States Empowering Plaintiff Cities

Across the country, cities are becoming major players in plaintiff’s-side litigation. With increasing frequency, cities, counties, and other municipalities are filing lawsuits to vindicate the public interest. Cities’ aggressive use of lawsuits, however, has been met with some skepticism from both scholars and states. At times, states have taken action—both legislative and via litigation—to preempt city-initiated suits. This Article contends that states should welcome city-initiated public-interest lawsuits. Such litigation, this Article demonstrates, vindicates the principles of local control that cities exist to facilitate. What is more, a motivated plaintiff city can accomplish public-policy goals that are important not just to the city, but to the state as a whole. Accordingly, this Article contends, states should do more than just tolerate city-initiated litigation: States should actively encourage it. Towards that end, this Article sketches out a path through which states can remove some of the legal barriers plaintiff cities frequently face. Specifically, states can provide cities the authority to enforce state laws (such as state consumer-protection laws). In addition, states can and should delegate to cities standing to sue as parens patriae—that is, on behalf of the people of the state. This Article is the first piece of scholarship to flesh out a theory under which states can delegate their parens patriae authority. And importantly—particularly in era of gerrymandered districts that dilute cities’ legislative power—this Article is also the first to argue that state delegation to cities can be effectuated not just through a state legislature, but by a motivated state attorney general

Profiting from Not for Profit: Toward Adequate Humanities Instruction in American K-12 Schools

Martha Nussbaum\u27 describes Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities-her paean to a humanities-rich education-as a manifesto, not an empirical study (p. 121). Drawing on contemporary psychological research and classic pedagogical theories, Nussbaum convincingly argues that scholastic instruction in the humanities is a critical tool in shaping democratic citizens. Nussbaum shows how the study of subjects like literature, history, philosophy, and art helps students build essential democratic capacities like empathy and critical thought. Through myriad examples and anecdotes, Not For Profit sketches an appealing vision of what an ideal education should be in a democracy

The New Front in the Clean Air Wars: Fossil-Fuel Influence Over State Attorneys General- and How It Might Be Checked

Review of Struggling for Air: Power and the War On Coal by Richard L. Revesz and Jack Leinke, and Federalism on Trial: State Attorneys General and National Policymaking in Contemporary America by Paul Nolette

Can Courts Repair the Crumbling Foundation of Good Citizenship? An Examination of Potential Legal Challenges to Social Studies Cutbacks in Public Schools

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts\u27 repeated celebration of education as the foundation of good citizenship, this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary\u27s civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court\u27s refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as a fundamental right leaves potential federal challenges with substantial barriers to success. A state-law litigation strategy might prove more effective. In many states, constitutional education provisions or educationrelated judicial precedent strongly imply that public schools have a duty to provide students with social studies. States\u27 education standards or the history surrounding the adoption of education provisions may also suggest that a constitutionally adequate education necessarily includes social studies instruction. Thus, although challenges to schools\u27 curricular decisions are not sure to succeed, courts present a potential venue in which social studies-deprived students may be able to vindicate a right to civic education

Can Courts Repair the Crumbling Foundation of Good Citizenship? An Examination of Potential Legal Challenges to Social Studies Cutbacks in Public Schools

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts\u27 repeated celebration of education as the foundation of good citizenship, this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary\u27s civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court\u27s refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as a fundamental right leaves potential federal challenges with substantial barriers to success. A state-law litigation strategy might prove more effective. In many states, constitutional education provisions or educationrelated judicial precedent strongly imply that public schools have a duty to provide students with social studies. States\u27 education standards or the history surrounding the adoption of education provisions may also suggest that a constitutionally adequate education necessarily includes social studies instruction. Thus, although challenges to schools\u27 curricular decisions are not sure to succeed, courts present a potential venue in which social studies-deprived students may be able to vindicate a right to civic education

Dynamics of the Time Horizon Minority Game

We present exact analytic results for a new version of the Minority Game (MG) in which strategy performance is recorded over a finite time horizon. The dynamics of this Time Horizon Minority Game (THMG) exhibit many distinct features from the MG and depend strongly on whether the participants are fed real, or random, history strings. The THMG equations are equivalent to a Markov Chain, and yield exact analytic results for the volatility given a specific realization for the quenched strategy disorder.Comment: Latex file, 11 pages, 6 figure