How states learn from the success or failure of other states’ laws in federal courts.

Why make the same mistakes as those who have gone before you? In new research into state lawmaking, Rachael K. Hinkle finds that legislators often put that principle into practice. She finds that when the Supreme Court rules that a state’s law is constitutional, it is 27 percent more likely that another state will adopt that same type of law. In addition, using software originally designed to detect plagiarism, she also uncovers that these other states will borrow up to 7 percent of the law’s text, a probability which triples if a state’s own federal circuit court declares the law to be constitutional

Rachael K. Hinkle, Unintended Consequences. How the Publication Norm as a Tool of Compromise Reduces the Influence of Female and Minority Judges

Even when women and people of color achieve positions of political power, that does not guarantee they will be able to wield the same amount of influence as similarly-situated white men. Institutional norms may combine with social constructions of difference to create a system in which power is distributed disproportionately. Such a pattern is evident in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Benign procedural practices and laudable deliberative processes combine with divergent viewpoints generated by fundamentally different social experiences to create a system in which power is exercised unequally

The Role of the U.S. Courts of Appeals in Legal Development: An Empirical Analysis

What are the causes and consequences of legal development? In recent years courts scholars have begun to address these broad and challenging questions, yet there is still much work to be done. The intermediate level of the federal court system: a.k.a., circuit courts) provides an institutional context replete with opportunities to extend our theoretical and empirical understanding of legal development. My dissertation takes advantage of these opportunities in three ways. First, I explore legal constraint by comparing citation to and treatment of circuit court precedents. A precedent is binding in its own circuit, but merely persuasive in other circuits. Consequently, if law constrains judges the effect of ideology on how a precedent is treated should be significantly less when it is considered in its own circuit than when considered by a sister circuit. Second, I investigate the nuances of a circuit\u27s citation to its own binding precedent to determine how it is influenced by strategic anticipation of whether a case will be reviewed and overturned by the entire circuit. Third, I examine the impact of federal courts on state policy discussion, positing that both adoption and content of a policy will be influenced by federal court rulings on the constitutionality of a previously adopted statute

Invisible Pension Investments

A large share of the more than $6.28 trillion in private pension plan assets is held in certain types of indirect investment vehicles. If those vehicles file their own annual return with the Department of Labor they are called “direct filing entities” (or DFEs), and pension plans that invest in them are excused from providing detailed information concerning the assets, liabilities, and investment performance of the DFEs. Consequently, the publicly-available summary financial information reported by pension plans investing through one or more DFEs is seriously incomplete: while a plan must identify the categorical nature of its direct investments (for example, as common or preferred stock, corporate or government debt, real estate, etc.), indirect investments through a DFE are reported only as interests in the DFE, without regard to the underlying nature of the DFE’s assets and liabilities. Matching the DFE’s return with the returns filed by plans that invest through the DFE is theoretically possible, but it is technically difficult and has not been comprehensively achieved. This study undertakes the task of linking returns filed by large private pension plans and DFEs in 2008. After explaining the types of DFEs, summary statistics on the extent of pension plan investment through DFEs and the composition of DFE portfolios are reported. The process employed to link the holdings of each DFE to its investor-plans is described, followed by description and analysis of the results. Important differences in the asset allocations of pension plans of various types are revealed, and the portfolio compositions of plans that do and do not invest through DFEs are compared. Because thirty-five percent of plans that invest in a DFE are found to file internally inconsistent returns that preclude successful linking of DFE financial information to the investor-plan, the plan characteristics associated with such deficient filings are investigated. Although the composition of DFE portfolios is currently invisible to plan participants and the general public, we find little evidence that DFEs have been systematically exploited to obscure the identity of pension plan investments. Finally, the results of this study are reviewed in light of the purposes of pension plan financial disclosure. Even if routine, accurate, and comprehensive matching of DFE financial information with investor-plans were available, ERISA’s text and policies support the regulatory formulation of a far more detailed digital disclosure regime.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116092/1/vatr13.pd

How one circuit court judge can stop a higher court from establishing a legal precedent

Not all legal cases establish a legal precedent – federal circuit court appeal opinions often go unpublished and thus only apply to the dispute in question. In new research, Morgan L.W. Hazelton, Rachael K. Hinkle, and Jee Seon Jeon find that the decision whether or not to publish such opinions can have an influence on whether a judge issues a dissent from the majority. If the circuit court is substantially different ideologically from a higher court, judges can pre-emptively silence a dissenting opinion by deciding that it will not be published, thus negating the chance that their decision will be reviewed by a higher court

The Long and the Short of It: The Influence of Briefs on Outcomes in the Roberts Court

