Digital Commons Network^™

The Impacts Of School-Business Partnerships On The Early Labor-Market Success Of Students, John H. Bishop, Ferran Mane

John H Bishop

[Excerpt] This chapter examines the effects of improved signaling of student achievement in high school on the labor market success of recent high-school graduates. The chapter is organized into three sections. In the first section, we reproduce the argument that Bishop put forth in 1985 that better signaling of student achievement to employers would improve the quality of the jobs that recent high-school graduates could obtain and strengthen incentives to learn. In the second section, we analyze longitudinal data on eight graders in 1988 and attempt to measure the effect of school-employer partnerships on their subsequent success in the labor …

Is An Oversupply Of College Graduates Coming?, John H. Bishop

John H Bishop

[Excerpt] Demand for college graduates workers was strong during the 1980s (Blackburn, Bloom and Freeman 1989; Katz and Murphy 1990; Kosters 1989; Freeman 1991). The relative wage of college graduate workers rose and college attendance rose in response. Have the demand and technology shocks that produced this result run their course? Is the supply response large enough to stop and/or reverse the 1980s escalation of the relative wages of college graduates? Read superficially, Bureau of Labor Statistics projections appear to suggest that the answers to these questions are YES. In the latest BLS report, the growing supply of college graduates …

Solar Energy Policy In Canada: An Overview Of Recent Legislative And Community-Based Trends Towards A Coherent Renewable Energy Sustainability Framework, Kamaal Zaidi

Kamaal Zaidi

This paper outlines solar energy policy in Canada, in the hopes of advancing renewable energy policy. More specifically, the most recent advances in public policy relating to renewable energy are examined in selected provinces to show how solar energy is on the rise in Canada. The technology behind solar energy is briefly analyzed, while the legal aspects of solar energy are covered to build upon the discussion in various provinces. Since much of Canadian solar energy policy draws from Germany, Japan, and the United States, these three jurisdictions are mentioned to show their solar energy policies. The paper ends with …

School Reform That Matters, Michael Johanek

Michael C Johanek

A "loving critic" of the U.S., Dean Kishore Mahbubani at the National University of Singapore, suggests that "American society could ... fail if it does not force itself to conceive of failure." Our "first systemic failure," claims Mahbubani, is "groupthink." evident in our collective inability to challenge the "manifest nonsense" from financial sector officials years ago. Today, "the belief that American society allows every idea to be challenged has led Americans to assume that every idea is challenged. They have failed to notice when their minds have been enveloped in groupthink."[1] Might this apply to our ideas about school reform? …

Expandable Grids For Visualizing And Authoring Computer Security Policies, Robert Reeder, Lujo Bauer, Lorrie Cranor, Michael Reiter, Kelli Bacon, Keisha How, Heather Strong

Lorrie F Cranor

We introduce the Expandable Grid, a novel interaction technique for creating, editing, and viewing many types of security policies. Security policies, such as file permissions policies, have traditionally been displayed and edited in user interfaces based on a list of rules, each of which can only be viewed or edited in isolation. These list-of-rules interfaces cause problems for users when multiple rules interact, because the interfaces have no means of conveying the interactions amongst rules to users. Instead, users are left to figure out these rule interactions themselves. An Expandable Grid is an interactive matrix visualization designed to address the …

Webster Plus One: Solving The "Impossible" Apportionment Debate, Mark M. Bell

Mark M Bell

Apportionment issues inevitably arise decennially. Consistent with historical trends, the debates concerning the upcoming 2010 apportionment have already begun to intensify. Deciding which apportionment method to use has generated intense debates among some of the most prominent figures in the Nation’s history. Most scholars believe that there is constitutional tension between two fundamental apportionment constraints: apportioning proportionally and representatively. It has been universally accepted that it is “impossible to satisfy both criteria.” In order to satisfy both criteria, an apportionment method must both, maintain quota, and avoid paradoxes. I postulate a new method, the “Webster Plus One” approach, that stands …

Prevention Or Pretext: The Designation Of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Syed Ali M. Jafri

Syed Ali M. Jafri

This paper examines whether the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” & “Specially Designated Foreign Terrorists” designations are applied in a consistent manner. The author concludes that the designations are applied inconsistently and are used in the post September 11th era as a tool not only against legitimate terrorist targets, but also against the ideological opponents of United States foreign policy. Specifically the designations are used against Islamic based political movements. The pre-textual use of terrorist designations against ideological opponents weakens the United States position in the battle against terrorism, and undermines their legitimate security concerns. The current application of the designation schemes …

Untapped Inventive Potential In U.S. Communities, Michael Meehan

Michael Meehan PhD

This paper combines the 2000 U.S. Census data and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) Patent Citation Data File in order to analyze how certain community-level population and community factors correlate with overall patenting and relative rates of assigned and unassigned patenting. Among the interesting findings discussed are that, in addition to the fact that overall patenting increased with higher populations of employed people, higher populations of people with either terminal undergraduate or master’s degrees, and higher median income, the overall rates of patenting decreased, and did not merely remain the level, as the other sectors of a communities’ …

