The Professional Responsibility Case for Valid and Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams

Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate Title VII disparate impact analysis for employers apply just as fundamentally to attorney licensing through principles of professional responsibility and legal ethics.This Article examines the civil rights cases from the 1970s that established bar examiners’ immunity from Title VII. It then analyzes our professional duties of public protection, competence, and nondiscrimination that require valid, nondiscriminatory attorney licensing tests, suggesting that the Title VII framework be borrowed for this purpose. The Article then undertakes that scrutiny, presenting evidence of the disparate impact of bar exams and their unproven validity, and suggesting feasible, less discriminatory modifications and alternatives. In other words, core professional responsibilities require consideration and adoption of valid licensing mechanisms that can reduce any disparate impact in who we permit to enter our profession, and who we exclude

What Law Must Lawyers Know?

What constitutes the body of legal knowledge that every lawyer mustpossess? I used to know, or think I did, but no longer. I suspect no one elseknows either. This difficult question is not just an intriguing theoreticalmatter but also an urgent, practical problem. Licensing regulators assumethat minimal competence in any profession requires certain fundamentalknowledge, skills, and abilities.Bar examiners must determine whatknowledge, skills, and abilities are necessary for minimum competence asan attorney and then design tests and other requirements to attempt to alignlicensure with minimum competence. Today’s tangled attorney licensingpuzzle cannot be solved without better answers to this foundational question:what law must every lawyer know

Hearing on Non-point Source Pollution: The Impacts of Agriculture on Water Quality

Congressional testimony by Robert W. Howarth, before the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Water Resources & the Environment - The Impact of Agriculture on Water Quality. April 19, 2007

Greenhouse gas emissions from domestic hot water: heat pumps compared to most commonly used systems

We estimate the emissions of the two most important greenhouse gasses (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), from the use of modern high-efficiency heat pump water heaters compared to the most commonly used domestic hot water systems: natural gas storage tanks, tankless natural gas demand heaters, electric resistance storage tanks, and tankless electric resistance heaters. We considered both natural gas-powered electric plants and coal-powered plants as the source of the electricity for the heat pumps, the thermal electric storage tanks, and the tankless electric demand heaters. The time-integrated radiative forcing associated with using a heat pump water heater was always smaller than any other means of heating water considered in this study across all time frames including at 20 and 100 years. The estimated amount of CH4 lost during its lifecycle was the most critical factor determining the relative magnitude of the climatic impact. The greatest net climatic benefit within the 20-year time frame was predicted to be achieved when a storage natural gas water heater (the most common system for domestic hot water in the United States) fueled by shale gas was replaced with a high efficiency heat pump water heater powered by coal-generated electricity; the heat pump system powered by renewable electricity would have had an even greater climatic benefit, but was not explicitly modeled in this study. Our analysis provides the first assessment of the GHG footprint associated with using a heat pump water heater, which we demonstrate to be an effective and economically viable way of reducing emissions of GHGs.This study was funded by the Wallace Global Fund, the Park Foundation, and Cornell University

Automotive Stirling engine development program

The major accomplishments were the completion of the Basic Stirling Engine (BSE) and the Stirling Engine System (SES) designs on schedule, the approval and acceptance of those designs by NASA, and the initiation of manufacture of BSE components. The performance predictions indicate the Mod II engine design will meet or exceed the original program goals of 30% improvement in fuel economy over a conventional Internal Combustion (IC) powered vehicle, while providing acceptable emissions. This was accomplished while simultaneously reducing Mod II engine weight to a level comparable with IC engine power density, and packaging the Mod II in a 1985 Celebrity with no external sheet metal changes. The projected mileage of the Mod II Celebrity for the combined urban and highway CVS cycle is 40.9 mpg which is a 32% improvement over the IC Celebrity. If additional potential improvements are verified and incorporated in the Mod II, the mileage could increase to 42.7 mpg

Amplitude variability in satellite photometry of the non-radially pulsating O9.5V star zeta Oph

We report a time-series analysis of satellite photometry of the non-radially pulsating Oe star zeta Oph, principally using data from SMEI obtained 2003--2008, but augmented with MOST and WIRE results. Amplitudes of the strongest photometric signals, at 5.18, 2.96, and 2.67/d, each vary independently over the 6-year monitoring period (from ca. 30 to <2 mmag at 5.18/d), on timescales of hundreds of days. Signals at 7.19/d and 5.18/d have persisted (or recurred) for around two decades. Supplementary spectroscopic observations show an H-alpha emission episode in 2006; this coincided with small increases in amplitudes of the three strongest photometric signals.Comment: MNRAS, in pres

The "Forcipomyia ingrami" Complex in Hawaii (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae)