This Article considers the role of information, affected groups, and persuasion in the connection between justice votes and the content of briefs in the Roberts Court. Hazelton, Hinkle, and Spriggs shed new light on the previously observed finding that the side with the most briefs is more likely to win. The authors find that the true advantage lies in providing the Court with a greater amount of information overall, and that holding total information constant, a greater number of briefs is, surprisingly, a disadvantage

Longitudinal imaging highlights preferential basal ganglia circuit atrophy in Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the Huntingtin gene (HTT), coding for polyglutamine in the Huntingtin protein, with longer CAG repeats causing earlier age of onset. The variable 'Age' × ('CAG'-L), where 'Age' is the current age of the individual, 'CAG' is the repeat length and L is a constant (reflecting an approximation of the threshold), termed the 'CAG Age Product' (CAP) enables the consideration of many individuals with different CAG repeat expansions at the same time for analysis of any variable and graphing using the CAG Age Product score as the X axis. Structural MRI studies have showed that progressive striatal atrophy begins many years prior to the onset of diagnosable motor Huntington's disease, confirmed by longitudinal multicentre studies on three continents, including PREDICT-HD, TRACK-HD and IMAGE-HD. However, previous studies have not clarified the relationship between striatal atrophy, atrophy of other basal ganglia structures, and atrophy of other brain regions. The present study has analysed all three longitudinal datasets together using a single image segmentation algorithm and combining data from a large number of subjects across a range of CAG Age Product score. In addition, we have used a strategy of normalizing regional atrophy to atrophy of the whole brain, in order to determine which regions may undergo preferential degeneration. This made possible the detailed characterization of regional brain atrophy in relation to CAG Age Product score. There is dramatic selective atrophy of regions involved in the basal ganglia circuit-caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens, globus pallidus and substantia nigra. Most other regions of the brain appear to have slower but steady degeneration. These results support (but certainly do not prove) the hypothesis of circuit-based spread of pathology in Huntington's disease, possibly due to spread of mutant Htt protein, though other connection-based mechanisms are possible. Therapeutic targets related to prion-like spread of pathology or other mechanisms may be suggested. In addition, they have implications for current neurosurgical therapeutic approaches, since delivery of therapeutic agents solely to the caudate and putamen may miss other structures affected early, such as nucleus accumbens and output nuclei of the striatum, the substantia nigra and the globus pallidus

Precision Analysis of Evolved Stars

Evolved stars dominate galactic spectra, enrich the galactic medium, expand to change their planetary systems, eject winds of a complex nature, produce spectacular nebulae and illuminate them, and transfer material between binary companions. While doing this, they fill the HR diagram with diagnostic loops that write the story of late stellar evolution. Evolved stars sometimes release unfathomable amounts of energy in neutrinos, light, kinetic flow, and gravitational waves. During these late-life times, stars evolve complexly, with expansion, convection, mixing, pulsation, mass loss. Some processes have virtually no spatial symmetries, and are poorly addressed with low-resolution measurements and analysis. Even a "simple" question as how to model mass loss resists solution. However, new methods offer increasingly diagnostic tools. Astrometry reveals populations and groupings. Pulsations/oscillations support study of stellar interiors. Optical/radio interferometry enable 2-3d imagery of atmospheres and shells. Bright stars with rich molecular spectra and velocity fields are a ripe opportunity for imaging with high spatial and spectral resolution, giving insight into the physics and modeling of later stellar evolution

Precision Analysis of Evolved Stars

Evolved stars dominate galactic spectra, enrich the galactic medium, expand to change their planetary systems, eject winds of a complex nature, produce spectacular nebulae and illuminate them, and transfer material between binary companions. While doing this, they fill the HR diagram with diagnostic loops that write the story of late stellar evolution. Evolved stars sometimes release unfathomable amounts of energy in neutrinos, light, kinetic flow, and gravitational waves. During these late-life times, stars evolve complexly, with expansion, convection, mixing, pulsation, mass loss. Some processes have virtually no spatial symmetries, and are poorly addressed with low-resolution measurements and analysis. Even a "simple" question as how to model mass loss resists solution. However, new methods offer increasingly diagnostic tools. Astrometry reveals populations and groupings. Pulsations/oscillations support study of stellar interiors. Optical/radio interferometry enable 2-3d imagery of atmospheres and shells. Bright stars with rich molecular spectra and velocity fields are a ripe opportunity for imaging with high spatial and spectral resolution, giving insight into the physics and modeling of later stellar evolution.Comment: Decadal2020 Science White Paper; 6 pages, 12 figure