Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

From Third World To First World: Law And Policy In Singapore’S Urban Transformation And Integration, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The physical transformation of a colonial backwater city, Singapore, in one generation has been described as a feat of urban planning, renewal, and development. Less studied is the political will of the government to create a thriving city fit for purpose. Even less studied is the role of law that provides the powerful levers for the rapid and deep-seated changes to the urban landscape in Singapore. In this regard, the mindset shift that accompanied the massive urban transformation has facilitated a national psyche that embraces the material dimension of progress, for which urban renewal is not just a mere indicator …

Implicit Communication And Enforcement Of Corporate Disclosure Regulation, Ashiq Ali, Michael T. Durney, Jill E. Fisch, Hoyoun Kyung

All Faculty Scholarship

This study examines the challenge of implicit communication -- qualitative statements, tone, and non-verbal cues -- to the effectiveness of enforcing corporate disclosure regulation. We use a Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) setting, given that the SEC adopted the regulation recognizing that managers can convey non-public information privately not just through explicit quantitative disclosures but also through implicit communication. In a high-profile enforcement action, however, the court focused on a literal examination of the manager’s language rather than his positive spin to conclude that the SEC had been “too demanding” in examining the manager’s statements and that its enforcement policy …

Deploying Machine Learning For A Sustainable Future, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

To meet the environmental challenges of a warming planet and an increasingly complex, high tech economy, government must become smarter about how it makes policies and deploys its limited resources. It specifically needs to build a robust capacity to analyze large volumes of environmental and economic data by using machine-learning algorithms to improve regulatory oversight, monitoring, and decision-making. Three challenges can be expected to drive the need for algorithmic environmental governance: more problems, less funding, and growing public demands. This paper explains why algorithmic governance will prove pivotal in meeting these challenges, but it also presents four likely obstacles that …

Public Opinions Of Unmanned Aerial Technologies In 2014 To 2019: A Technical And Descriptive Report, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Janell C. Walther, Carrick Detweiler, Sebastian Elbaum, Adam Houston

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

The primary purpose of this report is to provide a descriptive and technical summary of the results from similar surveys administered in fall 2014 (n = 576), 2015 (n = 301), 2016 (ns = 1946 and 2089), and 2018 (n = 1050) and summer 2019 (n = 1300). In order to explore a variety of factors that may impact public perceptions of unmanned aerial technologies (UATs), we conducted survey experiments over time. These experiments randomly varied the terminology (drone, aerial robot, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), unmanned aerial system (UAS)) used to describe the technology, the purposes of the technology (for …

George W. Bush, Policy Selling And Agenda-Setting After 9/11, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

George W. Bush successfully set the agenda for an expansive, global war against terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. This agenda was not inevitable, it arose from an interpretation of events and of America’s adversaries that leaned on global conflict, cultural differences, and the presumption of evil intent. Bush’s speech-making successfully led to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, civil liberty-reducing legislation, and a large institutional edifice dedicated to counterterrorism. The themes Bush’s speeches evoked and the agendas and policies that these speeches set are covered in this chapter.

How Can Presidents Properly Calibrate The Terror Threat?, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Presidential rhetoric has minimally changed from the narrative set by George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Bush’s policies and agenda have also largely remained. This chapter provides proposals for change given the empirical and theoretical findings made in the book. The counterterrorist policy agenda needs to be narrowed and made more precise. The public needs to educate itself about the terror threat to understand that it is not a significant risk when weighed against others. Presidents need to be more careful with what words they use when describing America’s terrorist adversaries and with who they call terrorists. Recalibrating the …

Barack Obama: From An End To Terror To Drone Wars And Isis, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Barack Obama attempted to recalibrate presidential rhetoric on the terror threat. He made far fewer speeches about terrorism than George W. Bush did. Yet, despite some efforts to the contrary, he continued many of Bush’s policies—and in the case of targeted assassinations using drones (unmanned aerial vehicles), went further than Bush. The analysis of Obama’s rhetoric on terrorism shows a president who both wants to distance himself from his predecessor and one who wants to be seen as tough on terrorism. In the final analysis, Obama’s rhetoric and policies hewed rather closely to George W. Bush’s. This chapter raises questions …

