Inside State Courts: Improving the Market for State Trial Court Law Clerks

The power of state trial courts is tremendous. Charged with resolving 95% of the nation’s legal cases, state trial judges decide “the law” for thousands of litigants and criminal defendants every year, not to mention countless others impacted or bound by their decisions. Yet for decades state judges and academics have warned of a “crisis in the courts.” Many state courts today remain chronically underfunded, although they rarely ever compose more than 1% of the average state budget (and never more than 2%). State chief judges have decried the waning quality of state courts, arguing that inadequate funding has led to undue court delays, case backlogs, and poorly decided cases, placing state courts “at the tipping point of dysfunction.” Yet despite nearly four decades of court funding litigation and legislative debate, state court reform efforts remain limited in many states by one sobering and largely neglected fact: local government is in the driver’s seat on funding state trial courts and determining the quality of justice. When court funding is decentralized, and local communities must pay for their own court services, the property and income wealth of the community determines the quality of justice in that particular area. Unsurprisingly, decentralized state court funding systems have tended to benefit only courts in affluent communities, where the highest tax revenue and per capita income base predominate, while courts in poorer locales are often left lacking sufficient funding and resources to operate efficiently. This fact casts a long shadow over the ideal of equal opportunity to justice. This Article refracts the problem of local state court funding through one vitally important, but until now unstudied, judicial resource: state trial court clerkships

Should The U.S. Seriously Contemplate Initiating A Value-Added Tax? What Are Other Countries Doing With This Type Of Tax?

The U. S. Tax System needs extensive changes. As Congress addresses these modifications, should it consider a value-added system? To what extent are other countries using the value-added tax

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Earned Value Management System Criteria

In December 1996, the Cost/Schedule Control Systems Criteria (C/SCSC) was officially replaced by the Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) criteria. The switch to EVMS, coupled with current acquisition reform changes, have left many wondering what the effects of these changes will be. This thesis defines the costs and benefits of the old C/SCSC, and then compares them. Additionally, this thesis discusses the changes accompanying the switch to EVMS and the effect on the costs and benefits. The marginal costs of C/SCSC are defined as the difference between the costs of a C/SCSC compliant system and a contractors normal management control system. The marginal system compliance costs are 334-481 person days, while the marginal operating costs are 50% of the C/SCSC compliant operating costs. Fourteen benefits of C/SCSC are detailed in this thesis. The most important benefit discovered was the data reliability that comes with a criteria compliant management control system. The main difference between C/SCSC and EVMS is the system certification process. Under C/SCSC, DoD teams would have to certify a contractor\u27s system. Under EVMS, contractors have the ability to self-certify their system (with final government approval). Cost savings may result through self-certification without reductions in the benefits

The “Vanishing Trial”: Arbitrating Wrongful Death

Within the past four decades, private arbitration has spread apace across the American legal landscape. The “mass production” of arbitration clauses has pervaded modern business life, relegating a multitude of legal doctrines from the public courthouse into the private realm. The results have been both acute and invidious. Modern judicial preferences for arbitration have given way to enforcement in areas of the formerly unenforceable. Courts are now compelling new classes of claims, previously thought to be beyond the pale of any arbitration agreement. The latest target in this expedition is the wrongful death action, with courts now shifting wrongful death litigants into private arbitration when they never agreed to arbitrate their disputes in the first place. The recent paradigm shift into wrongful death arbitration raises a complex blend of conceptual, practical, normative, and doctrinal problems. Under modern judicial preferences for arbitration, the problems that inhere within wrongful death arbitration have remained largely hidden. In this article, we expose these problems and develop a more nuanced and coherent rule of analysis that comprehends the history and purpose behind these two legal doctrines: wrongful death liability and arbitration. First, we show that courts compelling arbitration in this area distort the very rights wrongful death liability historically sought to defend—including the property rights of family members who depended upon the decedent for economic support. Next, we explain that, by denying family members access to public tribunals and punitive damage awards, courts compelling wrongful death arbitration erode the basic deterrence function of wrongful death liability. In reaching our conclusion, we urge a bright-line rule that rejects wrongful death arbitration as fundamentally inconsistent with the historical intent and purpose behind both wrongful death liability and arbitration

Post-natal Survival of Raccoons in Relation to Female Age and Denning Behavior

We measured post-natal survival of radio-collared raccoons 1-5 months old in southwest Iowa, 1988-1989. We compared survival of young nurtured by yearling and adult females and related den site selection to survival functions using proportional hazards models. Adult females used upland and farmstead habitats note frequently than yearlings, whereas yearling females used lowland habitats note frequently. Tree cavities and beds on the ground were used most frequently. Adult females denned in buildings 13% of the time and in holes in the ground 9.5% of the time, whereas yearlings frequently tested with litters in beds on the ground (31%). Microhab1tat characteristics including such factors as tree size, surrounding vegetation, and den characteristics had no influence on use. We observed 9 mortalities of 64 earmarked young, 4 caused by dogs, the remaining including vehicle collisions, predation, and disease. All mortalities occurred after litters moved from their natal den to a post-natal den site. We could not show significant differences in survival of young nurtured by yearling and adult females and the best estimate of post-natal survival of raccoons from 22 May to 15 September was 0.65. Post-natal survival was positively influenced by the variety of habitats and den types used by females and their young. Denning habitat selection and post-natal survival of young, particularly those of adult females, may have an important influence on population levels

Beable trajectories for revealing quantum control mechanisms

The dynamics induced while controlling quantum systems by optimally shaped laser pulses have often been difficult to understand in detail. A method is presented for quantifying the importance of specific sequences of quantum transitions involved in the control process. The method is based on a ``beable'' formulation of quantum mechanics due to John Bell that rigorously maps the quantum evolution onto an ensemble of stochastic trajectories over a classical state space. Detailed mechanism identification is illustrated with a model 7-level system. A general procedure is presented to extract mechanism information directly from closed-loop control experiments. Application to simulated experimental data for the model system proves robust with up to 25% noise.Comment: Latex, 20 pages, 13 figure

Use of Supplements for Maintenance of Nelore Bullocks in \u3ci\u3eBrachiaria decumbens\u3c/i\u3e, during the Dry Season in Acre, Brazilian Amazon

This study had the objective of evaluating animal performance and net economic returns of Nelore bullocks receiving: 1) mineral mixture (MM), 2) mineral mixture + urea (MMU), and 3) multiple supplement (MS), during the dry season of 1999 in Acre, Brazilian Amazon. The animals were maintained in pastures of Brachiaria decumbens, and liveweight gains, forage availability and chemical composition were assessed during the experimental period. Liveweight gains of 0.58, 0.65 and 0.60 kg/day, respectively, for MM, MMU and MS, were not different (P\u3e 0.05). The use of MMU provided additional net economic return of 10.8% in comparison with the treatment with MM

A Phase I/II Study of a 72-h Continuous Infusion of Etoposide in Advanced Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Purpose. The study was performed to assess the antitumour activity and toxicity of a 72-h continuous infusion of single-agent etoposide as second-line treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic soft tissue sarcoma (STS), following reports of substantial activity using this schedule of etoposide administration as first-line treatment in combination with ifosfamide

Constitutive expression of Yes-associated protein (Yap) in adult skeletal muscle fibres induces muscle atrophy and myopathy

Peer reviewedPublisher PD