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

Investigating the effect of nanolime treatment on the drying kinetics of Clipsham limestone

Climate change poses an ever-increasing risk to our stone built heritage. Among conservation actions, the use of consolidant products is considered a possible response to this challenge, and the adoption of nanolimes has been widely studied showing promising results. However, while the effectiveness and method of application has been assessed, few studies have probed the changes in drying kinetics following treatment. In fact, a drastic alteration of the water transport might lead to further anomalies. This study investigates the influence of nanolimes dispersed in ethanol on the drying kinetics of Clipsham limestone using cavity ring-down spectroscopy. The degree of treatment was assessed by gravimetry, Raman spectroscopy, optical microscopy, colorimetry, optical profilometry and thin section analysis. Results showed an increase in the dry mass, observable colour changes and decrease in surface roughness. Small but reproducible increases were observed in the evaporation flux for phase I behaviour following treatment, however, no changes were observed in the total mass of water released or the phase II diffusivity. Determination of the activation energy associated with phase II drying was unchanged following treatment . These results indicate that following treatment there has been little-to-no change in the internal surfaces and structure of the stone to affect vapour transport

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

Insights into spatial inhomogeneity in an oxygen plasma from cavity ringdown spectroscopy

Cavity ringdown spectroscopy has been used to investigate the translational and rotational temperatures of the v = 0 and 1 vibrational levels of O2(X) in an inductively coupled plasma at 100 mTorr (13.332 Pa) pressure. All rotational states probed display a clear increase in temperature as plasma power increases: at fixed power, the translational temperature appears largest for rotational states in v = 1 (J= 7, 16, 17, 22) and lowest in the low energy states (J = 1, 18, 19) in v = 0; highly excited rotational states (J = 28, 30, 31) of v = 0 show intermediate behaviour. The rotational temperature values behave similarly. These observations are consistent with the effects of plasma inhomogeneity and can be interpreted with a simple one-dimensional model whereby the pressure, temperature and mole fractions of the various species across the chamber (and arms) are approximated with rational profiles and the corresponding line-of-sight averaged densities and temperatures calculated. This basic model is reasonably successful at reproducing the observations for O2(X, v = 0) and O(3P) densities. The fact that resolving several rotational transitions allows spatial variations within the plasma to be inferred from line-of-sight averaged measurements is an extremely powerful result that could be of great utility in future work

OH detection by absorption of frequency-doubled diode laser radiation at 308nm

Radiation at 308 nm has been obtained by frequency doubling the output of a commercial diode laser cooled to 165 K. A single pass through a crystal of LiIO3 converted 1 mW of 616 nm radiation to 50 pW of UV, and this was used to detect the OH radical in absorption in a flow tube. Possible extensions of the method for detection of OH in the atmosphere are discussed

A review of structural brain abnormalities in Pallister-Killian syndrome

Background Pallister-Killian syndrome (PKS) is a rare multisystem developmental syndrome usually caused by mosaic tetrasomy of chromosome 12p that is known to be associated with neurological defects. Methods We describe two patients with PKS, one of whom has bilateral perisylvian polymicrogyria (PMG), the other with macrocephaly, enlarged lateral ventricles and hypogenesis of the corpus callosum. We have also summarized the current literature describing brain abnormalities in PKS. Results We reviewed available cases with intracranial scans (n = 93) and found a strong association between PKS and structural brain abnormalities (77.41%; 72/93). Notably, ventricular abnormalities (45.83%; 33/72), abnormalities of the corpus callosum (25.00%; 18/72) and cerebral atrophy (29.17%; 21/72) were the most frequently reported, while macrocephaly (12.5%; 9/72) and PMG (4.17%; 3/72) were less frequent. To further understand how 12p genes might be relevant to brain development, we identified 63 genes which are enriched in the nervous system. These genes display distinct temporal as well as region-specific expression in the brain, suggesting specific roles in neurodevelopment and disease. Finally, we utilized these data to define minimal critical regions on 12p and their constituent genes associated with atrophy, abnormalities of the corpus callosum, and macrocephaly in PKS. Conclusion Our study reinforces the association between brain abnormalities and PKS, and documents a diverse neurogenetic basis for structural brain abnormalities and impaired function in children diagnosed with this rare disorder

