Discretionary Dockets

The Supreme Court’s workload and its method for selecting cases have drawn increasing critical scrutiny. Similarly, and separately, recent commentary has focused on the disparate approaches the Court has taken to resolving cases on its (historically small) docket. In this Essay we draw these two lines of inquiry together to argue that the Court’s case selection should align with its approach to constitutional adjudication. In doing so, we discuss four modes of constitutional decisionmaking and then examine the interplay between those modes, the Court’s management of its docket, and its sense of institutional role. The Court, we argue, has neither settled on one approach to constitutional adjudication nor applied the different modes in any systematic fashion. We conclude with thoughts about how the Court can better offer guidance through its decisionmaking — if that is what the Court still aspires to do

Administrative Change

Determining the standard of review for administrative actions has commanded judicial and scholarly interest like few other topics. Notwithstanding the extensive debates, far less consideration has been given to the unique features of agencies’ deviations from their own precedents. In this article we examine this puzzle of administrative change. By change, we mean a reversal of the agency’s former views about the best way to implement and interpret its regulatory mandate. We trace the lineage of administrative change at the Supreme Court and analyze features that distinguish agency reversals from other administrative actions. In particular, we contend that because administrative agencies have been given authority to make official pronouncements about the intrinsic meaning of legal texts, agency reversals can carry significant consequences for the rule of law. These consequences are linked to an under-appreciated feature of administrative action: the agency’s chosen mode of reasoning. Agencies sometimes use what we call prescriptive reasoning: weighing evidence, utilizing technical expertise, and making policy choices. At other times agencies undertake what we call expository reasoning: identifying congressional intent and the import of judicial opinions. While prescriptive reasoning yields conclusions about optimal policy, expository reasoning is concerned with what the law is. This distinction activates fundamental rule-of-law interests that should restrain an agency’s discretion to declare that the same document means X today, Y tomorrow, and Z the day after. This Article proposes a new theory and doctrine of administrative change that affords substantial deference in cases where change is based on prescriptive reasoning, but requires de novo scrutiny of reversals grounded in expository reasoning. The proposal strikes an appropriate balance between the need for agency flexibility and the importance of a stable rule of law. administrative law, statutory interpretation, interpretation, stare decisis, precedent, legal change, change, administrative change, rule of law, Chevron, Fox, deference, standards of review, arbitrary and capriciou

Administrative Change

Determining the standard of review for administrative actions has commanded judicial and scholarly interest like few other topics. Notwithstanding the extensive debates, far less consideration has been given to the unique features of agencies’ deviations from their own precedents. In this article we examine this puzzle of administrative change. By change, we mean a reversal of the agency’s former views about the best way to implement and interpret its regulatory mandate. We trace the lineage of administrative change at the Supreme Court and analyze features that distinguish agency reversals from other administrative actions. In particular, we contend that because administrative agencies have been given authority to make official pronouncements about the intrinsic meaning of legal texts, agency reversals can carry significant consequences for the rule of law. These consequences are linked to an under-appreciated feature of administrative action: the agency’s chosen mode of reasoning. Agencies sometimes use what we call prescriptive reasoning: weighing evidence, utilizing technical expertise, and making policy choices. At other times agencies undertake what we call expository reasoning: identifying congressional intent and the import of judicial opinions. While prescriptive reasoning yields conclusions about optimal policy, expository reasoning is concerned with what the law is. This distinction activates fundamental rule-of-law interests that should restrain an agency’s discretion to declare that the same document means X today, Y tomorrow, and Z the day after. This Article proposes a new theory and doctrine of administrative change that affords substantial deference in cases where change is based on prescriptive reasoning, but requires de novo scrutiny of reversals grounded in expository reasoning. The proposal strikes an appropriate balance between the need for agency flexibility and the importance of a stable rule of law. administrative law, statutory interpretation, interpretation, stare decisis, precedent, legal change, change, administrative change, rule of law, Chevron, Fox, deference, standards of review, arbitrary and capriciou

Upgrading LMSs: Understanding Faculty Perceptions and Use for Improved Implementation

Adventist schools are in a constantly changing academic environment and are under consistent pressure to implement the latest technologies, such as Learning Management Systems (LMSs). This research study seeks to provide a better understanding of faculty perceptions of their LMS. We explore factors leading to successful faculty use of LMSs

