The Looming Battle for Control of Multidistrict Litigation in Historical Perspective

2018 marks fifty years since the passage of the Multidistrict Litigation Act. But instead of thoughts of a golden-anniversary celebration, an old Rodney Dangerfield one-liner comes to mind: “[M]y last birthday cake looked like a prairie fire.” Indeed, after a long period of relative obscurity, multidistrict litigation (MDL) has become a subject of major controversy—and not only among scholars of procedure. For a long time, both within and beyond the rarified world of procedure scholars, MDL was perceived as the more technical, less extreme cousin of the class action, which attracted most of the controversy. My goal in this Article is to shed light on the reasons the Multidistrict Litigation Act was constructed as it was and suggest that those engaged in the current debate ask, after becoming informed by available data, whether those reasons have lost any of their currency. I also offer some tenuous predictions about the path forward, recognizing that the prediction business is a dangerous one in the current political climate. First, I review the history to explain why the MDL framework was built without Rules Committee involvement. Then, I fast-forward to the present day and discuss briefly the nascent proposals to either amend the MDL statute or provide for Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for MDL. Finally, I conclude by assessing the current debate and make some suggestions as this debate winds its way forward. In 1968, the small cadre of judges who developed and fought for the MDL statute won the battle for procedural power. Today, fifty years later, the MDL statute continues to operate as they imagined. However, with success comes scrutiny, and what had been settled is now once again up for debate

The impact resistance of SiC and other mechanical properties of SiC and Si3N4

Studies focused on the impact and mechanical behavior of SiC and Si3N4 at high temperatures are summarized. Instrumented Charpy impact testing is analyzed by a compliance method and related to strength; slow crack growth is related to processing, and creep is discussed. The transient nature of flaw populations during oxidation under load is emphasized for both SiC and Si3N4

The effects of alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) on zooplankton community structure in Depot Pond NH and a comparison of seven New Hampshire lakes

Physical, chemical and biological features of seven New Hampshire lakes were examined in September and October of 1997. Zooplankton communities exhibited evidence of “top-down” control in Milton Three Ponds (Depot, Norteast, and Townhouse Ponds), showing effects of a planktivorous fish, Alosa pseudoharengus: small mean body size, dominance of small grazers such as Bosmina, and absence of large grazers such as Daphnia. Phosphorus concentrations were positively correlated to fluorescence of all water fractions, chlorophyll a and a phytoplankton biotic pollution index (modified from Hillsenhoff, 1978), revealing a level of “bottom-up” control

Gamma-ray Burst Positions from the ASM on RXTE

The RXTE/ASM has detected and positioned 14 confirmed GRB bursts (at this writing, Jan. 1999) including six whose positions were comunicated to the community 2 to 32 hours after the burst. Two of these latter bursts led to measurements of optical red shifts but one, despite an easily detected x-ray afterglow, produced no detectable optical or radio afterglow.Comment: 2 pages, 1 Figure, A&A format, accepted to appear in the proceedings of the conference "Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era", Rome, 3-6 Nov, 199

Policy rationales for electronic information systems : an area of ambiguity

Child welfare and protection (CWP) has engaged in the introduction of Electronic Information Systems (EIS), such as electronic recording, assessment and decision- making tools. It has been argued that EIS have adverse consequences in which gov- ernments are conceived as homogeneous entities that install EIS for self-interested purposes. Consequently, research focuses on how social workers evade/reshape the sometimes pernicious effects of EIS. Insufficient attention has been given to the gov- ernmental perspective and to why governments install EIS. In this article, we contrib- ute to this debate by performing semi-structured interviews with policy actors (directors, policy advisers and staff members) in the field of CWP in Flanders. Asked about their rationales for installing EIS, they spoke of administrative, policy, care and economic reasons. However, while advocating these EIS, they also expressed a critical attitude concerning the usefulness of EIS, hoping that practitioners would move back and forth between governmental demands and day-to-day realities, to establish a more responsive social work. This ambiguous situation in which policy makers seem to be both strong supporters and critics of EIS at the same time is captivating, since it seems no longer necessary to perceive governments as a homogeneous bogeyman and social work as a victim

Double-Layer Silicon PIN Photodiode X-Ray Detector for a Future X-ray Timing Mission

A double-layer silicon detector consisting of two 500micron-thick silicon PIN photodiodes with independent readouts was mounted in a vacuum chamber and tested with X-ray sources. The detector is sensitive from 1-30 keV with an effective area of 6 mm^2. The detector performs best at -35 C with an energy resolution of 220 eV (FWHM, full width at half maximum) at 5.9 keV, and is able to operate at room temperature, +25 C, with moderate resolution around 760 eV (FWHM). The response of the top layer sensor is highly uniform across the sensitive area. This large-format silicon detector is appropriate for future X-ray timing missions.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, NIM A to appea

X-ray Transients Monitored by the All-Sky Monitor on RXTE: A Tabulation

We present a tabulation of 46 transient x-ray sources monitored with the All-Sky Monitor (ASM) on the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). They fall into four broad categories: short (~d), intermediate, and long (>500 d) duration of outbursts, and long period binary systems that flare up at periastron (e.g., Be systems). The mixture of outburst/quiescent cycles and low-level persistent emission in a few systems could indicate conditions are near the limit for stable mass flow in the accretion disk. The two short-time-scale systems, CI Cam and V4641 Sgr, are within 1 kpc of the sun, and hence many more such systems may await discovery.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, Submitted for publication in "X-ray Astronomy '99; Stellar Endpoints, AGN and the Diffuse Background", Ed: G.Malaguti, G.Palumbo, and N.White, pub. Gordon and Breach (v.2: Additional references added, erroneous figure replaced