Problem of Equality in Takings, The

The Supreme Court is finally beginning to bring clarity to the law of regulatory takings and in the process is bringing to the fore a previously submerged theme in the jurisprudence: regulatory takings as a question of distributional justice and horizontal equity. This Article argues that this equality dimension is fundamentally problematic. On a theoretical level, privileging norms of equality engrafts political process rationales for heightened scrutiny onto groups defined solely by the differential burden of a regulation, an exercise in circularity. Equally troubling is the inverted political economy of regulatory takings claims that is likely to result: the greatest judicial protection is provided to those most able to navigate the political system. And from a doctrinal perspective, an overly robust equality inquiry housed in the Takings Clause is inherently indeterminate, warping not only the fabric of takings but also of equal protection jurisprudence. Accordingly, this Article argues that concerns about the uneven distribution of regulatory burdens should sound not under the Takings Clause but rather under the Equal Protection Clause, with its deferential standards for the review of ordinary economic and social regulation. Excising the equality dimension of regulatory takings would properly leave the Takings Clause as a guard against those rare regulatory actions that are functionally equivalent to the direct exercise of eminent domain. The result would be a simpler, clearer, and ultimately more egalitarian law of takings

Theories of Asbestos Litigation Cost - Why Two Decades of Procedural Reform Have Failed to Reduce Claimants\u27 Expenses

In twenty years of asbestos litigation, procedural reforms at all levels of the civil litigation system have failed to reduce plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. The result has been dramatic undercompensation of asbestos tort victims. This paper attempts to explain this remarkable fact using economic methodology. The paper offers three theories: First, that the continuing difficulty of assessing causation in asbestos and other mass tort cases predictably impedes the efforts of procedural reform to reduce costs; second, that changes in defendant and insurer risk attitudes have generated costly litigation; third, that collusion of plaintiffs’ attorneys to maintain prices cannot be ruled out. Each of these theories has some empirical support. Further, regardless of which turns out to be correct, the continuing high costs of civil litigation mean that resolution through the bankruptcy system will predictably harm future claimants, an unfair outcome. In the final assessment, civil procedure reform, the favored mechanism for resolving the asbestos case backlog, cannot achieve its objectives. Rather, reform must take into account substantive law and the motives and incentives of actors in the legal system. Holistic analysis of this type lends support to a comprehensive administrative remedies scheme, which has the best chance of decreasing the costs of compensation

Free-space coherent optical communication receivers implemented with photorefractive optical beam combiners

Performance measurements are reported concerning a coherent optical communication receiver that contained an iron doped indium phosphide photorefractive beam combiner, rather than a conventional optical beam splitter. The system obtained a bit error probability of 10(exp -6) at received signal powers corresponding to less than 100 detected photons per bit. The system used phase modulated Nd:YAG laser light at a wavelength of 1.06 microns

Spacecraft attitude sensor

A system for sensing the attitude of a spacecraft includes a pair of optical scanners having a relatively narrow field of view rotating about the spacecraft x-y plane. The spacecraft rotates about its z axis at a relatively high angular velocity while one scanner rotates at low velocity, whereby a panoramic sweep of the entire celestial sphere is derived from the scanner. In the alternative, the scanner rotates at a relatively high angular velocity about the x-y plane while the spacecraft rotates at an extremely low rate or at zero angular velocity relative to its z axis to provide a rotating horizon scan. The positions of the scanners about the x-y plane are read out to assist in a determination of attitude. While the satellite is spinning at a relatively high angular velocity, the angular positions of the bodies detected by the scanners are determined relative to the sun by providing a sun detector having a field of view different from the scanners

The Mobility Case for Regionalism

In the discourse of local government law, the idea that a mobile populace can “vote with its feet” has long served as a justification for devolution and decentralization. Tracing to Charles Tiebout’s seminal work in public finance, the legal-structural prescription that follows is that a diversity of independent and empowered local governments can best satisfy the varied preferences of residents metaphorically shopping for bundles of public services, regulatory environment, and tax burden. This localist paradigm generally presumes that fragmented governments are competing for residents within a given metropolitan area. Contemporary patterns of mobility, however, call into question this foundational assumption. People today move between — and not just within — metropolitan regions, domestically and even internationally. This is particularly so for a subset of residents — high human-capital knowledge workers and the so-called “creative class” — that is prominently coveted in this interregional competition. These modern mobile residents tend to evaluate the policy bundles that drive their locational decisions on a regional scale, weighing the comparative merits of metropolitan areas against each other. And local governments are increasingly recognizing that they need to work together at a regional scale to compete for these residents.This Article argues that this intermetropolitan mobility provides a novel justification for regionalism that counterbalances the strong localist tendency of the traditional Tieboutian view of local governance. Contrary to the predominant assumption in the legal literature, competition for mobile residents is as much an argument for regionalism as it has been for devolution and decentralization. In an era of global cities vying for talent, the mobility case for regionalism has significant doctrinal consequences for debates in local government law and public finance, including the scope of local authority, the nature of regional equity, and the structure of metropolitan collaboration

Parton Distributions Functions of Pion, Kaon and Eta pseudoscalar mesons in the NJL model

Parton distributions of pseudoscalar pi,K and eta mesons obtained within the NJL model using the Pauli-Villars regularization method are analyzed in terms of LO and NLO evolution, and the valence sea quark and gluon parton distributions for the pion are obtained at Q^2 = 4 GeV^2 and compared to existing parametrizations at that scale. Surprisingly, the NLO order effects turn out to be small compared to the LO ones. The valence distributions are in good agreement with experimental analyses, but the gluon and sea distributions come out to be softer in the high-x region and harder in the low-x region than the experimental analyses suggest.Comment: (Latex, epsfig) 17 pages, 7 figure

LHC phenomenology of a two-Higgs-doublet neutrino mass model

We study the LHC search prospects for a model in which the neutrinos obtain Dirac masses from couplings to a second Higgs doublet with tiny vacuum expectation value. The model contains a charged Higgs boson that decays to l nu with branching fractions controlled by the neutrino masses and mixing angles as measured in neutrino oscillation experiments. The most promising signal is electroweak production of H+ H- pairs with decays to l l' pTmiss, where l l' = e+ e-, mu+ mu-, and e+- mu-+. We find that a cut on the kinematic variable M_{T2} eliminates most of the t t and W-pair background. Depending on the neutrino mass spectrum and mixing angles, a 100 (300) GeV charged Higgs could be discovered at the LHC with as little as 8 (24) fb-1 of integrated luminosity at 14 TeV pp center-of-mass energy.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures. V2: reference added, submitted to PRD. V3: minor improvements to text; version to appear in PR