Cornerstone of Union Victory: Officer Partnerships in Joint Operations in the West

The American Civil War included one of the pivotal naval contests of the nineteenth century. A topic of considerable importance is the joint operations on the western waters that brought about a string of crucial victories in the conflict for the Union. The effective cooperation of the naval river fleet and the western armies was a major cornerstone of Union victory. Scholars have written biographies of the more noted admirals and narratives of the flotilla have been detailed. What has not been accomplished is an exploration of the Union officers’ professional partnerships between the Mississippi Squadron commanders and their corresponding army counterparts. The Naval-Army joint missions in the riverine operations impacted the overall operational effectiveness of the Union forces and are significant to understanding the outcome of the war. This study is grounded in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion and the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, as well as key combatants’ memoirs and postwar writings. These reveal the successes and failures in Army-Navy cooperation and their significance to the larger war effort. The complexities of these professional relationships underscore the challenges of combined operations and offer insight for modern military leaders and scholars examining the significance of the Western Theater of operations on the Union’s ultimate victory in the American Civil War

Influences on Reported Nonprofit Lobbying Efforts

The nonprofit sector holds an interesting role in democracy, as this segment balances the powers of government and business by providing a way to cultivate social justice and afford people a means of acting and promoting interests outside of the government and private sectors. Nonprofit organizations therefore allow people to join together in providing services and programs that strengthen the communities in which they act. Advocacy involves identifying, embracing, and promoting a cause, especially by educating the public about their organization, whether this is through public engagement, coalition building, or lobbying. Lobbying is a specific but critical component of general advocacy that enriches a nonprofit’s ability to fulfill its mission and helps to build informed public policies. For some organizations, issue advocacy is the purpose of their existence, others use it as a way to meet organizational goals, but some may avoid issue advocacy as a whole. Since the Internal Revenue Service gives federal tax-exemption status to organizations categorized as 501(c)(3), there are lobbying expenditure limitations on this category as put into law; most organizations do not get close to this threshold, but some change their advocacy techniques to avoid approaching the limit and endangering their tax-exempt status. Some literature shows that there is a positive relationship between the size of an organization and the amount of lobbying expenditures reported, but a negative relationship between certain types of funding sources and the willingness of a nonprofit to report lobbying expenditures. Therefore, there is not only the question of what factors influence whether a 501(c)(3) organization is willing to engage in lobbying efforts, but what factors may influence the extent of lobbying expenditures should be considered as well. These factors for each question may be the same, but they must be tested separately. Literature from the field is used to gain an understanding of nonprofit advocacy and lobbying efforts and the tendencies of 501(c)(3) organizations to lobby, as well as to define the expectations of what should be reported on the Form 990 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Using data from IRS Form 990, this study analyzes the relationship between lobbying expenditures, the size of the organization, and various funding sources. Funding sources assessed include direct public support, indirect public support, government grants, program service revenue, and membership fees and assessments. Two regression models were utilized, one to look at the factors associated with the organization’s willingness to engage in lobbying efforts, and a second to assess the factors associated with the extent of lobbying expenditures, if the organization did indeed engage in lobbying efforts. The study finds a statistically significant positive relationship between several sources of funding (direct public support, indirect public support, and program service revenue) and the reporting of lobbying expenditures, as well as a statistically significant positive relationship between several sources of funding (direct public support and indirect public support) and the amount of lobbying expenditures reported by the organizations that do engage in lobbying efforts. The funding factors associated for each of these questions did not provide the same results. The variable of the size of the organization provided straightforward results; the larger the organization, the more likely the organization was to lobby because it had more access to funding, but eventually the size was not a factor and the organization either reported lobbying or did not. Therefore, instead of the results showing that all large nonprofits lobby, it shows that if a large nonprofit does lobby, then they do a lot of it. Across the board, any increased amounts of funding correlated with increased reports of lobbying expenditures. Further conclusions are problematic, however, due to limitations in the research design. Although the dataset provided a large sample, more control over the sample selection would be ideal, as this study had to work within the constraints of limited data access. To truly assess the impacts of funding and size factors on lobbying expenditures, great care would need to be taken in ensuring the data from the IRS Form 990 was correctly filed by each organization, and proper measures would need to be taken to collect the data from organizations of a specific sector to ensure a more homogenous and specific data set. An interpretation of the results and a recommendation for further studies is made in the conclusion of this paper

Creating Rights, Terminating Rights, Overcoming Legal Conflicts

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Are All our Readings Misreadings?: Derrida, The Flickering A (A Look At Derrida On Interpretation)

The author here guides us toward a sensible conceptualization of Derrida’s philosophical/literary impact on the world. First, Derrida’s demonstration concerning the a or e in differ(e/a)nce is meant to protest the silence in the universe, the insufficiency of language. He speaks of the term “difference” in linguistic terms; as disruption; and as the space between the two. He goes further than Nietzsche in his assault on Western metaphysics. The author then tells us why Derrida resists being identified and labeled, commenting next on how his playfulness relates to logic and negative theology—how he manages to communicate something that resembles conventional thinking. Following that, the discussion describes how comfortable Derrida appears to be in his own misreadings, but uncomfortable with misreadings of himself. Is this a fault of his theory or a matter of human nature, we might ask? Finally, the author reveals his final verdict: Derrida is not the way, but a sign that tells us there is no certain way

Regulatory Frameworks for South Korea’s Offshore Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Activities

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Qualified Academic Freedom Privilege in Employment Litigation: Protecting Higher Education or Shielding Discrimination?

Courts have long honored the fundamental principle that the right to full and fair litigation assumes the unobstructed availability of evidence.\u27 When the divulgence of information in court threatens interests or relationships of sufficient social importance,however, courts have recognized a compelling justification for sacrificing the free flow of evidence and have created rules of privilege. Since 1972, when Congress extended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19641 to academic institutions, colleges and universities increasingly have faced broad discovery requests for confidential personnel files by plaintiffs alleging that discriminatory factors such as sex, race, or age played an impermissible role in the institution\u27s employment decisions.\u27 In response, some institutions have asked the courts, with mixed success, to recognize a new privilege for personnel files and tenure review committee materials based upon the fundamentals of academic freedom. This Recent Development considers whether the federal courts should recognize a qualified privilege for the discovery of peer review materials in litigation brought by university educators denied employment, tenure, or promotion based on what they allege are impermissible discriminatory grounds. Part II examines the underlying rationale for establishing an academic freedom privilege, focusing on the Constitution, statutes, judicial rules, and the common law as possible bases of support. Part II also examines plaintiffs\u27 ability to rebut any presumption of privilege recognized by the court. Part III discusses the inconsistencies in recent judicial responses to the disputed privilege. Part IV argues that the existing split among the federal circuits provides inadequate guidance for the lower courts faced with claims of privilege and suggests a two-step analysis to determine in each case whether a privilege should be recognized. Part V concludes that federal courts should adopt a qualified privilege based upon academic freedom to require the courts to balance the conflicting interests of academic freedom and freedom from discrimination