Representative Defendants

Everyone except the defendant in a criminal proceeding somehow represents the people. Prosecutors, judges, and juries are all considered public agents. Defendants in contrast are thought of as parochial, interested in nothing more than saving their own skins. This broadly shared understanding of criminal court actors was not historically fated nor is it legally accurate today. The Constitution tasks criminal defendants with significant public responsibility. They frequently represent the interests of third parties who have no direct stake in defendants\u27 criminal cases. Defendants vindicate the participatory rights of excluded jurors, they deter unconstitutional searches and seizures that could harm innocent civilians in the future, and they help ensure the transparent and expeditious functioning of the criminal justice system for the public\u27s benefit. Neither courts nor commentators recognize these representative actions as part of a coherent account of defendants\u27 role in the legal system. But representative defendants serve some of the same functions that representative plaintiffs do in the civil setting: overcoming information deficits, low-dollar-value harms, and resource scarcity, all of which make it unlikely that individual harm bearers will seek recourse in court. Courts, commentators, and the public should be clear-eyed about the role defendants play in our legal system. Doing so would help modulate criminal justice policy and enable defense counsel to more effectively challenge the systematic, third-party harms that criminal justice institutions generate

Applications of heat pipes to cool PWBS and hybrid microcircuits

Some of the advanced thermal management techniques used to reduce operating junction temperature under extreme environmental temperature conditions are discussed. Heat pipes in actual electronic packaging applications, and those under development, are discussed. Performance characteristics of heat pipes are given, and examples are described of how thermal problems in electronic packaging are solved through the use of heat pipes

Multivariate and Propensity Score Matching Software with Automated Balance Optimization: The Matching package for R

Matching is an R package which provides functions for multivariate and propensity score matching and for finding optimal covariate balance based on a genetic search algorithm. A variety of univariate and multivariate metrics to determine if balance actually has been obtained are provided. The underlying matching algorithm is written in C++, makes extensive use of system BLAS and scales efficiently with dataset size. The genetic algorithm which finds optimal balance is parallelized and can make use of multiple CPUs or a cluster of computers. A large number of options are provided which control exactly how the matching is conducted and how balance is evaluated.

The design of field experiments with survey outcomes: A framework for selecting more efficient, robust, and ethical designs

There is increasing interest in experiments where outcomes are measured by surveys and treatments are delivered by a separate mechanism in the real world, such as by mailers, door-To-door canvasses, phone calls, or online ads. However, common designs for such experiments are often prohibitively expensive, vulnerable to bias, and raise ethical concerns. We show how four methodological practices currently uncommon in such experiments have previously undocumented complementarities that can dramatically relax these constraints when at least two are used in combination: (1)Â online surveys recruited from a defined sampling frame (2)Â with at least one baseline wave prior to treatment (3)Â with multiple items combined into an index to measure outcomes and, (4)Â when possible, a placebo control. We provide a general and extensible framework that allows researchers to determine the most efficient mix of these practices in diverse applications. Two studies then examine how these practices perform empirically. First, we examine the representativeness of online panel respondents recruited from a defined sampling frame and find that their representativeness compares favorably to phone panel respondents. Second, an original experiment successfully implements all four practices in the context of a door-To-door canvassing experiment. We conclude discussing potential extensions