Performance Evaluations Are Not Legitimacy Judgments: A Caution About Interpreting Public Opinions Toward the United States Supreme Court

This Article explains the differences between public opinion of the Supreme Court’s performance and its underlying legitimacy as an institution. Gibson identifies public perception of the Supreme Court as being influenced by partisan and ideological differences. The Article compares “performance evaluations” to “institutional legitimacy,” defined as a construct between authorities and how those connected to them do what they believe to be appropriate. Gibson concludes these separations must be recognized, particularly as the public itself becomes more ideologically polarized and such polarization may permeate the bench itself in the future

On Extracting Mechanical Properties from Nanoindentation at Temperatures up to 1000∘^{\circ}C

Alloyed MCrAlY bond coats, where M is usually cobalt and/or nickel, are essential parts of modern turbine blades, imparting environmental resistance while mediating thermal expansivity differences. Nanoindentation allows the determination of their properties without the complexities of traditional mechanical tests, but was not previously possible near turbine operating temperatures. Here, we determine the hardness and modulus of CMSX-4 and an Amdry-386 bond coat by nanoindentation up to 1000$^{\circ}$C. Both materials exhibit a constant hardness until 400$^{\circ}$C followed by considerable softening, which in CMSX-4 is attributed to the multiple slip systems operating underneath a Berkovich indenter. The creep behaviour has been investigated via the nanoindentation hold segments. Above 700$^{\circ}$C, the observed creep exponents match the temperature-dependence of literature values in CMSX-4. In Amdry-386, nanoindentation produces creep exponents very close to literature data, implying high-temperature nanoindentation may be powerful in characterising these coatings and providing inputs for material, model and process optimisations

Does intolerance dampen dissent? Macro-tolerance and protest in American metropolitan areas

Political tolerance has long been regarded as one of the most important democratic values because intolerant political cultures are believed to foster conformity and inhibit dissent. Although widely endorsed, this theory has rarely been investigated. Using multilevel regression with poststratification to measure levels of macro-tolerance in U.S. metropolitan areas, and event data to measure rates of protest, we test whether cultures of intolerance do indeed inhibit public expressions of dissent. We find that they do: levels of macro-tolerance are positively and strongly associated with higher rates of protest in American metropolitan areas. Our findings have implications for the study of political tolerance, for normative theories of free speech and other civil liberties, and for scholarship on protest and collective action

The Least Accountable Branch?

Under what conditions should judges be held accountable to their constituents for the decisions they make? In framing our question as we have we are immediately tipping our hand on two crucial issues: (1) we assume that judges have constituents, which is, of course, technically true of more than 90% of American judges, and (2) we imply that under at least some conditions, accountability is not only appropriate but required by most theories of liberal democracy. Our arguments run as follows: • In many areas of law, including sentencing, judges are given by statute an enormous amount of discretion. • When law authorizes discretion, law no longer indicates what specific decision should be made. Any decision that falls within the range of discretion authorized by law must be judged to be compatible with the rule-of-law. • Judges may base their discretionary decisions on many factors, including expertise, their own ideological predilections, their own self-interest, the interests of the workgroup of which they are a member, and the preferences and interests of their constituents, to name just a few salient factors

Accounting in Small Business Decisions

Accounting in Small Business Decisions presents the first large-scale empirical examination of how small firms use accounting data to make operating decisions. James L. Gibson is former department chair of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Management. His research areas include organizational behavior and development. W. Warren Haynes is a former scholar at the University of Kentucky.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_business/1001/thumbnail.jp