Foundation Board Diversity: No Change in Diversity Since 2009

This analysis of the gender, racial, and ethnic makeup of the boards of directors of the largest 481 foundations in the nation reveals that 25 percent of the positions were held by people of color, including approximately 13 percent by African Americans, 6 percent by Latinos, and 6 percent by Asians. We were able to identify only one Native American board member in the 564 total board seats that we examined. The list of foundations was obtained fromthe Foundation Center's website and selectedthe top 50 foundations by asset size. We searched each foundation's website forinformation on the board of directors and recorded the race/ethnicity of each board member along with theirgender. To determine if the assessment of the race/ethnicity of each board member was correct, we crossreferencedtheir name with the NNDB (Notable Names Database, http://www.nndb.com/). After recording therace/ethnicity of each board member we contacted their respective foundations to obtain a confirmation of the accuracy of the assessment. Data was collected in July of 2012.Only 18 of the 48 foundations sampled responded to the request for confirmation of the race/ethnicity of their board members. Thus, it is possible that some of our data is not accurate. In the interest of transparency, we encourage all foundations to disclose their board of directors diversity data on their websites. Additionally, we were not able to obtain information about the executive boards of the Walton Family Foundation or the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation, as they do not disclose such information about their board

New Global Minima for Thomson's Problem of Charges on a Sphere

Using numerical arguments we find that for $N$ = 306 a tetrahedral configuration ($T_h$) and for N=542 a dihedral configuration ($D_5$) are likely the global energy minimum for Thomson's problem of minimizing the energy of $N$ unit charges on the surface of a unit conducting sphere. These would be the largest $N$ by far, outside of the icosadeltahedral series, for which a global minimum for Thomson's problem is known. We also note that the current theoretical understanding of Thomson's problem does not rule out a symmetric configuration as the global minima for N=306 and 542. We explicitly find that analogues of the tetrahedral and dihedral configurations for $N$ larger than 306 and 542, respectively, are not global minima, thus helping to confirm the theory of Dodgson and Moore (Phys. Rev. B 55, 3816 (1997)) that as $N$ grows dislocation defects can lower the lattice strain of symmetric configurations and concomitantly the energy. As well, making explicit previous work by ourselves and others, for $N<1000$ we give a full accounting of icosadeltahedral configuration which are not global minima and those which appear to be, and discuss how this listing and our results for the tetahedral and dihedral configurations may be used to refine theoretical understanding of Thomson's problem.Comment: 1- Manuscript revised. 2- A new global minimum found for a dihedral (D_5) configuration found for N=54

When Can the Government’s Misrepresentations Give Rise to a Constitutional Tort?

Can allegations that senior State Department and National Security Council officials failed to inform a U.S. citizen that her foreign citizen husband was in foreign custody suffice to allege a denial of access to the courts in violation of the Fifth Amendment so as to give rise to a constitutional tort even absent any allegation that the plaintiff tried to file a lawsuit or was actually hindered in doing so? If so, was that right clearly established as of the time of the government officials\u27 conduct so as to defeat a defense of qualified immunity

The Subsidy Question in \u3cem\u3eKing v. Burwell\u3c/em\u3e—A Federalist Response to Crony Capitalism

On the surface, King v. Burwell appears to be a simple case about statutory interpretation. In the Affordable Care Act (widely known as Obamacare), when Congress referred to the “State,” in the provision triggering federal subsidies to insurance consumers for purchases made from federally-authorized insurance providers selling federally-authorized insurance products, should the “State” be understood to refer to the federal market (i.e., exchanges) as well as “State” markets. Simple tools of statutory construction–namely, that Congress knew full well how to refer to a “federal” exchange and failed to do so–would seem to be sufficient to supply a result. It would also seem be a stretch to rely on legislative history to overturn this conclusion

The International Recognition of Judgments: The Debate Between Private and Public Law Solutions

This article explores institutional alternatives for balancing the competing trade and non-trade concerns at the national and global levels in relation to the recognition and enforcement of judgments. It argues against a private international law convention of the kind that is currently being negotiated at the Hague Conference on Private International Law, and against quasi-constitutional and constitutional solutions, such as those employed by the European Union and the United States. Rather, the article argues that managing the tensions between trade and non-trade values and between state autonomy and globally established standards can best be achieved through a supplementary agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO)

The Passive Virtues and the World Court: Pro-Dialogic Abstention by the International Court of Justice

Only a few years ago the International Court of Justiceseemed to be edging toward judicial activism. This article argues that in its most recent pronouncements the ICJ has instead employed a variety of techniques for abstention. The ICJ\u27s use of this arsenal of devices recalls, however, Alexander Bickel\u27s argument for the exercise of judicial restraint by the U.S. Supreme Court in a way that nonetheless allows the judicial organ to stimulate constitutional politics. In the recent contentious cases and advisory opinions concerning the status of East Timor, exploitation of the natural resources of Nauru, and a trilogy of nuclear testing and nuclear weapons issues, the ICJ has in effect challenged the international political community to debate the application of the core principles of the international legal order. The approach the ICJ now follows thus tracks its South-West Africa Cases, where it successfully prompted constitutional decision-making by the competent U.N. organs. That precedent, in light of recent practice, should now serve as a paradigm for legitimate abstention by the Court -- one that is consistent with its principled exercise of the judicial function and, at the same time, gives shape to the process of legitimate decision-making in the international community

WTO and U.N. Law: Institutional Comity in National Security

This Article proposes a new theory for locating the World Trade Organization (WIO) in the larger transnational legal system. The theory would require institutional comity between the VITO and other equally significant institutions, in particular the United Nations, in the emerging global constitutional structure. Institutional comity would govern the conflicts between the VITO and United Nations, much as the traditional public international law concept of comity facilitates the management of analogous conflicts arising between sovereign nation states in the implementation of their regulatory policies. The theory of institutional comity presented in this Article accommodates the competing global interests in trade and security, as well as balances contending visions of national sovereignty and globalization. It also provides a more compelling account of the place of the WTO in international law than that currently available in WTO scholarship, which would treat the VITO either as a mere bargain among states or as having a quasi-constitutional status. The explanatory power of the institutional comity approach is revealed in analysis of the national security exception under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GA77), which the United States recently threatened to invoke before the WTO in the case concerning Helms-Burton sanctions against countries doing business with Cuba. The interpretation advanced by the Article would limit the so-called self-judging national security exception by permitting the VITO to look to the practice of the United Nations in questions relating to national security to identify objective indicia for whether a state invokes the exception in good faith

The Subsidy Question in King v. Burwell

On the surface, King v. Burwell appears to be a simple case about statutory interpretation. In the Affordable Care Act (widely known as Obamacare), when Congress referred to the “State,” in the provision triggering federal subsidies to insurance consumers for purchases made from federally-authorized insurance providers selling federally-authorized insurance products, should the “State” be understood to refer to the federal market (i.e., exchanges) as well as “State” markets. Simple tools of statutory construction–namely, that Congress knew full well how to refer to a “federal” exchange and failed to do so–would seem to be sufficient to supply a result. It would also seem be a stretch to rely on legislative history to overturn this conclusion