Putting Law and Politics in the Right Places — Reforming the Independent Counsel Statute

The fundamental flaw in the independent counsel statute consists of its attempt to convert a political decision, the decision whether to refer to a case of public corruption to an investigator outside normal prosecutorial offices, into a legal one. When the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 1994 expires on Jun 30, 1999, it should not be reenacted unless this flaw is eliminated

Global Warming and the Problem of Policy Innovation: Lessons From the Early Environmental Movement

When it comes to influencing government decisions, special interests have some built-in advantages over the general public interest. When the individual members of special interest groups have a good deal to gain or lose as a result of government action, special interests can organize more effectively, and generate benefits for elected officials, such as campaign contributions and other forms of political support. They will seek to use those advantages to influence government decisions favorable to them. The public choice theory of government decision making sometimes comes close to elevating this point into a universal law, suggesting that the general public interest can never prevail over powerful special interests. In the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Congress enacted numerous significant environmental laws, laws that continue to form the backbone of federal policies toward environmental problems. These laws were truly innovative in their policies and their designs, and they pitted the general public interest in improving environmental quality against powerful, special interests. In each case, the general public interest was able to prevail. This policy “window” did not stay open for long. It was quickly succeeded by an extended period in which enacting additional innovative statutes has proven nearly impossible, which continues to this day. Yet we need innovative approaches to address continuing and emerging environmental problems more than ever. This is self-evidently true with respect to the problem of global warming and climate change. The questions worth asking are whether we can identify the factors that once made policy innovation possible in the late 1960s and early 1970s and if those factors can be produced once again. For the public’s David to be able to stand up against the special interest Goliaths, a broad base of the public must first be mobilized, and then that mobilization must be sustained, which typically occurs when the public embraces a sense of great urgency. Urgency can be generated when the public appreciates that failure to address a problem threatens them or their loved ones with significant harm. Media attention plays a key role in creating the public’s awareness of any urgent problem. These factors can succeed in putting general concerns of the public on the public agenda, at which time acceptable proposals for workable solutions need to be available. When the first window for policy innovation opened up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, each of these favorable factors was present for many of our conventional pollution problems. At the same time, the strength of the special interests was at a low ebb. This Essay argues that under current circumstances, the conditions for policy innovation are not yet as favorable as they were in this earlier period. Strong presidential leadership may be capable of altering those conditions, but as yet the public’s concern about the adverse effects of climate change does not appear to have achieved the same strength or intensity as comparable concerns over conventional pollution problems had earlier

Clear Consensus, Ambiguous Commitment

Americans from every demographic, socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic category identify themselves as concerned about the environment, and most say that they have personally taken steps to reduce pollution or improve environmental quality in some way. One of the most salient cultural and social signatures of the contemporary era in the United States, and throughout much of the world, has been the diffusion of a desire to protect, preserve, and restore features of the natural environment to a greater degree than current practices and policies do. These environmental concerns are not only widely shared, they have been extended to become a wide policy agenda. No longer confined to preserving national parks or eliminating the most noxious forms of smog and the most obvious kinds of water pollution, the environmental agenda has expanded to embrace the preservation of open spaces, critical habitats, wetlands, tropical rain forests, and other natural areas; the reduction of all forms of harmful pollution and emissions; and the reformation of personal habits of consumption and corporate practices of production that underlie the supply and demand of products that directly or indirectly harm the environment. Environmental implications are everywhere and they have seeped into everyone\u27s consciousness

Foreword

In the summer of 2001, a group of lawyers, law professors, students, and judges formed the American Constitution Society. The organization’s avowed purpose is to counter the dominant vision of American law today, a narrow conservative vision that lacks appropriate regard for the ways in which the law affects people’s lives: and to restore the fundamental principles of respect for human dignity, protection of individual rights and liberties, genuine equality, and access to justice to their rightful- and traditionally central-place in American law. 1 By spring 2002, the American Constitution Society had formed more than fifty campus chapters, plus lawyer chapters in several cities, and had held hundreds of speaking programs

Effect of Vibrational Excitation on the Theoretical Performance of the Stoichiometric Carbon-Oxygen Propellant System

Accurate calculations to evaluate the performance of the stoichiometric carbon-oxygen propellant system have been carried out for nozzle flow with and without chemical reactions and with and without vibrational adjustment. The calculations show that, for frozen chemical flow, a lag of vibrational energy states at chamber conditions nearly doubles the reduction in I_(sp), as compared with flow in which complete vibrational equilibrium is maintained. On the other hand, lags in vibrational adjustment have practically no effect on the theoretical performance of hot propellant systems if chemical equilibrium is maintained during nozzle flow. The preceding conclusions are in agreement with the results on other propellant systems obtained previously by use of an approximate evaluation procedure

Administrative Process Reform in a Discretionary Age: The Role of Social Consequences

The basic rulemaking procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act have remained intact for thirty-eight years, but now Congress is seriously considering reform of those generic rules. To evaluate the merits of these reform proposals, we must develop criteria against which to judge them. Although procedural reforms are commonly judged against the goals of fairness, accuracy, and procedural efficiency, Professors Schroeder and Magat argue that these are insufficient criteria to apply to administrative process reforms at a time when agencies possess substantial discretion in the rulemaking process. In such a context, procedures have an impact on society in ways not adequately evaluated by the traditional criteria. Discretion means that agencies may choose from a set of possible rules, none of which has been foreclosed by the enabling legislation of the agency. Procedures influence which choices the agency makes and, because these choices alter the regulations and restrictions under which society operates, they affect the social consequences of regulation. This article describes a model of participant behavior necessary to trace the effects of procedures on the social consequences of regulation, articulates a set of criteria to evaluate these social consequences, and then analyzes two frequently proposed generic reforms to the APA: mandatory regulatory impact analysis and oversight by the Office of Management and Budget

Energies of Quantum QED Flux Tubes

In this talk I present recent studies on vacuum polarization energies and energy densities induced by QED flux tubes. I focus on comparing three and four dimensional scenarios and the discussion of various approximation schemes in view of the exact treatment.Comment: 9 pages latex, Talk presented at the QFEXT 05 workshop in Barcelona, Sept. 2005. To appear in the proceeding