Automatic Detection of Outliers in Multibeam Echo Sounding Data

The data volumes produced by new generation multibeam systems are very large, especially for shallow water systems. Results from recent multibeam surveys indicate that the ratio of the field survey time, to the time used in interactive editing through graphical editing tools, is about 1:1. An important reason for the large amount of processing time is that users subjectively decide which soundings are outliers. There is an apparent need for an automated approach for detecting outliers that would reduce the extensive labor and obtain consistent results from the multibeam data cleaning process, independent of the individual that has processed the data. The proposed automated algorithm for cleaning multibeam soundings was tested using the SAX-99 (Destin FL) multibeam survey data [2]. Eight days of survey data (6.9 Gigabyte) were cleaned in 2.5 hours on an SGI platform. A comparison of the automatically cleaned data with the subjective, interactively cleaned data indicates that the proposed method is, if not better, at least equivalent to interactive editing as used on the SAX-99 multibeam data. Furthermore, the ratio of acquisition to processing time is considerably improved since the time required for cleaning the data was decreased from 192 hours to 2.5 hours (an improvement by a factor of 77)

The Much Maligned 527 and Institutional Choice

The continuing controversy over “527” organizations has led Congress to impose extensive disclosure requirements on these political organizations and to consider imposing extensive restrictions on their funding as well. The debate about what laws should govern these entities has, however, so far almost completely ignored the fact that such laws raise a complicated institutional choice question. This Article seeks to resolve that question by developing a new institutional choice framework to guide this and similar choices. The Article first explores the context for making this determination by describing the current laws governing 527s, including both federal election laws administered by the Federal Election Commission and federal tax laws administered by the Internal Revenue Service. The Article then proposes and applies an institutional choice framework to guide the decision of into which body of substantive law the current and proposed rules for 527s should be incorporated. The Article concludes that while regulation of political activity through both election law and tax law can work reasonably well, the different tasks for which these bodies of law and their implementing agencies are best suited require a different allocation of responsibilities than both current and proposed laws governing 527s provides. Finally, the Article identifies other areas that may benefit from application of this framework

Politics at the Pulpit: Tax Benefits, Substantial Burdens, and Institutional Free Exercise

More than fifty years ago, Congress enacted a prohibition against political campaign intervention for all charities, including churches and other houses of worship, as a condition for receiving tax deductible contributions. Yet the IRS has never taken a house of worship to court for alleged violation of the prohibition through political comments from the pulpit, presumably at least in part because of concerns about the constitutionality of doing so. This decision is surprising, because a careful review of Free Exercise Clause case law - both before and after the landmark Employment Division v. Smith decision - reveals that the prohibition almost certainly would have survived a constitutional challenge. Now, however, two changes to the relevant legal landscape may shift the balance toward houses of worship seeking to challenge the prohibition in the sermon context and generate new concerns for the federal government, even as the IRS begins to more aggressively investigate alleged violations. The first change was Congress\u27 enactment of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which codified the substantial burden/strict scrutiny analysis articulated by the Supreme Court in pre-Smith Free Exercise Clause cases but rarely followed by that Court in practice. While no longer applicable to state and local laws, RFRA still applies to federal laws, including the prohibition. The second change is the growing support among both courts and scholars for an institutional approach to protecting constitutional rights, particularly in the context of religious organizations. This approach suggests that houses of worship challenging the prohibition may be able to argue successfully that the ability to speak to their members about matters of religious conviction is a necessary aspect of free exercise and so the government cannot, either constitutionally or under RFRA, discourage such speech by placing a condition on the receipt of a long-standing tax benefit. Part I of this Article briefly describes the prohibition and its history. Part II reviews current and past Free Exercise Clause case law and explains why the prohibition almost certainly would have withstood constitutional challenge under those decisions. Part III examines the legislative history and application of RFRA, including the difficult question of what that Act actually restored, and then applies RFRA to the prohibition. This Part concludes that as applied to the specific context of a religiously motivated sermon the prohibition substantially burdens exercise of religion within the meaning of RFRA. Once that conclusion is reached, RFRA requires the government to demonstrate that the prohibition is the least restrictive means for furthering a compelling government interest. I argue that the government would find such a demonstration difficult if not impossible to make, even taking into account Establishment Clause concerns raised by creating a RFRA-based exception to the prohibition for houses of worship. Part IV explores the developing institutional view of free exercise and argues that a proper appreciation of that view would bar the government from applying the prohibition to not only sermons but also a broader range of internal communications from religious leaders to the members of their houses of worship on matters of religious importance, under both the Constitution and RFRA. Finally, Part V briefly addresses whether as a practical matter an exception to the prohibition could be appropriately defined and limited

A Critical Problem Needing a Bolder Solution?: A Response to Atinuke O. Adediran\u27s Nonprofit Board Composition

The governing boards of nonprofit organizations, and particularly of nonprofits that serve low income and other vulnerable populations, fail to adequately include the populations that they serve. At least this is the common understanding among people familiar with these boards. Professor Atinuke Adediran not only confirms the existence of this problem but clarifies it in four important ways. Professor Adediran also proposes concrete steps to address it; although, the clarity she has brought to the problem raises the question of whether she could have been bolder in her proposed solutions. The clarity comes from new data, careful consideration of previous research, identification of an existing gap in legal scholarship, and the importation from the for-profit context of a helpful theoretical framework. Professor Adediran has significantly advanced the debate over nonprofit board composition.48 Her effort to do so is especially critical at this time of heightened concerns about racial discrimination and economic inequality. It is a hope that her work will further encourage nonprofits, funders, and policymakers to take renewed interest in this issue

