Problem of Equality in Takings, The

The Supreme Court is finally beginning to bring clarity to the law of regulatory takings and in the process is bringing to the fore a previously submerged theme in the jurisprudence: regulatory takings as a question of distributional justice and horizontal equity. This Article argues that this equality dimension is fundamentally problematic. On a theoretical level, privileging norms of equality engrafts political process rationales for heightened scrutiny onto groups defined solely by the differential burden of a regulation, an exercise in circularity. Equally troubling is the inverted political economy of regulatory takings claims that is likely to result: the greatest judicial protection is provided to those most able to navigate the political system. And from a doctrinal perspective, an overly robust equality inquiry housed in the Takings Clause is inherently indeterminate, warping not only the fabric of takings but also of equal protection jurisprudence. Accordingly, this Article argues that concerns about the uneven distribution of regulatory burdens should sound not under the Takings Clause but rather under the Equal Protection Clause, with its deferential standards for the review of ordinary economic and social regulation. Excising the equality dimension of regulatory takings would properly leave the Takings Clause as a guard against those rare regulatory actions that are functionally equivalent to the direct exercise of eminent domain. The result would be a simpler, clearer, and ultimately more egalitarian law of takings

Theories of Asbestos Litigation Cost - Why Two Decades of Procedural Reform Have Failed to Reduce Claimants\u27 Expenses

In twenty years of asbestos litigation, procedural reforms at all levels of the civil litigation system have failed to reduce plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. The result has been dramatic undercompensation of asbestos tort victims. This paper attempts to explain this remarkable fact using economic methodology. The paper offers three theories: First, that the continuing difficulty of assessing causation in asbestos and other mass tort cases predictably impedes the efforts of procedural reform to reduce costs; second, that changes in defendant and insurer risk attitudes have generated costly litigation; third, that collusion of plaintiffs’ attorneys to maintain prices cannot be ruled out. Each of these theories has some empirical support. Further, regardless of which turns out to be correct, the continuing high costs of civil litigation mean that resolution through the bankruptcy system will predictably harm future claimants, an unfair outcome. In the final assessment, civil procedure reform, the favored mechanism for resolving the asbestos case backlog, cannot achieve its objectives. Rather, reform must take into account substantive law and the motives and incentives of actors in the legal system. Holistic analysis of this type lends support to a comprehensive administrative remedies scheme, which has the best chance of decreasing the costs of compensation

Free-space coherent optical communication receivers implemented with photorefractive optical beam combiners

Performance measurements are reported concerning a coherent optical communication receiver that contained an iron doped indium phosphide photorefractive beam combiner, rather than a conventional optical beam splitter. The system obtained a bit error probability of 10(exp -6) at received signal powers corresponding to less than 100 detected photons per bit. The system used phase modulated Nd:YAG laser light at a wavelength of 1.06 microns

Spacecraft attitude sensor

A system for sensing the attitude of a spacecraft includes a pair of optical scanners having a relatively narrow field of view rotating about the spacecraft x-y plane. The spacecraft rotates about its z axis at a relatively high angular velocity while one scanner rotates at low velocity, whereby a panoramic sweep of the entire celestial sphere is derived from the scanner. In the alternative, the scanner rotates at a relatively high angular velocity about the x-y plane while the spacecraft rotates at an extremely low rate or at zero angular velocity relative to its z axis to provide a rotating horizon scan. The positions of the scanners about the x-y plane are read out to assist in a determination of attitude. While the satellite is spinning at a relatively high angular velocity, the angular positions of the bodies detected by the scanners are determined relative to the sun by providing a sun detector having a field of view different from the scanners

LHC phenomenology of a two-Higgs-doublet neutrino mass model

We study the LHC search prospects for a model in which the neutrinos obtain Dirac masses from couplings to a second Higgs doublet with tiny vacuum expectation value. The model contains a charged Higgs boson that decays to l nu with branching fractions controlled by the neutrino masses and mixing angles as measured in neutrino oscillation experiments. The most promising signal is electroweak production of H+ H- pairs with decays to l l' pTmiss, where l l' = e+ e-, mu+ mu-, and e+- mu-+. We find that a cut on the kinematic variable M_{T2} eliminates most of the t t and W-pair background. Depending on the neutrino mass spectrum and mixing angles, a 100 (300) GeV charged Higgs could be discovered at the LHC with as little as 8 (24) fb-1 of integrated luminosity at 14 TeV pp center-of-mass energy.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures. V2: reference added, submitted to PRD. V3: minor improvements to text; version to appear in PR

Regleprudence – at OIRA and Beyond

There are significant domains of legality within the administrative state that are mostly immune from judicial review and have mostly escaped the attention of legal theorists. While administrative law generally focuses on the products of agency action as they are reviewed by the judiciary, there are important aspects of regulatory activity that are legal or law-like but rarely interrogated by systematic analysis with reference to accounts about the role and nature of law. In this Article, we introduce a category of analysis we call regleprudence, a sibling of jurisprudence and legisprudence. Once we explore some regleprudential norms, we delve into one case study – the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the legal work it undertakes through regulatory review – and gesture at how more general attention to regleprudence can improve our understanding of important corners of the Executive Branch

Parton Distributions Functions of Pion, Kaon and Eta pseudoscalar mesons in the NJL model

Parton distributions of pseudoscalar pi,K and eta mesons obtained within the NJL model using the Pauli-Villars regularization method are analyzed in terms of LO and NLO evolution, and the valence sea quark and gluon parton distributions for the pion are obtained at Q^2 = 4 GeV^2 and compared to existing parametrizations at that scale. Surprisingly, the NLO order effects turn out to be small compared to the LO ones. The valence distributions are in good agreement with experimental analyses, but the gluon and sea distributions come out to be softer in the high-x region and harder in the low-x region than the experimental analyses suggest.Comment: (Latex, epsfig) 17 pages, 7 figure