Biting midges of the genus Forcipomyia are some of the most important pollinators of cacao and other tropical crop plants. A study of the species known as F. ingrami revealed that it has been misidentified, and that the African species formerly known as ingrami, now psilonota, does not occur in Hawaii. Instead there are at least four other species: palikuensis Hardy, a large, shining blackish species from Hawaii and East Maui; kaneohe n. sp., a small shining species from Oahu; pholeter n. sp., a small pale species living in lava tube caves on Hawaii; and hardyi n. sp., a dull brownish species which is extremely common on all the islands; all probably endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. The immature stages of these midges, which breed in wet, decaying vegetation, leaf axils, and aquatic vegetation, have excellent characters diagnostic for species. Characters are illustrated and discussed showing how these species may be distinguished from their closely related congeners from the Pacific, Asia, and Africa. Forcipomyia clara Chan and LeRoux from Singapore is a junior synonym of F. sauteri Kieffer (N. SYNONYMY)

Fundamental stellar parameters of zeta Pup and gamma^2 Vel from HIPPARCOS data

We report parallax measurements by the HIPPARCOS satellite of zeta Puppis and gamma^2 Velorum. The distance of zeta Pup is d=429 (+120/ -77) pc, in agreement with the commonly adopted value to Vela OB2. However, a significantly smaller distance is found for the gamma^2 Vel system: d=258 (+41/-31) pc. The total mass of gamma^2 Vel derived from its parallax, the angular size of the semi-major axis as measured with intensity interferometry, and the period is M(WR+O)=29.5 (+/-15.9) Msun. This result favors the orbital solution of Pike et al. (1983) over that of Moffat et al. (1986). The stellar parameters for the O star companion derived from line blanketed non-LTE atmosphere models are: Teff=34000 (+/-1500) K, log L/Lsun=5.3 (+/-0.15) from which an evolutionary mass of M=29 (+/-4) Msun and an age of 4.0 (+0.8/-0.5) Myr is obtained from single star evolutionary models. With non-LTE model calculations including He and C we derive a luminosity log L/Lsun~4.7 (+/-0.2) for the WR star. The mass-luminosity relation of hydrogen-free WR stars implies a mass of M(WR)~5 (+/-1.5) Msun. From our data we favor an age of ~10 Myr for the bulk of the Vela OB2 stars. Evolutionary scenarios for zeta Pup and gamma^2 Vel are discussed in the light of our results.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letters (misprints corrected

Roads as nitrogen deposition hot spots

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Biogeochemistry 114 (2013): 149-163, doi:10.1007/s10533-013-9847-z.Mobile sources are the single largest source of nitrogen emissions to the atmosphere in the US. It is likely that a portion of mobile-source emissions are deposited adjacent to roads and thus not measured by traditional monitoring networks, which were designed to measure longterm and regional trends in deposition well away from emission sources. To estimate the magnitude of near-source nitrogen deposition, we measured concentrations of both dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and total (inorganic + organic) dissolved nitrogen (TDN) in throughfall (i.e., the nitrogen that comes through the forest canopy) along transects perpendicular to two moderately trafficked roads on Cape Cod in Falmouth MA, coupled with measurements of both DIN and TDN in bulk precipitation made in adjacent open fields at the same transect distances. We used the TDN throughfall data to estimate total nitrogen deposition, including dry gaseous nitrogen deposition in addition to wet deposition and dry particle deposition. There was no difference in TDN in the bulk collectors along the transects at either site; however TDN in the throughfall collectors was always higher closest to the road and decreased with distance. These patterns were driven primarily by differences in the inorganic N and not the organic N. Annual throughfall deposition was 8.7 (+0.4) and 6.8 (+0.5) TDN - kg N ha-1 yr-1 at sites 10 m and 150 m away from the road respectively. We also characterized throughfall away from a non-road edge (power line right-of-way) to test whether the increased deposition observed near road edges was due to deposition near emission sources or due to a physical, edge effect causing higher deposition. The increased deposition we observed near roads was due to increases in inorganic N especially NH4 +. This increased deposition was not the result of an edge effect; rather it is due to near source deposition of mobile source emissions. We scaled these results to the entire watershed and estimate that by not taking into account the effects of increased gaseous N deposition from mobile sources we are underestimating the amount of N deposition to the watershed by 13% - 25%.This research was supported by Woods Hole SeaGrant (grant NA06OAR4170021), NSF IGERT (grant DGE 0221658), an Edna Bailey Sussman Environmental Internship Award from Cornell University, and a Mellon Foundation award though Cornell University.2014-04-1

Studies in the Lake Ontario Basin using ERTS-1 and high altitude data

Studies in the Lake Ontario Basin are designed to provide input for models of river basin discharge and macro-scale features of lake circulation. Lake studies appear to require high altitude imagery to record the dynamic features of Lake Ontario so that ERTS-1 data may be interpreted. Land area studies require input of soil moisture, land use and soil-sediment-geomorphology measurements some of which appear to be available, on a regional scale from ERTS-1 products