Testing the Cavefish Model: An Organism-focused Theory of Biological Design

Poster Abstract The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is experimentally testing an engineering-based model of rapid biological adaptation: Continuous Environmental Tracking (CET). This model infers that organisms actively track conditions within specific environments to self-adjust through internal mechanisms and initiate adaptive functionality. The animal under investigation is Astyanax mexicanus (Mexican tetra), a freshwater fish with well-differentiated, interfertile morphotypes: eyed surface-dwelling fish (surface fish) with distinct pigmentation patterns, and eyeless cave-dwelling fish (cavefish) with minimal pigmentation. Aquaria within our newly established laboratory contain breeding pairs of cavefish exposed to either (A) cyclical light/dark patterns of full-spectrum high-intensity light, (B) minimal light combined with high CO2(low pH) levels or (C) deionized water. Preliminary results show that (1) cavefish rapidly increase pigmentation when exposed to high-intensity light, and (2) do not exhibit injurious behavior or physiology in low pH water; (3) surface fish lose pigmentation across their body in low pH or deionized water conditions; (4) adult cavefish and surface fish respond rapidly within weeks-to-months of experimental treatments. Thus far, preliminary results imply that high-intensity light may stimulate the induction of latent melanin synthesis pathways in adult cavefish. Second, pre-acclimation of cavefish to acidic water chemistry likely reflects conditions within their native cave environments. Third, comparative loss of pigmentation in adult surface fish exposed to darkness and low pH or deionized water suggests they actively self-adjust, and that adaptive traits are reversable. Fourth, in contrast to cavefish, surface fish indicate non-acclimation to a simulated cave environment. Lastly, all responses by A. mexicanus to experimental treatments occur without undergoing multigenerational cycles of death and survival. These implications do not support the conventional view that beneficial adaptations arise through random mutation, unregulated genomic recombination, or accumulation of unguided genetic variation – regardless of time scales. Therefore, organisms are the agents in control of adaptations and diversification. If correct, hypotheses attributing the exquisite fit of organisms to environments through the agency of nature are mistaken. We present a new direction in experimental science for the ICR, and Creation Science, that sees every organism as a divinely engineered creation with adaptive capacity across multiple environmental conditions

The very large G-protein coupled receptor VLGR1: a component of the ankle link complex required for the normal development of auditory hair bundles

Sensory hair bundles in the inner ear are composed of stereocilia that can be interconnected by a variety of different link types, including tip links, horizontal top connectors, shaft connectors, and ankle links. The ankle link antigen is an epitope specifically associated with ankle links and the calycal processes of photoreceptors in chicks. Mass spectrometry and immunoblotting were used to identify this antigen as the avian ortholog of the very large G-protein-coupled receptor VLGR1, the product of the Usher syndrome USH2C (Mass1) locus. Like ankle links, Vlgr1 is expressed transiently around the base of developing hair bundles in mice. Ankle links fail to form in the cochleae of mice carrying a targeted mutation in Vlgr1 (Vlgr1/del7TM), and the bundles become disorganized just after birth. FM1-43 [N-(3-triethylammonium)propyl)-4-(4-(dibutylamino)styryl) pyridinium dibromide] dye loading and whole-cell recordings indicate mechanotransduction is impaired in cochlear, but not vestibular, hair cells of early postnatal Vlgr1/del7TM mutant mice. Auditory brainstem recordings and distortion product measurements indicate that these mice are severely deaf by the third week of life. Hair cells from the basal half of the cochlea are lost in 2-month-old Vlgr1/del7TM mice, and retinal function is mildly abnormal in aged mutants. Our results indicate that Vlgr1 is required for formation of the ankle link complex and the normal development of cochlear hair bundles

A Cepheid Distance to NGC 4603 in Centaurus

In an attempt to use Cepheid variables to determine the distance to the Centaurus cluster, we have obtained images of NGC 4603 with the Hubble Space Telescope on 9 epochs using WFPC2 and the F555W and F814W filters. This galaxy has been suggested to lie within the ``Cen30'' portion of the cluster and is the most distant object for which this method has been attempted. Previous distance estimates for Cen30 have varied significantly and some have presented disagreements with the peculiar velocity predicted from redshift surveys, motivating this investigation. Using our observations, we have found 61 candidate Cepheid variable stars; however, a significant fraction of these candidates are likely to be nonvariable stars whose magnitude measurement errors happen to fit a Cepheid light curve of significant amplitude for some choice of period and phase. Through a maximum likelihood technique, we determine that we have observed 43 +/- 7 real Cepheids and that NGC 4603 has a distance modulus of 32.61 +0.11/-0.10 (random, 1 sigma) +0.24/-0.25 (systematic, adding in quadrature), corresponding to a distance of 33.3 Mpc. This is consistent with a number of recent estimates of the distance to NGC 4603 or Cen30 and implies a small peculiar velocity consistent with predictions from the IRAS 1.2 Jy redshift survey if the galaxy lies in the foreground of the cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 17 pages with 17 embedded figures and 3 tables using emulateapj.sty. Additional figures and images may be obtained from http://astro.berkeley.edu/~marc/n4603

OMNI: Open Mind Neuromodulation Interface for accelerated research and discovery

Electrical neuromodulation is an approved therapy for a number of neurologic disease states, including Parkinson's disease (PD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Essential Tremor, epilepsy and neuropathic pain. Neuromodulatory strategies are also being piloted for an increasing number of additional indications, including Major Depressive Disorder, Dystonia, and addiction. The development of implantable devices capable of both neural sensing and adaptive stimulation may prove essential for both improving therapeutic outcomes and expanding the neuromodulation indication space. Nevertheless, an increasingly fragmented device ecosystem forces researchers and therapy developers to customize and reinvent data visualization, clinician engagement, and device control software to support individual clinical studies. Each hardware platform provides a unique software interface to the implanted neurostimulator, making pre-existing code from prior studies difficult to leverage for future work - a hindrance that will expand as device technology diversifies. Here, we envision, detail, and demonstrate the use of a novel software architecture, OMNI, that accelerates neuromodulation research by providing a flexible, platform- and device-agnostic interface for clinical research and therapy development