Best Frenemies: Evaluating the Dual Jurisdiction of the Federal Antitrust Agencies

What happens when Congress grants two federal regulatory institutions dual jurisdiction over the enforcement of the antitrust law, but then fails to provide instructions on how to divide up the responsibility? The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have concurrent jurisdiction over the enforcement of federal antitrust law in the United States. Historically, the DOJ and FTC have worked in tandem as a unified front, but tensions have been steadily increasing between the two agencies. These mounting tensions recently reached two very public boiling points. The first was in September of 2008, when the DOJ released a report detailing its enforcement approach under section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The FTC not only refused to join the report, but it also criticized the report for being excessively pro-business and non-interventionist. The second clash occurred on May 2, 2019, when the DOJ interfered in the FTC’s civil enforcement case against Qualcomm Inc. by filing a Statement of Interest in support of the company and in opposition to the FTC’s position. The DOJ’s actions further illustrated the growing cracks in the agencies’ methods for navigating their shared jurisdiction of enforcing the antitrust laws. This Note examines the current system that the two agencies have devised to determine which agency is in charge in the event of a dispute and argues that legislative change is necessary to protect the sanctity and future of antitrust law and enforcement in the United States

Magnetization switching in nanoscale ferromagnetic grains: simulations with heterogeneous nucleation

We present results obtained with various types of heterogeneous nucleation in a kinetic Ising model of magnetization switching in single-domain ferromagnetic nanoparticles. We investigate the effect of the presence of the system boundary and make comparison with simulations on periodic lattices. We also study systems with bulk disorder and compare how two different types of disorder influence the switching behavior.Comment: 3 pages, 4 Postscript figure

The Forty Year Crisis: A Legislative History of the Refugee Act of 1980

This Article analyzes the legal responses of the United States to issues of refugee and asylum policy in the post-World War II period that culminates in the enactment of the 1980 Refugee Act. The article describes the consensus for a humanitarian, nondiscriminatory policy that led to the passage of the Refugee Act. This legislative history demonstrates the effort to develop a coherent and flexible refugee admission policy and to create statutory mechanisms to mediate the conflict between the executive and legislative branches over the control and standards for refugee admissions. The article evaluates the implementation of the Refugee Act, proposals by recent administrators for reform, and offers a series of recommendations for future refugee and asylum policy

Opgørelse af regularitet på jernbaner

Regularitet på jernbaner opgøres forskelligt, hvorfor det er svært at sammenligne regularitet mellem forskellige selskaber og lande. Opgørelse af regularitet vanskeliggøres endvidere af, at regulariteten afhænger af både kapacitetsudnyttelsen, pålideligheden, køreplanstillægget og rettidigheden. Erfaringer viser, at fokus på regularitet kan forbedre regulariteten. Fokus på regularitet kan opnås gennem fx kampagner overfor passagerer og togpersonale. Imidlertid kan ”overdrevent” fokus på togenes regularitet være skadeligt for passagerernes regularitet. Dette skyldes, at fokus på togregularitet kan resultere i, at et forsinket korresponderende tog ikke afventes, at rejsetiden forlænges for at have mere luft i køreplanerne, og at forsinkede tog aflyses for ikke at generere følgeforsinkelser. Det er muligt at opgøre regulariteten for passagerer i stedet for tog. Opgørelse af passagerre-gularitet i stedet for togregularitet betyder, at passagererne ikke stilles ringere ved ”overdrevent” fokus på regularitet. Brug af passagerregularitet i bod-bonus-kontrakter betyder endvi-dere, at der vil være fokus på at sikre så gode forhold for passagererne som muligt. Passagerernes forhold kan endvidere forbedres, ved at sikre det rette tillæg i køreplanerne i forhold til risikoen for forsinkelser og det samlede tidsforbrug, hvilket kan sikres ved simulering og vurdering af passagerforsinkelser