Constitutional Law - Spending Clause - Twenty-First Amendment

The United States Supreme Court has held that the withholding of federal highway funds from states that failed to comply with a congressional directive establishing twenty-one as the states\u27 minimum age for alcohol consumption and purchase is a valid exercise of the spending power. South Dakota v. Dole, 107 S. Ct. 2793 (1987)

Presidential Inaction and the Separation of Powers

Imagine two presidents. The first campaigned on an issue that requires him to expand the role of the federal government-—maybe it was civil rights legislation or stricter sentencing for federal criminals. In contrast, the second president pushes policies—-financial deregulation, perhaps, or drug decriminalization—-that mean less government involvement. Each is elected in a decisive fashion, and each claims a mandate to advance his agenda. The remaining question is what steps each must take to achieve his goals. The answer is clear, and it is surprising. To implement his preferred policies, the first president faces the full gauntlet of checks and balances-—from the formal requirements of bicameralism and presentment to the modern congressional vetogates. And yet the president aiming to govern by inaction faces virtually none. Instead, to get the federal government out of a particular issue, the second president needs only to ensure that existing laws are not implemented. Critically, he can achieve this goal without the help of Congress or the courts; he can simply direct his executive agencies accordingly. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. James Madison famously articulated a functional account of our governmental structure that would use overlapping authority to prevent any single branch from unilaterally making policy. No doubt Madison and the other Federalists had in mind runaway action; after all, the principal concern in Madison’s day was a Congress run amok. But the core principle at play admits of no such restriction. In the modern administrative state, the president’s refusal to enforce duly enacted statutes—-what we call “presidential inaction”—-will often dictate national policy but will receive virtually none of Madison’s checks and balances. This asymmetry between action and inaction cannot be justified if we are to remain faithful to the notion that interbranch competition is the core virtue of our constitutional regime. Yet the stakes are even greater than a need to update our theory of the separation of powers. Unchecked inaction fuels an imbalanced political structure that endows the modern executive with more power to change the scope of government than the Framers-—or even the architects of the New Deal—-ever imagined. This imbalance amounts to a thumb on the scale, allowing presidents to abandon unilaterally the governmental functions to which they are opposed. In other words, it creates a structural bias against government intervention. The separation of powers is, of course, intended to create friction, to make it difficult to pass legislation. We consider this a feature of our system, not a bug. But once legislation is enacted, the president is obligated to enforce it. Put simply, if the president does not want to enforce a law, he must advocate for its repeal. He may not simply ignore it. The relative institutional capacities of the various players make the solution clear: our approach would call on Congress to assume the role of robust adversary to the president, a role it can serve far better than the courts. Moreover, examining interbranch relations with inaction in mind would offer new insights on old problems, from statutory interpretation to federalism

Media Framing and Sources Quoted in Coverage of the Name, Image, and Likeness Debate

Athletes competing at NCAA institutions acquired the ability to profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) on July 1, 2021. The time period leading up to this point was marked by contentious debate about college athletes and “amateurism” in the sports media. To better understand the nature of this mediated debate, the current study investigated framing in media coverage of NIL rights with a particular focus on the types of sources quoted by journalists during a two-year period from 2019-2021. A total of 113 media articles were identified for analysis. NCAA officials were the most consistently quoted sources in this media coverage, appearing in 59.3% of articles. Overall, media coverage often privileged the NCAA’s viewpoint that any disruption to the amateur “collegiate model” would be detrimental to the future of college sport. In contrast, current college athletes were quoted in just 5.3% of articles. Although other sources, such as politicians (quoted in 47.5% of articles), often spoke on behalf of college athletes about the rights they should be entitled to, the actual voices of athletes themselves were largely absent from this mediated debate. The exclusion of athletes’ voices is relevant given ongoing discussion about amateurism and the rights of college athletes

A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law

"This volume is an indispensable resource for scholars and students of medieval Scandinavia. This polyglot dictionary draws on the vast and vibrant range of vernacular legal terminology found in medieval Scandinavian texts – terminology which yields valuable insights into the quotidian realities of crime and retribution; the processes, application and execution of laws; and the cultural and societal concerns underlying the development and promulgation of such laws. Legal texts constitute an unparalleled – and often untapped – source of information for those studying the literature, languages and history of medieval and Viking Age Scandinavia. The Lexicon is a welcome contribution to the study of medieval Scandinavia on two counts: firstly, it makes accessible a wealth of vernacular historical documents for an English-speaking audience. Secondly, it presents legal terminologies that span the languages and geographies of medieval Scandinavia, drawing on twenty-five legal texts composed in Old Swedish, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Gutnish and Old Faroese. By collating and juxtaposing legal terms, the Lexicon thus offers its readers a fascinating, comprehensive window into the legal milieu of medieval Scandinavia as a unified whole. It is in this respect that A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law differs from the other major lexica that came before it: where relevant, it gathers closely related terms from multiple Nordic languages beneath single headwords within single entries. This approach illuminates the differences (and similarities) in usage of specific lexical items and legal concepts across geographic areas and through time. This dictionary contains over 6000 Nordic headwords, and is laid out as a standard reference work. It is easily navigable, with a clear structure to each entry, providing English equivalents; textual references; phrases in which headwords frequently appear; cross-references to aid readers in locating synonyms or cognate terms within the lexicon; and references to published works. Roughly one quarter of the headwords supply semantic analysis and detailed information on the textual and historical contexts within which a term might appear, which help the reader to engage with the broader legal concepts underlying specific terms. The Lexicon is thus designed to provide its readers not only with succinct single definitions of Norse legal terms, but with a sense of the wider Scandinavian legal landscape and worldview within which these concepts were developed.

The Digital Laocoön: Replication, Narrative and Authenticity

This paper examines what qualities and affordances of a digital object allow it to emerge as a new cultural object in its own right. Due to the relationship between authenticity and replication, this is particularly important for digital objects derived from real world objects, such as digital ‘replicas’. Such objects are not an inauthentic or surrogate form of an ‘authentic’ object, but a new object with a complex relationship with the original and its own uses and affordances. The Digital Laocoön Immersive (VR exhibit), part of an AHRC funded project, was a response to the tragic fires at the Mackintosh Building of the Glasgow School of Art in 2014 and 2018. In this project a digital replica of a plaster cast of Laocoön, with a long history of use within the school, was chosen as the centre piece for the proposed immersive. As a consequence of both the immersive’s design methodology and the lessons learnt in its production, the Laocoön proved to be an ideal subject through which to critically assess the question of how the status of the replica. This paper will explore not only how the material infrastructure, form and content of digital representations have an impact on its broader set relationships, but how the concept of an extended object, its production processes, and the way that these are explicitly acknowledged (or not), operate on its relationship to the original

Effect of Initial Preservative Treatment on Electrical Conductivity in Douglas-Fir Pole Sections

The effect of copper naphthenate treatment on electrical resistance of Douglas-fir utility poles was compared with similar poles either left untreated or treated with pentachlorophenol (penta). Penta-treated and untreated wood had similar electrical resistance shortly after treatment and after a 3-month outdoor weathering period. Electrical resistance of copper naphthenate– treated wood was more variable but consistently greater, indicating that poles treated with this chemical would not pose an increased risk to utility personnel working on them