University undergraduate students and library-related privacy issues

New technologies increase the ability to capture and retrieve data about library usage patterns and users. Collecting, analyzing, and using patron data, however, may raise concerns among library users about their online privacy and how the data collected might be used to their advantage or disadvantage. This article examines undergraduate students\u27 knowledge and perceptions of online privacy issues, their opinions regarding who should collect and retain information about them, for what purposes, and under what circumstances

Bayesian Framework for Multi-Stage Transmission Expansion Planning Under Uncertainty via Emulation

Effective transmission expansion planning is necessary to ensure a power system can satisfy all demand both reliably and economically. However, at the time reinforcement decisions are made many elements of the future power system background are uncertain, such as demand level, type and location of installed generators, and plant availability statistics. In the current power system planning literature, making decisions which account for such uncertainties is usually done by considering a small set of plausible scenarios, and the resulting limited coverage of parameter space limits confidence that the resulting decision will be a good one with respect to the real world. This thesis will consider a Bayesian approach to transmission expansion planning under uncertainty, which uses statistical emulators to approximate how input affects output of expensive simulators using a small number of training runs (evaluations from the simulator), as well as quantifying uncertainty in the simulator output for all points at which it has not been evaluated. In addition, expert judgement is used to formulate probability density functions to describe the uncertainties which exist in the power system, which can then be used alongside the emulator to estimate expected costs under uncertainty whilst also giving credible intervals for the resulting estimate. Further, the methodology will be expanded to consider multi-stage transmission expansion problems under uncertainty, where uncertainty can be reduced in various aspects of the power system between decisions. In the existing power system planning literature, multi-stage decisions under uncertainty are handled by considering a small number of possible projections of the future power system, which gives a very limited coverage of the space of all possible projections of the future power system. This thesis will consider how emulation can be used alongside backwards induction to calculate costs across all stages as a function of the first stage decision only, whilst also accounting for the uncertainties which exists in the future power system. As part of this, the future state of the power system is modelled using continuous variables which effectively allows for an infinite number of possible projections to be considered. Throughout this thesis, the methodology used is detailed in quite general terms, which should allow for the methodology to be applied to problems of interest other than the transmission expansion planning problem considered in this thesis with relative ease

The Depravity of the 1930s and the Modern Administrative State

Gillian Metzger’s 2017 Harvard Law Review foreword, entitled 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege, is a paean to the modern administrative state, with its massive subdelegations of legislative and judicial power to so-called “expert” bureaucrats, who are layered well out of reach of electoral accountability yet do not have the constitutional status of Article III judges. We disagree with this celebration of technocratic government on just about every level, but this Article focuses on two relatively narrow points. First, responding more to implicit assumptions that pervade modern discourse than specifically to Professor Metzger’s analysis, we challenge the normally unchallenged premise that the 1930s was a decade of moral wisdom about governmental design that should serve as a ground for constitutional reasoning that is superior to the actual text of the Constitution. The 1930s was a thoroughly awful time, worldwide and in the United States; and while America avoided some of the very worst trends of those times (although it was a worldwide leader in others, such as eugenics), the intellectual and political foundations of that decade were a terrible ground for theories of government. We do not make the absurd claim that everything that emerged from the 1930s was therefore bad simply by virtue of that origin, nor do we make the equally absurd ad hominem claim that everyone who supports anything from the 1930s must support everything from that time. We only want to call into question the (generally implicit) premise that the governmental forms of the 1930s are sacrosanct because that decade should be seen as the real constitutional founding. The intellectual foundations of the 1780s and 1860s—the decades that led to the ratification of the actual constitutional text and the Civil War Amendments—are far superior to those of the 1930s. To be clear, we think that constitutional interpretation should be about the Constitution, not about time periods, values, or constitutional “orders,” but if for some reason one wants to focus on time periods, the 1930s should be the last time period to which one looks for guidance. Second, we offer some very modest legislative tweaks to the existing institutions of the administrative state that we believe will move American government more toward the correct constitutional baseline with only minimal changes in actual governmental functions. Major rules should be enacted using constitutional (if expedited) lawmaking procedures; all executive officers should, by statute if not by constitutional command, be made removable at will by the President; and all deprivations of life, liberty, and property by the federal government should be accomplished through due process of law, which means adjudication through an Article III tribunal. None of these tweaks requires abolition of any federal agency or repeal of any substantive organic statute. Adopting them will not establish constitutional government. But it will be better than abandoning the enterprise altogether in favor of rule by “experts” deemed fit, by virtue of their college degrees, to govern their unenlightened “lessers.

Marshall University Music Department Presents a Faculty Recital, featuring, Stephen Lawson, horn, assisted by J. Steven Hall, marimba, percussion, Kay Lawson, bassoon, Peggy Johnson, piano

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1520/thumbnail.jp

Marshall University Music Department Presents a Faculty Recital featuring Stephen Lawson, horn, assisted by, J. Steven Hall, marimba, percussion, Kay Lawson, bassoon, Peggy Johnston, piano

