12,554 research outputs found
Taking Back What’s Theirs: The Recess Appointments Clause, Pro Forma Sessions, and a Political Tug-of-War
This Note surveys the current landscape of the Recess Appointments Clause. With the recent recess appointments of Richard Cordray to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and three other individuals to join the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), came an influx of old—and new—controversy over the President’s recess appointment authority. This Note explores interpretational issues that have surrounded the Clause since its inception, as well as novel issues that have arisen with the Congress’s use of pro forma sessions in an attempt to block recess appointments and derail the executive’s agenda. The conflict over control of the appointments process is at its peak, as exemplified by the current litigation seeking to invalidate President Obama’s most recent recess appointments. This Note examines the varied interpretations of the Clause, the current litigation and potential dispositions, the increasing congressional trend of using the appointments process as an obstructionist device, and the possible state of both the CFPB and the Recess Appointments Clause after litigation. Ultimately, this piece proposes a modified functionalist standard by which the validity of recess appointments should be judged. That is, if the Senate is in a truly functional recess for a period of longer than three days, then the President should be able to make a valid recess appointment. Additionally, this three-day rule can be broken in the event of an emergency that renders the Senate unable to advise and consent to a nominee at a time when a recess appointment is necessary for the uninterrupted functioning of the government
Comparison of three estimators in a polynomial regression with measurement errors
In a polynomial regression with measurement errors in the covariate, which is supposed to be normally distributed, one has (at least) three ways to estimate the unknown regression parameters: one can apply ordinary least squares (OLS) to the model without regard of the measurement error or one can correct for the measurement error, either by correcting the estimating equation (ALS) or by correcting the mean and variance functions of the dependent variable, which is done by conditioning on the observable, error ridden, counter part of the covariate (SLS). While OLS is biased the other two estimators are consistent. Their asymptotic covariance matrices can be compared to each other, in particular for the case of a small measurement error variance
Low-temperature infrared dielectric function of hyperbolic -quartz
We report the infrared dielectric properties of -quartz in the
temperature range from to . Using an
infrared free-electron laser, far-infrared reflectivity spectra of a single
crystal -cut were acquired along both principal axes, under two different
incidence angles, in S- and P-polarization. These experimental data have been
fitted globally for each temperature with a multioscillator model, allowing to
extract frequencies and damping rates of the ordinary and extraordinary,
transverse and longitudinal optic phonon modes, and hence the
temperature-dependent dispersion of the infrared dielectric function. The
results are in line with previous high-temperature studies, allowing for a
parametrized description of all temperature-dependent phonon parameters and the
resulting dielectric function from up to the
--phase transition temperature, . Using
these data, we predict remarkably high quality factors for polaritons in
-quartz's hyperbolic spectral region at low temperatures
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