Inflating The Terror Threat Since 2001, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Presidential rhetoric serves a critical interpretive role in defining events, particularly the threat of terrorism. As Richard Neustadt argues, the power of the presidency lies in the leader’s power to persuade. Presidents frame the terror threat by setting the country’s policy agenda. They then try to sell policies to Congress and the public through the pressure they can employ using their rhetoric and their office. This study, based on content analysis speech data ranging from September 2001 to February 2019, delves into why presidents speak the way they do about terrorism looking both at the content and frequency of their …

Donald Trump, Twitter, And Islamophobia: The End Of Dignity In Presidential Rhetoric About Terrorism, Gabriel Rubin

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is markedly different than that of just about every other American president. Trump’s speeches on terrorism and his related Islamophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric are examined in this chapter. Trump’s use of Twitter and view of the presidency as a “permanent campaign” keep his followers in a state of near-permanent mobilization. Trump uses the rhetoric of fear to push his followers against Muslims and immigrants by linking terrorism to both groups. As Jeffrey Tulis opines, Trump is America’s first demagogue. This chapter highlights how Trump’s demagoguery and novel method for communicating with his followers has framed the terror …

Evaluating The Facilitating Attuned Interactions (Fan) Approach: Vicarious Trauma, Professional Burnout, And Reflective Practice, Katherine Hazen, Matthew W. Carlson, Holly Hatton-Bowers, Melanie Fessinger, Jennie Cole-Mossman, Jamie Bahm, Kelli Hauptman J.D., Eve Brank, Linda Gilkerson

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Background: This evaluation examined the use of the Facilitated Attuned Interaction (FAN) approach to reflective practice among child welfare and early childhood professionals working with vulnerable children and families.

Objective: The aims of the current evaluation were to test (a) the role of vicarious trauma in predicting professional burnout, (b) the effect of reflective practice quality in decreasing professional burnout, and (c) the ability of reflective practice quality to lessen the relationship between vicarious trauma and professional burnout.

Participants and Setting: The sample included sixty-three professionals across diverse professions including child welfare social workers, early childhood educators, and child welfare …

The Law And Economics Of Risk Regulation, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Law plays a central role in the management of risk in society. The rules adopted by regulatory agencies now affect nearly every facet of the economy, and as such regulation has motivated a substantial body of academic research. Law and economics research on regulation has, first, demonstrated the normative justification for governmental intervention in the marketplace based on the concept of market failure. Second, political economy research on regulation has shown how, as a positive matter, interest groups, political movements, and public pressure affect the stringency of such regulation, sometimes more than any normative rationale for regulation. Third, risk regulation …

Regulatory Abdication In Practice, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

“Meta-regulation” refers to deliberate efforts to induce private firms to create their own internal regulations—a regulatory strategy sometimes referred to as “management-based regulation” or even “regulation of self-regulation.” Meta-regulation is often presented as a flexible alternative to traditional “command-and-control” regulation. But does meta-regulation actually work? In her recent book, Meta-Regulation in Practice: Beyond Normative Views of Morality and Rationality, Fiona Simon purports to offer a critique of meta-regulation based on an extended case study of the often-feckless process of electricity regulatory reform undertaken in Australia in the early part of this century. Yet neither Simon’s case study nor her book …

Mandatory, Fast, And Fair: Case Outcomes And Procedural Justice In A Family Drug Court, Melanie Fessinger, Katherine Hazen, Jamie Bahm, Jennie Cole-Mossman, Roger Heideman, Eve Brank

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Objectives: Problem-solving courts are traditionally voluntary in nature to promote procedural justice and to advance therapeutic jurisprudence. The Family Treatment Drug Court (FTDC) in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a mandatory dependency court for families with allegations of child abuse or neglect related to substance use. We conducted a program evaluation examining parents’ case outcomes and perceptions of procedural justice to examine whether a mandatory problem-solving court could replicate the positive outcomes of problem-solving courts. Methods: We employed a quasi-experimental design that compared FTDC parents to traditional dependency court parents (control parents). We examined court records to gather court orders, compliance …

Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

Over the last fifty years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found itself repeatedly defending its regulations before federal judges. The agency’s engagement with the federal judiciary has resulted in prominent Supreme Court decisions, such as Chevron v. NRDC and Massachusetts v. EPA, which have left a lasting imprint on federal administrative law. Such prominent litigation has also fostered, for many observers, a longstanding impression of an agency besieged by litigation. In particular, many lawyers and scholars have long believed that unhappy businesses or environmental groups challenge nearly every EPA rule in court. Although some empirical studies have …

