To Skin a Cat: Qui Tam Actions as a State Legislative Response to Concepcion

The Supreme Court\u27s decision in Concepcion is widely regarded as heralding the demise of small-claims class actions whenever contracts of adhesion are involved in the transaction-which means for virtually all consumer and employment claims. Amending the Federal Arbitration Act to overturn Concepcion would be a relatively simple exercise in legislative drafting, but in the current political climate such efforts are unlikely to succeed. Thus far, proposed federal corrective legislation has failed to pass, and federal agency regulation of class waivers has been lacking. State legislatures might have the political ability to pass corrective legislation, but virtually all state limitations on class waivers in mandatory arbitration clauses are foreclosed by federal preemption under Concepcion. This Article proposes an alternative approach that could be taken at the state level: statutory qui tam actions to enforce civil penalties for violations of state consumer protection and employment laws. A qui tam action is a representative action brought on behalf of the state, to enforce the state\u27s claim for civil penalties, rather than a class action to recover compensation for individual injuries. The penalties are owed to the state, with a share of the recovery payable to the plaintiff as an incentive to private enforcement. The action is for the public benefit, for the law enforcement purpose of ensuring compliance with state law, rather than for private benefit. Thus, the rationale 0f Concepcion simply does not apply to such actions. Indeed, allowing private parties to contract away the state legislature\u27s chosen means of enforcing claims that belong to the state would seriously impair the state\u27s ability to execute core governmental functions. It would be an intrusion into state sovereignty that should give pause to neo-federalists such as the majority in Concepcion. California\u27s Private Attorneys General Act (PA GA), which provides a mechanism for private enforcement of civil penalties for violation of the state labor code, is an example of how a state might use the qui tam model to hold defendants accountable for mass harms without being vulnerable to FAA preemption under Concepcion. After describing the operation of PAGA and how courts have interpreted it, I propose some simple adjustments that would increase the likelihood that courts would find Concepcion inapplicable to a PAGA-style qui tam statute. Qui tam actions are not a perfect substitute for class actions, because they can provide only limited compensation to victims. But they may partially fill the deterrence gap that Concepcion is widely expected to create

EVALUATION OF EFFECTIVE MICROORGANISMS (EM) TECHNOLOGY IN MAIZE (Zea mays L.) GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT AND YIELD IN MOROGORO TANZANIA

The field experiment was conducted at Tushikamane Centre Kilakala, Morogoro Tanzania to investigate the effect of EM technology on maize (Zea mays L.) growth, development and yield. Maize is a major cereal consumed; over 80% of population depends on maize for food in Tanzania. Low soil fertility, insect pests and diseases are among the primary constraints in maize production. This is due to continuous cultivation without fertilizing the soil, poor and lack of proper measures to control pest and diseases. Most farmers in both rural and urban areas of Tanzania are not aware with the use of organic fertilizers especially the EM (Effective Microorganism) technology in agriculture to increase crop yield without the use of agricultural chemicals or artificial fertilizers, the method of farming is inexpensive, capable of producing high-quality products, high yield produces and preserving the environment. Therefore, this research work mainly aimed at studying the efficiency of EM technology on maize (Zea mays L.) crop performance in the field. Five treatments comprising of EM technology EM-Bokashi, Bokashi and EM-A, EM-FPE and EM-5, combination of Bokashi, EM-A, EMFPE and EM5, and absolute control were compared in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Bokashi leaves (3.7%N) at 1851.9kg/ha, 200 mls of EMA mixed with water to make a 2L solution, EMFPE and EM5 were mixed with water at 200mls to get a 2L solution which was sprayed thrice a week scheduled for application. Three weeks were scheduled for application of EM. Application of EM-Bokashi produced an average yield of 3.06 tonha-1, EM-Bokashi and EM-A produced grain yield of 3.24 tonha-1, EMFPE and EM-5 produced 3.11 tonha-1 and, application of all EM-Bokashi, EM-A, EMFPE and EM-5 produced grain yield of 3.51 tonha-1, while absolute control produced 2.12 tonha-1. Application of EM improved maize crop yield

German General Social Survey 2000: English translation of the German "ALLBUS"-Questionnaire

Der ALLBUS-Fragebogen der Deutschen Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage 2000 umfasst über 100 Punkte zu persönlichen, sozialen und politischen Ansichten. Dabei finden die folgenden Aspekte Berücksichtigung: (1) Familie und Partnerschaft, (2) Beruf, (3) Politik, (4) soziales Verhalten und Einstellungen, (5) Identität, (6) individuelle Situation, (7) Erwartungen, (8) soziale Selbsteinschätzung, (9) soziale Ungleichheit, (10) Wohlfahrtsstaat, (11) Demokratie in Deutschland, (12) wirtschaftliche Situation in Deutschland, (13) Erziehung und Ausbildung sowie (14) demografische Angabender Befragten. (ICG2

A Study into the Adoption of, and Enthusiasm for Agile Development Methodologies Within Further Education

This paper describes a survey of UK Further Education professionals in order to determine the uptake and use of Agile Methodologies. Thirty individuals, including directors, managers and developers, completed the survey. The results indicate a low level (\u3c25%) of Agile adoption within the sector, and this mirrors findings in the wider public sector, despite there being a backdrop of reduced funding and government pressure towards carrying out Agile projects. Interestingly, where institutions have adopted Agile the level of impact measured shows little improvement over traditional processes. Despite the FE sector being a place where change and teamwork would find a natural home, the enthusiasm for Agile systems was also low in the respondents to this survey and given that these individuals were recruited from a mailing list for those interested in Agile, these results are particularly interesting

Mesoscopic non-Hermitian skin effect

We discuss a generalization of the non-Hermitian skin effect to finite-size photonic structures with neither gain nor loss in the bulk and purely real energy spectrum under periodic boundary conditions (PBC). We show that such systems can still have significant portions of eigenmodes concentrated at the edges and that this edge concentration can be linked to the non-trivial point-gap topology of the size-dependent regularized PBC spectrum, accounting for the radiative losses. As an example, we consider the chiral waveguide quantum electrodynamics platform with an array of atoms coupled to the waveguide. The proposed mesoscopic analogue of the non-Hermitian skin effect could be potentially applied to other seemingly lossless photonic structures, such as chiral resonant all-dielectric metamaterials.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure