An Analysis of the Impact of Multiple Environmental Goods on House Prices

It seems an established empirical fact that Superfund sites lower local property values. Two recent literature reviews (Farber, 1998, Boyle and Kiel, 2001) report that published academic papers on the topic verify that point. The EPA’s approach assumes that all sites negatively impact property values, and that the impact is similar for all sites. This paper examines 74 National Priorities List (NPL) sites in 13 U.S. counties in order to test these two implicit assumptions. Following the hedonic approach of Kiel (1995) and Kiel and McClain (1995), we find that some sites have the expected negative impact, while other sites have either no impact or a positive impact on local property values. We also consider the possibility of ‘stigma’ from sites by looking at those sites that have been cleaned during our sample period and find that some sites do appear to suffer from stigma, while others do not. We then use a meta-analysis approach to examine what factors affect the likelihood and extent of a decrease in property values near the sites. We find that larger sites in areas with fewer blue-collar workers are more likely to have the expected negative impact on local house prices.Environment, Superfund, Hedonic regressions, meta-analysis, property values

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: \u3cem\u3eKiyemba v. Obama\u3c/em\u3e and the Meaning of Freedom, Separation of Powers, and the Rule of Law Ten Years After 9/11

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs suggest that this commitment is either waning or was never as strong as scholars thought. About a year and a half before the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States Supreme Court was primed to hear oral arguments in the Uighurs’ case known as Kiyemba v. Obama. The issue in this case was whether the Uighurs, who were concededly being detained illegally, would be released from Guantanamo Bay. As a result of the government’s latest delay tactics, the Court never heard the merits of the case. Had it done so, the Court, arguably, would have established the contours of a constitutionally required habeas remedy for foreign nationals whose indefinite detention had been judicially declared illegal and no other option but release into the continental interior of the United States is possible. The Court’s dismissal of the Uighurs previously granted cert petition thus signaled the beginning of the end of the Court’s landmark “war-on–terror” line of precedential cases culminating in the evisceration of its 2008 seminal case of Boumediene v. Bush. With the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision now reinstated in which the court had held in 2009 that habeas courts had no jurisdiction to order the release of foreign nationals under such circumstances because it was an immigration case triggering the political branches’ plenary power over which such matters are largely immune from judicial intervention. But Kiyemba v. Obama is not an immigration case. The Uighurs were brought here involuntarily as a result of the government’s counterterrorism policies, the implementation of which the Court had declared unlawful over the course of a four year period beginning with Rasul v. Bush in 2004. The D.C. Circuit Court holding, which still stands, was erroneous because the Uighurs never sought to immigrate to this country; their filing of writs of habeas corpus placed the matter solidly in the area of granting constitutionally required habeas relief which a habeas court has jurisdiction to decide. Through political machinations and influences at all levels of government, however, the Supreme Court has more recently decided to end its role of protecting the individual rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees with a series of denials of cert.-petitions without a single dissent authored to voice concerns about the beginning of the end of the Republic Benjamin Franklin once said we had but only if we could keep it. And although most of the original group of Uighurs has subsequently been relocated to other countries, the two still remaining have now entered their second decade of unlawful detention

Guidelines For Pursuing and Revealing Data Abstractions

Many data abstraction types, such as networks or set relationships, remain unfamiliar to data workers beyond the visualization research community. We conduct a survey and series of interviews about how people describe their data, either directly or indirectly. We refer to the latter as latent data abstractions. We conduct a Grounded Theory analysis that (1) interprets the extent to which latent data abstractions exist, (2) reveals the far-reaching effects that the interventionist pursuit of such abstractions can have on data workers, (3) describes why and when data workers may resist such explorations, and (4) suggests how to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks through transparency about visualization research perspectives and agendas. We then use the themes and codes discovered in the Grounded Theory analysis to develop guidelines for data abstraction in visualization projects. To continue the discussion, we make our dataset open along with a visual interface for further exploration

Whole-school mental health promotion in Australia

Although there is increasing recognition internationally of the significance of social and emotional health and wellbeing for the healthy development of young people, the levels of support that governments provide for mental health policy and programme initiatives vary widely. In this paper, consideration is given to Australia’s approach to mental health promotion from early years to secondary school, including specific reference to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative. Although it is now well established that schools provide important settings for the promotion of mental health initiatives, there are significant challenges faced in effectively implementing and maintaining the delivery of evidence-based practice in school settings, including concerns about quality assurance in processes of implementation, translation, dissemination and evaluation.peer-reviewe

Book review: crimes unspoken: the rape of German women at the end of the Second World War by Miriam Gebhardt

In Crimes Unspoken: The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War, Miriam Gebhardt presents readers with a detailed and carefully researched account of the extent of sexual violence perpetrated by Allied forces against German women. Recent discussion has focused primarily on assaults committed by Soviet troops, but the author argues that this does not represent the whole picture. Katherine Williams recommends this text to readers interested in twentieth-century history, gender and memory

Book review: Reproductive states: global perspectives on the invention and implementation of population policy edited by Rickie Solinger and Mie Nakachi

Throughout the twentieth century, there are many examples of nations and their governments imposing restrictive population policies on their citizens in response to perceived political crises and international pressure. From China’s ‘one-child’ policy, the pro-natalist rhetoric of the former USSR to the post-WWII containment measures of the USA, such legislation has had one major thing in common: the perception of women’s bodies as political resources. Katherine Williams recommends Reproductive States: Global Perspectives on the Invention and Implementation of Population Policy to readers interested in biopolitics, gender, statecraft and world systems

Book review: les Parisiennes: how the women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s by Anne Sebba

What did it feel like to be a woman in Paris from 1939-49? What were the choices women were forced to make in order to ensure their survival during the Nazi occupation? Anne Sebba attempts to answer these questions, and many more, in Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, using an impressive array of primary sources including interviews with surviving women. The book chronicles how women from all walks of life coped during years of fear and uncertainty, and gives readers insight into the life-and-death daily decisions that women in Paris made. Katherine Williams recommends this book to those interested in social history, gender and femininity studies

Book review: girl trouble: panic and progress in the history of young women by Carol Dyhouse

As author Carol Dyhouse covers in her book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, despite massive advancements in education, work opportunities, political rights, and personal and reproductive freedoms, moral hysteria has accompanied popular rhetoric regarding the place of young women in society since the Victorian era. Can we afford to be optimistic about the impact of modernity on girls? Katherine Williams recommends this insightful, and often witty, read to anyone interested in gender studies, or social histories

LSE Lit Fest 2017 book review: Red Ellen: the life of Ellen Wilkinson, socialist, feminist, internationalist by Laura Beers

In Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist, Laura Beers presents a dynamic account of the life of Ellen Wilkinson, a working-class girl from Manchester turned humanitarian, campaigner and politician. Beers’s book offers an insight into Wilkinson’s sometimes controversial life and a period of British history when young people from all walks of life were driven by the desire to enact social change, both at home and abroad. Katherine Williams recommends this book to those interested in the history of the radical left in the UK, social history and, of course, Ellen Wilkinson herself. On Friday 24 February, author Laura Beers will be speaking about her new biography of Ellen Wilkinson for the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2017. This year’s theme is Revolutions – not only marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution, but also other anniversaries of revolutions in literature, international relations, politics, religion and science. Tickets to all events are free and available here