https://mds.marshall.edu/music_perf/1523/thumbnail.jp

The Depravity of the 1930s and the Modern Administrative State

Gillian Metzger’s 2017 Harvard Law Review foreword, entitled 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege, is a paean to the modern administrative state, with its massive subdelegations of legislative and judicial power to so-called “expert” bureaucrats, who are layered well out of reach of electoral accountability yet do not have the constitutional status of Article III judges. We disagree with this celebration of technocratic government on just about every level, but this Article focuses on two relatively narrow points. First, responding more to implicit assumptions that pervade modern discourse than specifically to Professor Metzger’s analysis, we challenge the normally unchallenged premise that the 1930s was a decade of moral wisdom about governmental design that should serve as a ground for constitutional reasoning that is superior to the actual text of the Constitution. The 1930s was a thoroughly awful time, worldwide and in the United States; and while America avoided some of the very worst trends of those times (although it was a worldwide leader in others, such as eugenics), the intellectual and political foundations of that decade were a terrible ground for theories of government. We do not make the absurd claim that everything that emerged from the 1930s was therefore bad simply by virtue of that origin, nor do we make the equally absurd ad hominem claim that everyone who supports anything from the 1930s must support everything from that time. We only want to call into question the (generally implicit) premise that the governmental forms of the 1930s are sacrosanct because that decade should be seen as the real constitutional founding. The intellectual foundations of the 1780s and 1860s—the decades that led to the ratification of the actual constitutional text and the Civil War Amendments—are far superior to those of the 1930s. To be clear, we think that constitutional interpretation should be about the Constitution, not about time periods, values, or constitutional “orders,” but if for some reason one wants to focus on time periods, the 1930s should be the last time period to which one looks for guidance. Second, we offer some very modest legislative tweaks to the existing institutions of the administrative state that we believe will move American government more toward the correct constitutional baseline with only minimal changes in actual governmental functions. Major rules should be enacted using constitutional (if expedited) lawmaking procedures; all executive officers should, by statute if not by constitutional command, be made removable at will by the President; and all deprivations of life, liberty, and property by the federal government should be accomplished through due process of law, which means adjudication through an Article III tribunal. None of these tweaks requires abolition of any federal agency or repeal of any substantive organic statute. Adopting them will not establish constitutional government. But it will be better than abandoning the enterprise altogether in favor of rule by “experts” deemed fit, by virtue of their college degrees, to govern their unenlightened “lessers.

Why Robert Mueller\u27s Appointment as Special Counsel Was Unlawful

Since 1999, when the independent counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act expired, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has had in place regulations providing for the appointment of “special counsels” who possess “the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney.” Appointments under these regulations, such as the May 17, 2017 appointment of Robert S. Mueller to investigate the Trump campaign, are patently unlawful, for three distinct reasons. First, all federal offices must be “established by Law,” and there is no statute authorizing such an office in the DOJ. We conduct what we think is the first thorough examination of the statutes structuring the DOJ to show that the statutory provisions relied upon by the DOJ and lower courts for the appointment of special counsels over the past two decades do not—and even obviously do not—authorize the creation and appointment of special counsels at the level of United States Attorneys. They authorize the creation and appointment of special counsels to “assist” United States Attorneys, and they allow existing Senate-confirmed United States Attorneys to serve also as special counsels, but they do not remotely authorize the creation of the kind of special counsels represented by Robert Mueller who replace rather than assist United States Attorneys. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), does not hold to the contrary, because no question was raised in that case about the validity of the independent counsel’s appointment. Second, even if one chooses to overlook the absence of statutory authority for the position, there is no statute specifically authorizing the Attorney General, rather than the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint such a special counsel. Under the Appointments Clause, inferior officers can be appointed by department heads only if Congress so directs by statute—and so directs specifically enough to overcome a clear-statement presumption in favor of presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation. No such statute exists for the special counsel. Third, the special counsel is, in all events, a superior rather than inferior officer, and thus cannot be appointed by any means other than presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation regardless of what any statutes purport to say. This is obviously true as a matter of original meaning, and it is even true as a matter of case law once one understands that neither Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), nor Edmond v. United States, 520 U.S. 651 (1997), can plausibly be read to say that any person who is in any fashion subordinate to another executive official is an “inferior” officer. Such a reading of those decisions leads to the ludicrous result that there is only one noninferior officer in every federal department, which is a good reason not to read them that way. There are surely times when special counsels are appropriate. Both statutes and the Constitution provide ample means for such appointments through the use of existing United States Attorneys with unimpeachable credentials and reputations for standing above politics. Any number of United States Attorneys have performed these functions with distinction. Statutes and the Constitution do not, however, permit the Attorney General to appoint a private citizen as a substitute United States Attorney under the title “special counsel.” That is what happened on May 17, 2017. That appointment was unlawful, as are all of the legal actions that have flowed from it. The D.C. Circuit’s unreasoned February 26, 2019 opinion in In re Grand Jury Investigation upholding Mueller’s appointment does not come to grips with any of these arguments. The panel decision asserts (falsely) that the issues were either waived by the party challenging the appointment or are readily resolved by Supreme Court precedent. If the latter claim was true, those precedents would cry out for clarification or reconsideration by the Court. But that latter claim is only even minimally plausible based on the most superficial skimming of the applicable precedents. The statutory and constitutional structure of federal law enforcement is a serious matter, and one might have hoped that the federal courts—and the Department of Justice—would devote a bit more mental energy to that matter than they have thus far expended

Equity and Hierarchy: Reflections on the Harris Execution

The legal controversy surrounding the execution of Robert Alton Harris is only one in a series of cases over the past few months testing the proper relationship between the Supreme Court and the inferior federal courts. Controversy over inferior federal court grants or denials of injunctions concerning Haitian refugees1 and the French abortion pill2 have starkly raised, as does the Harris case3, profound questions concerning Supreme Court review of inferior court rulings on issues involving equitable relief. The Harris case did not display the American legal system at its finest. None of the participants in the process distinguished themselves-not the inferior courts, the Supreme Court, or Harris\u27 counsel. Judge Reinhardt4 and Professors Caminker and Chemerinsky deserve credit for pointing out many of the problems posed by the Harris decisions