Nothing Improper? Examining Constitutional Limits, Congressional Action, Partisan Motivation, and Pretextual Justification in the U. S. Attorney Removals

The forced mid-term resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys was an unprecedented event in American history. Nearly one year after the administration executed the removals, the House Judiciary Committee was still reviewing and publicizing emails, memoranda, and other documents in an effort to understand how the firings were effectuated. This Note examines many of those documents and concludes that the removals were likely carried out for partisan reasons. It then draws on the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers principles to argue that Congress is constitutionally empowered to enact removal limitations for inferior officers such as U.S. Attorneys so long as those limitations do not impermissibly infringe on the president\u27s Article H authority or result in congressional aggrandizement. Because of the partisan nature of the attorneys\u27 removals, this Note argues that Congress should consider such legislation to limit the president\u27s removal of U.S. Attorneys. In considering the constitutionality and efficacy of a potential statute, this Note examines three previous pieces of legislation on which such removal limitations could be modeled before proposing a fourth, hybrid statute that would emphasize the separation of powers values of balance and accountability in barring partisan removals of U.S. Attorneys. The Note concludes by claiming that the framework that the Supreme Court created in McDonnell Douglas v. Green can supply a useful analog to manage the fact-intensive probe into whether a removal was impermissibly partisan under the proposed statute or merely a typical, political removal, which any removal statute must likely allow to meet constitutional muster

Nothing Improper? Examining Constitutional Limits, Congressional Action, Partisan Motivation, and Pretextual Justification in the U. S. Attorney Removals

The forced mid-term resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys was an unprecedented event in American history. Nearly one year after the administration executed the removals, the House Judiciary Committee was still reviewing and publicizing emails, memoranda, and other documents in an effort to understand how the firings were effectuated. This Note examines many of those documents and concludes that the removals were likely carried out for partisan reasons. It then draws on the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers principles to argue that Congress is constitutionally empowered to enact removal limitations for inferior officers such as U.S. Attorneys so long as those limitations do not impermissibly infringe on the president\u27s Article H authority or result in congressional aggrandizement. Because of the partisan nature of the attorneys\u27 removals, this Note argues that Congress should consider such legislation to limit the president\u27s removal of U.S. Attorneys. In considering the constitutionality and efficacy of a potential statute, this Note examines three previous pieces of legislation on which such removal limitations could be modeled before proposing a fourth, hybrid statute that would emphasize the separation of powers values of balance and accountability in barring partisan removals of U.S. Attorneys. The Note concludes by claiming that the framework that the Supreme Court created in McDonnell Douglas v. Green can supply a useful analog to manage the fact-intensive probe into whether a removal was impermissibly partisan under the proposed statute or merely a typical, political removal, which any removal statute must likely allow to meet constitutional muster

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Sec Disgorgement of Profits, and the Evolving International Bribery Regime: Weighing Proportionality, Retribution, and Deterrence

This Note uses examples such as Titan Corp. to support the argument that there are reasons to question the United States\u27 increasing reliance on disgorgement to enforce the FCPA. Despite obvious deterrence benefits, the SEC\u27s quest for disgorgement of ill-gotten gains raises significant questions regarding extraterritoriality, proportionality, and evidentiary uncertainty. This Note looks to the history of the FCPA and both international anti-bribery agreements and foreign statutes implementing those agreements in arguing that U.S. and foreign regulators need to create a more certain, predictable enforcement climate as the number of foreign bribery enforcement actions continue to explode

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae Mob2p-Cbk1p kinase complex promotes polarized growth and acts with the mitotic exit network to facilitate daughter cell-specific localization of Ace2p transcription factor.

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae mitotic exit network (MEN) is a conserved signaling network that coordinates events associated with the M to G1 transition. We investigated the function of two S. cerevisiae proteins related to the MEN proteins Mob1p and Dbf2p kinase. Previous work indicates that cells lacking the Dbf2p-related protein Cbk1p fail to sustain polarized growth during early bud morphogenesis and mating projection formation (Bidlingmaier, S., E.L. Weiss, C. Seidel, D.G. Drubin, and M. Snyder. 2001. Mol. Cell. Biol. 21:2449-2462). Cbk1p is also required for Ace2p-dependent transcription of genes involved in mother/daughter separation after cytokinesis. Here we show that the Mob1p-related protein Mob2p physically associates with Cbk1p kinase throughout the cell cycle and is required for full Cbk1p kinase activity, which is periodically activated during polarized growth and mitosis. Both Mob2p and Cbk1p localize interdependently to the bud cortex during polarized growth and to the bud neck and daughter cell nucleus during late mitosis. We found that Ace2p is restricted to daughter cell nuclei via a novel mechanism requiring Mob2p, Cbk1p, and a functional nuclear export pathway. Furthermore, nuclear localization of Mob2p and Ace2p does not occur in mob1-77 or cdc14-1 mutants, which are defective in MEN signaling, even when cell cycle arrest is bypassed. Collectively, these data indicate that Mob2p-Cbk1p functions to (a) maintain polarized cell growth, (b) prevent the nuclear export of Ace2p from the daughter cell nucleus after mitotic exit, and (c) coordinate Ace2p-dependent transcription with MEN activation. These findings may implicate related proteins in linking the regulation of cell morphology and cell cycle transitions with cell fate determination and development

Damage-cluster distributions and size effect on strength in compressive failure

We investigate compressive failure of heterogeneous materials on the basis of a continuous progressive damage model. The model explicitely accounts for tensile and shear local damage and reproduces the main features of compressive failure of brittle materials like rocks or ice. We show that the size distribution of damage-clusters, as well as the evolution of an order parameter, the size of the largest damage-cluster, argue for a critical interpretation of fracture. The compressive failure strength follows a normal distribution with a very small size effect on the mean strength, in good agreement with experiments

Social Ecology of Children’s Vulnerability to Environmental Pollutants

BACKGROUND: The outcomes of exposure to neurotoxic chemicals early in life depend on the properties of both the chemical and the host’s environment. When our questions focus on the toxicant, the environmental properties tend to be regarded as marginal and designated as covariates or confounders. Such approaches blur the reality of how the early environment establishes enduring biologic substrates. OBJECTIVES: In this commentary, we describe another perspective, based on decades of biopsychological research on animals, that shows how the early, even prenatal, environment creates permanent changes in brain structure and chemistry and behavior. Aspects of the early environment—encompassing enrichment, deprivation, and maternal and neonatal stress—all help determine the functional responses later in life that derive from the biologic substrate imparted by that environment. Their effects then become biologically embedded. Human data, particularly those connected to economically disadvantaged populations, yield equivalent conclusions. DISCUSSION: In this commentary, we argue that treating such environmental conditions as confounders is equivalent to defining genetic differences as confounders, a tactic that laboratory research, such as that based on transgenic manipulations, clearly rejects. The implications extend from laboratory experiments that, implicitly, assume that the early environment can be standardized to risk assessments based on epidemiologic investigations. CONCLUSIONS: The biologic properties implanted by the early social environment should be regarded as crucial elements of the translation from laboratory research to human health and, in fact, should be incorporated into human health research. The methods for doing so are not clearly defined and present many challenges to investigators