Exploitation of Overseas Migrant Labor: Analysis of Migration Policy in Nepal and the Philippines

Nepal and the Philippines are two of the largest providers per capita of migrant laborers in the world. Each day, thousands of prospective migrants apply to go abroad, attracted by new opportunities and appealing wages. However, as the amount of workers abroad increases, so does government responsibility. Public and private institutions have drawn out and implemented detailed sets of rules and regulations, which are used to oversee the extensive migration process. The Philippine’s strong national and local level collaboration, robust training programs, and concentrated focus on reintegration distinguish themselves from Nepal, which suffers from limitations that damage its ability to provide migrant workers greater access to justice and effective societal integration. Nepal can learn from the success of the Philippines and apply similar initiatives using its existing resources to increase individual faith and participation in public life and institutions

The Influence of Prior Legal Background on Judicial Sentencing Considerations

State court judges are influenced by a myriad of factors during criminal case processing. To study the influence of prior legal background on judicial decision-making at sentencing, we performed in-depth qualitative interviews of 39 trial court judges presiding over criminal cases in a Northeastern U.S. state. We find that judges are influenced by their former legal experiences and most judges are cognizant of this influence. While certain sentencing considerations are prioritized for almost all judges (e.g., criminal history, seriousness of the offense), prioritization and processing of many other sentencing criteria are correlated with prior legal background. Former defense attorneys tend to focus on defendants’ mental health, social upbringing, and family support, while prosecutors focus on victim impact and violence, among other considerations. Our results highlight the need for diversity on the bench in criminal courts coupled with increased training and inter-courtroom communications

Defending Constitutional Rights in Imbalanced Courtrooms

Safeguarding Fourth Amendment protections is critical to preserving individual privacy rights and fostering positive perceptions of police legitimacy within communities. Maintaining an effective accountability structure for police stops, searches, and seizures is a necessary step toward achieving these objectives. In this article, we use qualitative interviews and survey data with defense attorneys to explore—from a court community perspective— their use of discretion to uphold the Exclusionary Rule through bringing suppression motions. Data demonstrate that power dynamics within the court community lead defense attorneys to conclude that litigating rights violations is often a futile effort that interferes with favorable case outcomes and important professional relationships. As a result, they sometimes opt to refrain from filing suppression motions in exchange for favorable plea offers and career aspirations. While understandable, these decisions frustrate the ability of the judicial system to hold the police accountable for Fourth Amendment violations

Towards Statistical Methods for Minimizing Effects of Failure Cascades

This paper concerns the potential of corrective actions, such as generation and load dispatch on minimizing the effects of transmission line failures in electric power systems. Three loss functions (grid-centric, consumer-centric, and influence localization) are used to statistically evaluate the criticality of initial contingent failures. A learning scheme for both AC and DC grid models combine a Monte Carlo approach with a convex dynamic programming formulation and introduces an adaptive selection process, illustrated on the IEEE-30 bus system.Comment: Pre-print submitted to ACC 202