Road Rage and R.S. 2477: Judicial and Administrative Responsibility for Resolving Road Claims on Public Land

The past decade has seen the D-4 Caterpillar bulldozer become a significant tool for those seeking to challenge federal land management agencies\u27 authority to protect resources federal lands by reducing access. The power of the bulldozer is both symbolic and pragmatic. It cuts an iconographic image of local officials standing up against federal control over vast areas of land in the rural west. But it also, in many cases, provokes litigation, allowing claims to property rights to receive judicial attention that might otherwise evade them. Underlying each of these protagonist\u27s legal positions, if not their motivations, is a right-of-way grant enacted as part of the Mining Act of 1866: “The right of way for the construction of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.” For 110 years, from its enactment in 1866 until its repeal in 1976, this obscure statute known as R.S. 2477 granted the right-of-way across unreserved federal public lands for the construction of highways. For most of its lifetime, the terse and obscure grant caused little stir, except for the occasional claim that now private lands are subject to R.S. 2477 rights-of-way established during earlier public ownership. Since its repeal, however, R.S. 2477 has become a flashpoint in the ongoing battle for control over western public lands and the resources they harbor. Throughout the west, states, counties, and even individuals and groups pushing for unrestricted motorized access to remote public lands are using R.S. 2477 to try to frustrate environmentally protective measures imposed by federal land managers. Some of these groups are seeking to establish R.S. 2477 highway claims in order to preclude the potential future designation of public lands for protection under the Wilderness Act of 1964. An overlooked aspect of the R.S. 2477 controversy has been the allocation of responsibility among federal courts and federal land managers--specifically, the Department of the Interior (“DOI”)--for resolving disputed R.S. 2477 claims. Whether courts or federal land managers have primary authority to interpret and apply R.S. 2477 is more than a question of mere procedure or choice of forum. It is central to the ability of federal land management agencies to administer the obsolete land grant in a way that harmonizes the intent of the Congress that created it and the intent of Congresses that have since repealed the grant and mandated the management of public lands for various uses, including protecting their primitive condition. This Article argues that federal land management agencies should replace the courts as the institution with primary responsibility for resolving issues that arise from R.S. 2477 claims. In this view, DOI should be accorded the opportunity to interpret R.S. 2477 and to make an initial determination of the validity and scope of claimed R.S. 2477 rights-of-way. The judicial role, though still substantial, would be limited to that customary in administrative law cases, namely, the review of agency action for abuse of discretion and impermissible resolution of statutory ambiguities. Agency primacy would ensure the consistency and uniformity of R.S. 2477 decisions and, if the process is properly structured, ensure that the unique problems presented by this antiquated grant are, at long last, finally settled in a manner that both permits public participation and interpretation of R.S. 2477 in the proper context of the modern public land management regime

The toric h-vector of a cubical complex in terms of noncrossing partition statistics

This paper introduces a new and simple statistic on noncrossing partitions that expresses each coordinate of the toric $h$-vector of a cubical complex, written in the basis of the Adin $h$-vector entries, as the total weight of all noncrossing partitions. The same model may also be used to obtain a very simple combinatorial interpretation of the contribution of a cubical shelling component to the toric $h$-vector. In this model, a strengthening of the symmetry expressed by the Dehn-Sommerville equations may be derived from the self-duality of the noncrossing partition lattice, exhibited by the involution of Simion and Ullman

Computerized Schedule Effectiveness Technique /SET/ determines present and future schedule position

Computerized scheduling system calculates an index of overall schedule-effectiveness. The schedule-effectiveness index is a measurement of actual overall performance against the existing schedule, and a series of schedule-effectiveness values indicates the trend of actual performance. This computer program is written in Fortran 4

An Analysis of Case Studies Regarding Principal Financial Accounting Concepts

During Fall of 2017 and Spring of 2018, I participated in an alternate thesis route for accounting majors. The alternate route consisted of enrolling in a year-long course with Dr. Victoria Dickinson and individually completing cases based on financial accounting concepts each week. The cases selected each focus on a specific financial accounting concept. The conclusions reached in the cases were based on materials from the case, in class lecture notes, and an intermediate accounting textbook. Each case presents a series of questions which start with basic accounting concepts and build to more complex conceptual issues. Each case further developed my technical skills and advanced my knowledge about financial accounting concepts. Overall, everything learned from the completion of this thesis will be applicable towards a future career in accounting from a conceptual standpoint and from the further development of writing and technical skills

Reforming the Immigration Courts of the United States: Why is There No Will to Make It an Article I Court?

This article strongly reaffirms the author\u27s support for the use of asylum as a way of providing justice for those fleeing persecution from other countries. Additionally, this article was written to help educate those interested in asylum law by providing some history and background on asylum. Part II of the article briefly discusses the history of asylum; enumerates the eligibility requirements for asylum; describes court proceedings in asylum cases; recounts recent statistics on grants of asylum; and also includes a brief history of our immigration courts. Part III examines the six significant problem areas our immigration courts have wrestled with during the last decade with respect to asylum caseloads. Finally, Part IV examines a few of the proposals put forth over the last thirty years to transform the immigration court system into an Article I Legislative Court