Globalization Without a Safety Net: The Challenge of Protecting Cross-Border Funding of NGOs

More than 50 countries around the world have sharply increased legal restrictions on both domestic non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) that receive funding from outside their home country and the foreign NGOs that provide such funding and other support. These restrictions include requiring advance government approval before a domestic NGO can accept cross-border funding, requiring such funding to be routed through government agencies, and prohibiting such funding for NGOs engaged in certain activities. Publicly justified by national security, accountability, and other concerns, these measures often go well beyond what is reasonably supported by such legitimate interests. These restrictions therefore violate international law, which provides that the right to receive such funding is an essential aspect of freedom of association. Yet affected NGOs cannot rely on the international human rights treaties that codify this right because those treaties have limited reach and lack effective avenues for remedying these violations. There is, however, a growing web of international investment treaties designed to protect cross-border flows of funds, leading some supporters of cross-border funding for NGOs to argue that NGOs can instead use these investment treaties to protect such funding. In this Article, I provide the most thorough consideration of this proposal to date, including taking into account not only the legal hurdles to invoking investment treaty protections in this context but also the practical hurdles based on recently gathered information regarding the costs to parties who pursue claims under these treaties. I conclude that while it may be possible to overcome both sets of hurdles in some situations, these hurdles are higher than previous commentators have acknowledged. In particular, overcoming the high costs of bringing claims under these treaties would at a minimum require a concerted effort to fund or reduce such costs through either securing substantial third party financing or recruiting significant pro bono assistance. Given these obstacles to invoking the protections of international investment treaties, I then explore the insights that the remarkable growth in such treaties provide regarding the conditions that would need to exist for countries to be convinced to enact a similar set of agreements to protect cross-border funding of NGOs. I conclude that such conditions are currently absent and that it will take many years to see if they could develop, even assuming that many countries continue to increasingly restrict or effectively prohibit such funding. In the meantime, both recipients and providers of cross-border funding for NGOs will need to consider alternate strategies that do not rely on international law to counter such restrictions

What Is This Lobbying That We Are So Worried About?

Lobbying is both an essential part of our democratic process and a source of some of our greatest fears about dangers to that process. Yet when Congress, the public, and scholars consider loosening or, as is more often the case, tightening the restrictions on lobbying, they usually assume that everyone knows what activities are in fact lobbying. They therefore overlook the fact that multiple definitions of lobbying currently exist in the various federal laws addressing lobbying. This Article seeks to fill this gap by answering the question of how lobbying should be defined for purposes of the existing federal laws relating to lobbying. The Article first explores the three sets of applicable laws, which tax lobbying, disclose lobbying, and restrict lobbyists. This exploration reveals that all three sets of laws arise out of a common concern regarding the influence of interest groups on government actions. Drawing on the extensive research regarding how interest groups wield such influence, the Article then determines that this research strongly suggests that the vulnerability to interest group methods that raise the greatest concerns varies depending on the type of government actor that an interest group seeks to influence. The Article therefore proposes the adoption of single definition of lobbying that covers all direct attempts to influence government officials and employees in Congress and at the very highest levels of the Executive Branch, while excluding attempts to influence other types of government actors and to influence the public

Charities and Lobbying: Institutional Rights in the Wake of Citizens United

One of the many aftershocks of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC is that the decision may raise constitutional questions for the long-standing limits on speech by charities. There has been much scholarly attention both before and after that decision on the limit for election-related speech by charities, but much less attention has been paid to the relating lobbying speech limit. This article seeks to close that gap by exploring that latter limit and its continued viability in the wake of Citizens United. I conclude that while Citizens United by itself does not undermine the limit on lobbying by charities, the decision does reinforce the constitutional requirement that the government allow charities to easily form a non-tax favored alternative for engaging in unlimited lobbying. Some post-Citizens United proposals for regulating speech-related activity may in fact run afoul of this requirement. More importantly, the intersection of Citizens United and this tax-based limit on charity speech may be a catalyst for renewed consideration of whether the unconstitutional conditions doctrine could be successfully refined in the subsidy context through an approach that considers the purpose of the subsidy and how important the speech-related limit is to the accomplishment of that purpose

What Is This Lobbying That We Are So Worried About?

Lobbying is both an essential part of our democratic process and a source of some of our greatest fears about dangers to that process. Yet when Congress, the public, and scholars consider loosening or, as is more often the case, tightening the restrictions on lobbying, they usually assume that everyone knows what activities are in fact lobbying. They therefore overlook the fact that multiple definitions of lobbying currently exist in the various federal laws addressing lobbying. This Article seeks to fill this gap by answering the question of how lobbying should be defined for purposes of the existing federal laws relating to lobbying. The Article first explores the three sets of applicable laws, which tax lobbying, disclose lobbying, and restrict lobbyists. This exploration reveals that all three sets of laws arise out of a common concern regarding the influence of interest groups on government actions. Drawing on the extensive research regarding how interest groups wield such influence, the Article then determines that this research strongly suggests that the vulnerability to interest group methods that raise the greatest concerns varies depending on the type of government actor that an interest group seeks to influence. The Article therefore proposes the adoption of single definition of lobbying that covers all direct attempts to influence government officials and employees in Congress and at the very highest levels of the Executive Branch, while excluding attempts to influence other types of government actors and to influence the public