Webster Plus One: Solving The "Impossible" Apportionment Debate, Mark M. Bell

Mark M Bell

Apportionment issues inevitably arise decennially. Consistent with historical trends, the debates concerning the upcoming 2010 apportionment have already begun to intensify. Deciding which apportionment method to use has generated intense debates among some of the most prominent figures in the Nation’s history. Most scholars believe that there is constitutional tension between two fundamental apportionment constraints: apportioning proportionally and representatively. It has been universally accepted that it is “impossible to satisfy both criteria.” In order to satisfy both criteria, an apportionment method must both, maintain quota, and avoid paradoxes. I postulate a new method, the “Webster Plus One” approach, that stands …

Email Policies Considered, Jay Forder, Patrick Quirk

Jay Forder

[Extract] The worldwide electronic mail system is a part of, and yet quite distinct from, the Internet. It has a broader coverage than the Internet and has capabilities beyond mere communication between humans (e.g. it can be used to produce automatic responses between computers). The previous issue of "Law & Technology" considered legal liability for e-mail and highlighted the need for a corporate policy. We now consider what a sensible policy might contain.

Race In The War On Drugs: The Social Consequences Of Presidential Rhetoric, Jeff L. Yates, Andrew Whitford

Jeff L Yates

One of the president’s main leadership tools for influencing the direction of American legal policy is public rhetoric. Numerous studies have examined the president’s use of the “bully pulpit” to lead policy by influencing Congress or public opinion, or by changing the behavior of public agencies. We argue that the president can use rhetoric to change the behavior of public agencies and that this can have important social consequences. We focus on the disproportionate impact of presidential rhetoric on different “target populations” in the context of the War on Drugs. Specifically, we observe that presidential rhetoric had a greater impact …

A Miscarriage Of Juvenile Justice: A Modern-Day Parable Of The Unintended Results Of Bad Lawmaking, Amy Vorenberg

Amy Vorenberg

Sensationalized cases increasingly create the context for public policy discussion. Stories about violent crime are a common feature of the local evening news and their emotional nature can often create the hook politicians need to showcase their “tough on crime” agendas. Often anecdotal and lurid, stories of criminal misdeeds are widely used to convince the public of a need to create or change laws. This article demonstrates the perils of making law by extrapolating from a few random, albeit attention-grabbing, events. Specifically, the article examines the impact of a 1995 change in New Hampshire state law that lowered the age …

The Discovery Immunity Exception In Indian Country – Promoting American Indian Sovereignty By Fostering The Rule Of Law, Jay Kanassatega

Jay Kanassatega

The purpose of this article is to encourage federal courts (and Indian tribes) to re-think reliance on tribal sovereign immunity as a basis to quash or modify process directed to Indian tribes and their elected and appointed officials and employees as non-parties to any underlying litigation. In such third-party actions, federal courts should not apply tribal immunity to quash or modify otherwise valid federal process served on an Indian tribe pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 45. Instead, the federal court should approach the issue with an eye toward implementing Congressional policies aimed at supporting the development …

Developing Conditions For Environmentally Sustainable Consumption: Drawing Insight From Anti-Smoking Policy, Rachel Krause

Rachel M. Krause

This paper starts from the premise that, particularly in industrialized countries, the consumption decisions made by individuals and households are a major source of environmental strain. Several international organizations and national governments have addressed this issue, but, thus far, their efforts have had minimal effect. This paper examines the conditions necessary for the implementation of policy able to effectively reduce the environmental impact of household consumption. It draws from the experience of American tobacco control, a relatively rare example of a public effort that succeeded in reducing the negative consequences of an entitled consumer behaviour.

An extensive review of the …

Sonomaworks A Community Health And Welfare Program Evaluation: Moving People From Welfare Dependence To Employment And Independence, Peter Wales

Ned Wales

SonomaWORKS was a ‘welfare to work’ program that was evaluated through grant funding from the US Department of Justice in the late 1990's. The outcomes from the research show some indication of success in moving long term welfare dependant families into full time and part time work. The core objective of this community services program was to improve the quality of life of the participants and encourage participation in the workforce. This policy approach along with other economic rationalisation incentives have been duplicated in other parts of the world in recent years. The evaluation findings on this program highlight the …

Reframing Campaigning: Communications, The Media And Elections In Canada, Paul W. Nesbitt-Larking

Paul W Nesbitt-Larking

This article is a critical assessment of Canadian perspectives on the role of the media in electoral behaviour, notably on the roles media play in setting or responding to the agenda in the heat of election campaigns. Research into the role of the media in election campaigns has been conducted within the broadly behaviouralist tradition of political scientific research. The article begins with a brief contextualization of the behaviouralist research tradition in Canada. Within the specific context of Canadian history and its social structure, the introduction explains how the very questions that Canadians have posed regarding media/campaign interactions have been …

The Emerging Constitutional Challenge Of Climate Change: India In Perspective, Deepa Badrinarayana

Deepa Badrinarayana

India’s rapidly growing economy naturally demands increasing energy needs from the industrial scale down to the personal. Mindful of potential negative impacts of economic development, India is making efforts to encourage growth while preserving and protecting the environment and human rights. India’s Integrated Energy Policy sets out the roadmap for how the country plans to achieve the balance among development, environmental protection, citizens’ rights, energy security, and a host of other priorities and concerns. Though ambitious and broad in scope, the Policy may prove inadequate in mitigating environmental impacts of development, and thus inadequate in balancing India’s needs, particularly in …