Teaching Legal Frameworks

This book chapter describes the process of developing legal frameworks. Legal frameworks are a critical element in basic legal analysis. They set out the questions courts ask when addressing a particular issue. Law students need to learn the applicable framework before proceeding with any type of rigorous legal analysis. This chapter also discusses an approach to teaching law students the skill of constructing legal frameworks, providing three concrete examples in the areas of Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facbookdisplay/1021/thumbnail.jp

Bayesian factorizations of big sparse tensors

It has become routine to collect data that are structured as multiway arrays (tensors). There is an enormous literature on low rank and sparse matrix factorizations, but limited consideration of extensions to the tensor case in statistics. The most common low rank tensor factorization relies on parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC), which expresses a rank $k$ tensor as a sum of rank one tensors. When observations are only available for a tiny subset of the cells of a big tensor, the low rank assumption is not sufficient and PARAFAC has poor performance. We induce an additional layer of dimension reduction by allowing the effective rank to vary across dimensions of the table. For concreteness, we focus on a contingency table application. Taking a Bayesian approach, we place priors on terms in the factorization and develop an efficient Gibbs sampler for posterior computation. Theory is provided showing posterior concentration rates in high-dimensional settings, and the methods are shown to have excellent performance in simulations and several real data applications

Health Insurance on the Internet and the Economics of Search

This paper explores the level and dispersion of premiums paid for individual health insurance by comparing asking price' data posted on an electronic insurance exchange with survey data on premiums actually paid in the period just before the advent of electronic exchanges. The primary theoretical question is whether the pattern of differences between asking prices and transactions prices can be explained using a simple search theory. We hypothesize, following suggestions of Stigler and Rothschild, that higher risks who expect to pay higher premiums for a given policy will engage in more intensive search than lower risks, given the same distribution of asking prices. As a result, for a given distribution of asking prices, the dispersion of premiums actually paid (transactions prices) will be smaller for higher risks. Therefore, the introduction of an electronic exchange should have a larger potential influence on the dispersion and level of premiums paid for lower risks than for higher risks. We find evidence consistent with each of these hypotheses.

Legal Scholarship, Humility, and the Scientific Method

This essay responds to the question of What next for law and behavioral biology? by describing an approach to legal scholarship that relies on the scientific method. There are two steps involved in this approach to legal scholarship. First, the legal scholar must become familiar with an area of scientific research that is relevant to the development of law and policy. (This essay uses behavioral biology research as an example.) Second, the legal scholar must seek and form relationships across disciplines, becoming an active member of a scientific research team that conducts studies relevant to particular issues of law and policy. This approach to legal scholarship does not conceive law as a science. It also does not place the legal scholar in the role of a scientist or empiricist. Instead, it places the legal scholar in a much more modest role -- as a participating member of a scientific research team. In this role, the legal scholar contributes to a research endeavor that employs the scientific method to produce new knowledge mostly in small, incremental steps. This scholar strives for nothing more than to participate in the production of new knowledge and the effective communication of that knowledge to other scholars, legal decisionmakers, and policymakers. It is a role that requires humility and promises significant advances in knowledge relevant to law and policy

Child Placement Decisions: The Relevance of Facial Resemblance and Biological Relationships

This article discusses two studies of evolution and human behavior addressing child-adult relationships and explores implications for policies and practices surrounding placement of children in foster homes. The first study indicates that men favor children whose facial features resemble their own facial features. This study may justify public child welfare decisionmakers in considering facial resemblance as they attempt to place children in safe foster homes. The second study indicates that parents are likely to invest more in children who are biologically related to them, thus enhancing their longterm well-being. Among other implications, this study may justify public child welfare decisionmakers in attempting to preserve biological families and avoid the removal of children from biological parents. It may also justify maintaining contact between biological parents and children even if removal is necessary. Although this article recognizes that the studies do not provide for comprehensive decisionmaking rules, the article articulates how the studies can be used to incrementally construct, test, and improve policies and practices in a specific area of public activity

The Multiethnic Placement Act: Threat to Foster Child Safety and Well-being?

Despite the efforts of public officials to reduce the time children spend in foster care, many children live in foster homes for a substantial portion of their childhoods. In fact, a child placed in a foster home may remain in that home for an extended period, with a significant possibility of remaining there permanently. In light of this situation, the decision to place a child in a particular foster home is extremely important. The federal Multiethnic Placement Act ( MEPA ) significantly affects foster care placement decisions. This law expressly prohibits public child welfare agencies from delaying or denying a child\u27s foster care or adoptive placement on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Federal officials have interpreted MEPA as barring public agencies from routinely and systematically considering race when placing children in particular foster homes. In other words, MEPA precludes these agencies from pursuing children\u27s interests through a policy or practice of matching a child\u27s race with that of his or her foster parent. To date, commentators who have examined MEPA have focused their attention on identifying and weighing the benefits and harms of transracial adoption for minority children and communities. As a consequence, they have not addressed the impact of MEPA on foster care placement decisions in any detail. In contrast, this Article examines foster care placement decisions. More specifically, this Article uses behavioral biology research on kinship cues and social psychology research on in-group favoritism to formulate a hypothesis that has implications for MEPA\u27s prohibition on the routine consideration of race in making foster care placement decisions. Namely, children placed with non-kin, same-race foster parents are likely to be safer and healthier than children placed with non-kin, different-race foster parents. The Article calls for a test of this hypothesis, explains how such a test may proceed, and discusses possible implications for laws and policies that address race and foster care

Design of an Optimum Thrust Nozzle for a Typical Hypersonic Trajectory Through Computational Analysis

An analysis of a planar supersonic nozzle for a NASP type vehicle was performed with a computer program that used the new upwind flux difference splitting (FDS) method. Thrust optimization, off-design performance, and cowl angle parametric analyses were accomplished, using FDS code, an oblique shock wave solver program, and a Scramjet cycle analysis code, at six points on a 1000 PSF maximum dynamic pressure trajectory, for the Mach numbers 7.5, 10.0, 12.5, 15.0, 17.5, and 20.0. Results from the single parameter number range from 7.5 to 20.0, the attachment angles identified as optimum for the respective trajectory points were 38.0, 38.6, 30.0, 24.6, 20.6, and 17.8. From this range of angles, the 20.6 degree nozzle was found to produce the minimum off-design performance losses over the entire trajectory. this deteriorization was based on selection criteria biased toward the higher Mach numbers. Using the 20.6 degree nozzle attachment angle, a cowl angle parametric analysis was performed to determine the extent to which off design performance losses could be recovered

Foster Care Safety and the Kinship Cue of Attitude Similarity

This article brings behavioral biology research on attitude similarity as a kinship cue to bear on the laws, policies, and practices surrounding the placement of children in foster care. The basic logic of the article relies on the nature and power of kinship cues. Individuals perceive others as kin through fallible, often unconscious mechanisms. Because these mechanisms are fallible, individuals may come to believe that unrelated persons are kin. Once a cue gives rise to the perception of kinship, the individual who acquires this perception about another person is more likely to treat that other person favorably, providing important benefits to this other person. This prosocial behavior could certainly benefit foster children. More specifically, if foster parents perceive their foster children as kin, they may provide better care, likely reducing incidents of maltreatment. Attitude similarity serves as a kinship cue. Individuals who share attitudes on a variety of items are more likely to treat each other favorably. This article explores how public actors may be able to construct a kinship cue that elicits prosocial behavior by matching foster parents with children who share their attitudes