High performance continuous-wave laser cavity enhanced polarimetry using RF-induced linewidth broadening

We present precise optical rotation measurements of gaseous chiral samples using near-IR continuous-wave cavity-enhanced polarimetry. Optical rotation is determined by comparing cavity ring-down signals for two counter-propagating beams of orthogonal polarisation which are subject to polarisation rotation by the presence of both an optically active sample and a magneto-optic crystal. A broadband RF noise source applied to the laser drive current is used to tune the laser linewidth and optimise the polarimeter, and this noise-induced laser linewidth is quantified using self-heterodyne beat-note detection. We demonstrate the optical rotation measurement of gas phase samples of enantiomers of α-pinene and limonene with an optimum detection precision of 10 µdeg per cavity pass and an uncertainty in the specific rotation of ∼0.1 deg dm−1 (g/ml)−1 and determine the specific rotation parameters at 730 nm, for (+)- and (−)-α-pinene to be 32.10 ± 0.13 and −32.21 ± 0.11 deg dm−1 (g/ml)−1, respectively. Measurements of both a pure R-(+)-limonene sample and a non-racemic mixture of limonene of unknown enantiomeric excess are also presented, illustrating the utility of the technique

Exhaled Breath Isoprene Rises During Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes.

Work was supported by the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre including salary support for SN. Hormonal assays were performed by Keith Burling and colleagues in the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre Core Biochemical Assay Laboratory. Clamp studies were performed in the Cambridge NIHR/ Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Diabetes Association via http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc16-046

Cavity ringdown studies of the E–H transition in an inductively coupled oxygen plasma: comparison of spectroscopic measurements and modelling

The absolute number density of ground state oxygen atoms, O(3P), present in a 100 mTorr oxygen plasma has been determined as a function of operating power using cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS). The dissociation fraction increases by an order of magnitude from ∼0.8% at 50 W to 8% at 250 W and reflects a similar increase in the electron density over this power range. Emission spectra show that the E–H switchover is accompanied by increased rotational heating of O2 and this behaviour is also observed in the translational temperatures determined by fitting the Doppler limited O(3P) CRDS data. The measurements are contextualised via a volume averaged kinetic model that uses the measured absolute densities of O(3P) and O2(a1Δg, v = 0) as a function of power as its benchmarks. Despite the inherent spatial inhomogeneity of the plasma, the volume averaged model, which uses a minimal set of reactions, is able to both reproduce previous measurements on the absolute density of O− and to infer physically reasonable values for both the electron temperature and number density as the E–H switch over is traversed. Time-resolved emission measurements return a value of 0.2 for the wall loss coefficient for O2(b1Σg+); as a consequence, the number density of O2(b1Σg+) is (at least) one order of magnitude less than O2(a1Δg)

Trace species detection in the near infrared using Fourier transform broadband cavity enhanced absorption spectroscopy: Initial studies on potential breath analytes

Cavity enhanced absorption measurements have been made of several species that absorb light between 1.5 and 1.7 µm using both a supercontinuum source and superluminescent light emitting diodes. A system based upon an optical enhancement cavity of relatively high finesse, consisting of mirrors of reflectivity ∼99.98%, and a Fourier transform spectrometer, is demonstrated. Spectra are recorded of isoprene, butadiene, acetone and methane, highlighting problems with spectral interference and unambiguous concentration determinations. Initial results are presented of acetone within a breath-like matrix indicating ppm precision at <∼10 ppm acetone levels. Instrument sensitivities are sufficiently enhanced to enable the detection of atmospheric levels of methane. Higher detection sensitivities are achieved using the supercontinuum source, with a minimum detectable absorption coefficient of ∼4 × 10(-9) cm(-1) reported within a 4 min acquisition time. Finally, two superluminescent light emitting diodes are coupled together to increase the wavelength coverage, and measurements are made simultaneously on acetylene, CO(2), and butadiene. The absorption cross-sections for acetone and isoprene have been measured with an instrumental resolution of 4 cm(-1) and are found to be 1.3 ± 0.1 × 10(-21) cm(2) at a wavelength of 1671.9 nm and 3.6 ± 0.2 × 10(-21) cm(2) at 1624.7 nm, respectively