between the states of the spin Hamiltonian of the pair of interacting particles. The value of the ESP is essentially determined by the mechanism of relative motion of particles. In our work we have considered the cage and free diffusion models. The effect of possible attractive spin-independent interactions between particles is also analyzed. Estimation with obtained formulas shows that the proposed mechanisms can lead to a fairly strong ESP much larger than the thermal one (at room temperatures)Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

The socioeconomic pattern of health and developmental outcomes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

The pervasive health and social disadvantage faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is an acknowledged part of Australian society. The contemporary data reveal striking inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in most measurable aspects of wellbeing across the life cycle. This reflects a postcolonial history of marginalisation and exclusion from mainstream society, dispossession of traditional lands, forced separation from family and kinship networks, and racism. Despite an increased awareness and disapproval of these inequalities in health, the inequalities persist.The lack of progress in the face of public disapproval and progressive government support underscores the fact that we still do not adequately understand the fundamental causes of Indigenous ill health and disease. A small body of research in Australia has highlighted that socioeconomic status (SES) accounts for a portion of the gap in health but this does not imply that they account for health differences within Indigenous population groups. A robust international literature has consistently shown that socioeconomic factors influence population health. These factors reflect the way in which society is ordered according to wealth, prestige, power, social standing or one’s control over economic resources, and their pattern of association with health has almost always depicted better health for those who are better off— that is, the health of population groups normally follows a gradient pattern. Despite the ubiquity of this observation in the empirical literature, there is uncertainty as to whether it applies to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations in Australia.Accordingly, this thesis has aimed to assess the pattern of socioeconomic disparities in the health and development of Indigenous populations in Australia, with a specific focus on children. The three key objectives were to: • Describe the developmental status of Indigenous children and the mechanisms that influence this status; • Determine the pattern of association between socioeconomic factors and physical and mental health outcomes; and • Reveal the significant differences (and similarities) in the socioeconomic pattern of child health between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, and articulate these in terms of their direction, shape and magnitude.The objectives of the study were primarily assessed using a quantitative analytic framework applied to four existing population-representative datasets: the 2008 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, the 2000–2002 Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey, the 2004–05 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey and 2004–05 National Health Survey. Simple univariate and cross-tabulation data were used to describe population characteristics, while the relationships between socioeconomic indicators and health outcomes were assessed using a range of regression techniques. Multilevel models are an important feature of this study, and have enabled a more accurate estimation of the effects of individual and area-level measures of SES on health. Generalised Additive Models were used to account for the possible non-linear nature of associations between continuous SES variables and physical health outcomes, with results presented as non-parametric spline curves. The mechanisms linking SES and mental health were explored using a stepwise approach to the regression analysis. All data in all chapters were weighted to reflect population benchmarks.The findings highlighted that there were significant socioeconomic disparities in the health of Indigenous children in Australia, although the direction, shape and magnitude varied, by both socioeconomic measure and health outcome. While the socioeconomic patterns of Indigenous child health are not universal, they are more consistent for mental than physical health. In addition, the thesis has shown that both conventional and alternative notions of SES can influence health patterns. The largest disparities in child physical health were observed for area-level SES indicators, while housing characteristics and area-level SES both had a strong direct effect on child mental health.The thesis has demonstrated that the patterns of socioeconomic disparities in child health differ markedly in Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations—at least in non-remote settings. It was not uncommon for the magnitude of disparity to be larger in the Indigenous population. These findings lend support to the notion that socioeconomic factors have a differential impact on the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. The implication of this for policy is that a single approach to stimulating socioeconomic conditions will not have equal benefits to child health outcomes in Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. While the evidence here underscores the validity of the well-worn edict that “one size does not fit all” in Indigenous health policy, it also reinforces the need to examine health disparities within and across Indigenous and other population groups in order to better inform policy and practiceCollectively, the results have provided clear evidence that socioeconomic factors matter to both the physical and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The diversity of findings implies that SES factors are one facet of the unique and complex set of factors that influence Aboriginal child health and wellbeing.This thesis has made several original contributions to the literature on social inequalities in Indigenous health in Australia and the broader field of social determinants of health. It is one of the few studies internationally to explicitly look at the socioeconomic patterning of health in an Indigenous population, and the first to examine these patterns among Indigenous children using population-representative data. In doing so, the study has begun to bridge the knowledge gap on social inequalities in Aboriginal health in Australia, and will facilitate a better grasp of the complex underlying mechanisms that determine Aboriginal health.For policy, this knowledge can lead to more effective government decision-making in terms of targeting social determinants of health that are of particular significance for Aboriginal populations. It is hoped that the findings of the thesis can provide directions for future research and insights to policy that will, ultimately, increase the pace of change toward health equity in Australia