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The Psychology Of Science Denialism And Lessons For Public Health Authorities, Brenna Moreno, Molly J. Walker Wilson Jan 2023

The Psychology Of Science Denialism And Lessons For Public Health Authorities, Brenna Moreno, Molly J. Walker Wilson

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As it wreaked tragedy on the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 helped expose a pandemic of a different kind, one steeped in distrust and contrarianism. This movement, termed science denialism, has been lurking and undermining public health efforts for decades. Specifically, it is “the employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists.” Unlike skepticism, which is “doubt as to the truth of something” and works to progress both science and society, denialism is characterized by individuals’ …


Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese Jan 2021

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

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In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated state were …


In-Group Bias And The Police: Evidence From Award Nominations, Nayoung Rim, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba Oct 2019

In-Group Bias And The Police: Evidence From Award Nominations, Nayoung Rim, Roman G. Rivera, Bocar A. Ba

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This paper examines the impact of in-group bias on the internal dynamics of a police department. Prior studies have documented racial bias in policing, but little is known about bias against officers due to lack of available data. We construct a novel panel dataset of Chicago Police Department officers, with detailed information on officer characteristics and work productivity. Exploiting quasi-random variation in supervisor assignment, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate black officers than white or Hispanic officers. We find weaker evidence that male supervisors are less likely to nominate female officers than male officers. We explore …


The Financial Counseling Industry: Past, Present, And Policy Recommendations, David A. Lander Jan 2018

The Financial Counseling Industry: Past, Present, And Policy Recommendations, David A. Lander

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Financial counseling plays an important role for low- and moderate-income Americans and deserves more attention from leaders in the field. As financial counseling has evolved, the providers have been challenged to find a model that is both borrower centered and sustainable. This article provides a diagnosis of the failures and challenges in the financial counseling field, as well as a discussion of steps through which the providers could optimally serve families in need. These steps include (a) enhanced funding of the industry as a result of a recognition by financial stakeholders that it would be beneficial for them if the …


In Defense Of The Restatement Of Liability Insurance Law, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue Jan 2017

In Defense Of The Restatement Of Liability Insurance Law, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue

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For most non-contractual legal claims for damages that are brought against individuals or firms, there is some form of liability insurance coverage. The Restatement of the Law Liability Insurance is the American Law Institute’s first effort to “restate” the common law governing such liability insurance policies, and we are the reporters. In a recent essay funded by the insurance industry, Yale Law Professor George Priest launched a strident critique of the Restatement project, arguing that the rules adopted in the Restatement:

(a) are radically contrary to existing case law,

(b) have a naïve “pro-policyholder” bias that ignores basic economic insights …


Tightening The Ooda Loop: Police Militarization, Race, And Algorithmic Surveillance, Jeffrey L. Vagle Jan 2016

Tightening The Ooda Loop: Police Militarization, Race, And Algorithmic Surveillance, Jeffrey L. Vagle

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This Article examines the role military automated surveillance and intelligence systems and techniques have supported a self-reinforcing racial bias when used by civilian police departments to enhance predictive policing programs. I will focus on two facets of this problem. First, my research will take an inside-out perspective, studying the role played by advanced military technologies and methods within civilian police departments, and how they have enabled a new focus on deterrence and crime prevention by creating a system of structural surveillance where decision support relies increasingly upon algorithms and automated data analysis tools, and which automates de facto penalization and …


Post-Racial Lending?, Cassandra Jones Havard Jan 2014

Post-Racial Lending?, Cassandra Jones Havard

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Should lenders have absolute discretion when setting mortgage loan prices regardless of the borrower's creditworthiness? How should a regulatory framework evaluate lending decisions for racial bias to determine if demographic or other variables are used as proxies for race? Congress enacted the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in order to acquire data on mortgage lending patterns and to discourage geographical disinvestment. Basic HMDA data indicates that mortgage loan applications from black and Hispanic households are more likely to be denied than are applications from whites. Loan denial rates for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are higher than white applicants at all income …


Transparency Through Insurance: Mandates Dominate Discretion, Tom Baker Jan 2012

Transparency Through Insurance: Mandates Dominate Discretion, Tom Baker

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This chapter describes how liability insurance has contributed to the transparency of the civil justice system. The chapter makes three main points. First, much of what we know about the empirics of the civil justice system comes from access to liability insurance data and personnel. Second, as long as access to liability insurance data and personnel depends on the discretion of liability insurance organizations, this knowledge will be incomplete and, most likely, biased in favor of the public policy agenda of the organizations providing discretionary access to the data. Third, although mandatory disclosure of liability insurance data would improve transparency, …


The Creativity Effect (With C. Sprigman), Christopher J. Buccafusco Jan 2011

The Creativity Effect (With C. Sprigman), Christopher J. Buccafusco

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No abstract provided.


Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan Sep 2010

Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan

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Are minorities treated differently by the legal system? Systematic racial differences in case characteristics, many unobservable, make this a difficult question to answer directly. In this paper, we estimate whether judges differ from each other in how they sentence minorities, avoiding potential bias from unobservable case characteristics by exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges. We measure the between-judge variation in the difference in incarceration rates and sentence lengths between African-American and White defendants. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation in order to explicitly construct the appropriate counterfactual, where race does not influence judicial sentencing. In our data set, …


Is The Rule Of Necessity Really Necessary In State Administrative Law: The Central Panel Solution, Arnold Rochvarg Jan 1999

Is The Rule Of Necessity Really Necessary In State Administrative Law: The Central Panel Solution, Arnold Rochvarg

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The rule of necessity is a judicial doctrine that permits a judge or agency decision maker to decide a case even if he or she would ordinarily be disqualified due to bias or prejudice . The rationale of the doctrine is that if there is no other person who can make the decision, let the biased person decide the case rather than have no decision made at all. The rule of necessity has been used in state administrative proceedings liberally despite the fact that it is widely recognized as unfair. This article analyzes current approaches to the doctrine, and after …