Illuminating Regulatory Guidance, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Administrative agencies issue many guidance documents each year in an effort to provide clarity and direction to the public about important programs, policies, and rules. But these guidance documents are only helpful to the public if they can be readily found by those who they will benefit. Unfortunately, too many agency guidance documents are inaccessible, reaching the point where some observers even worry that guidance has become a form of regulatory “dark matter.” This article identifies a series of measures for agencies to take to bring their guidance documents better into the light. It begins by explaining why, unlike the …

Private Company Lies, Elizabeth Pollman

All Faculty Scholarship

Rule 10b-5’s antifraud catch-all is one of the most consequential pieces of American administrative law and most highly developed areas of judicially-created federal law. Although the rule broadly prohibits securities fraud in both public and private company stock, the vast majority of jurisprudence, and the voluminous academic literature that accompanies it, has developed through a public company lens.

This Article illuminates how the explosive growth of private markets has left huge portions of U.S. capital markets with relatively light securities fraud scrutiny and enforcement. Some of the largest private companies by valuation grow in an environment of extreme information asymmetry …

Regulation Of Algorithmic Tools In The United States, Christopher S. Yoo, Alicia Lai

All Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers in the United States have just begun to address regulation of artificial intelligence technologies in recent years, gaining momentum through calls for additional research funding, piece-meal guidance, proposals, and legislation at all levels of government. This Article provides an overview of high-level federal initiatives for general artificial intelligence (AI) applications set forth by the U.S. president and responding agencies, early indications from the incoming Biden Administration, targeted federal initiatives for sector-specific AI applications, pending federal legislative proposals, and state and local initiatives. The regulation of the algorithmic ecosystem will continue to evolve as the United States continues to search …

The Color Of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, And The Making Of Americans (Introduction), Anjali Vats

Book Chapters

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, the body of legal doctrine and practice that governs the ownership of information, is animated by a dichotomy of creatorship and infringement. In the most often repeated narratives of creatorship/infringement in the United States, the former produces a social and economic good while the latter works against the production of that social and economic good. Creators, those individuals whose work is deemed protectable under copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and unfair competition law, create valuable products that contribute to economic growth and public knowledge. Infringers, those individuals who use the work of creators without their permission, steal …

Whither The Regulatory “War On Coal”? Scapegoats, Saviors, And Stock Market Reactions, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters

All Faculty Scholarship

Complaints about excessive economic burdens associated with regulation abound in contemporary political and legal rhetoric. In recent years, perhaps nowhere have these complaints been heard as loudly as in the context of U.S. regulations targeting the use of coal to supply power to the nation’s electricity system, as production levels in the coal industry dropped by nearly half between 2008 and 2016. The coal industry and its political supporters, including the president of the United States, have argued that a suite of air pollution regulations imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration seriously undermined coal companies’ …

Development On A Cracked Foundation: How The Incomplete Nature Of New Deal Labor Reform Presaged Its Ultimate Decline, Leo E. Strine Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Margaret Levi, and Barry R. Weingast’s excellent essay, Twentieth Century America as a Developing Country, Conflict, Institutional Change and the Evolution of Public Law, celebrates the period during which the National Labor Relations Act facilitated the peaceful resolution of labor disputes and improved the working conditions of American workers. These distinguished authors make a strong case for the essentiality of law in regulating labor relations and the importance of national culture in providing a solid context for the emergence of legal regimes facilitating economic growth and equality. This reply to their essay explores how the New Deal’s failure …

Management-Based Regulation, Cary Coglianese, Shana M. Starobin

All Faculty Scholarship

Environmental regulators have embraced management-based regulation as a flexible instrument for addressing a range of important problems often poorly addressed by other types of regulations. Under management-based regulation, regulated firms must engage in management-related activities oriented toward addressing targeted problems—such as planning and analysis to mitigate risk and the implementation of internal management systems geared towards continuous improvement. In contrast with more restrictive forms of regulation which can impose one-size-fits-all solutions, management-based regulation offers firms greater operational choice about how to solve regulatory problems, leveraging firms’ internal informational advantage to innovate and search for alternative measures to achieve the intended …

Delegating Or Divesting?, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

A gratifying feature of recent scholarship on administrative power is the resurgence of interest in the Founding. Even the defenders of administrative power hark back to the Constitution’s early history – most frequently to justify delegations of legislative power. But the past offers cold comfort for such delegation.

A case in point is Delegation at the Founding by Professors Julian Davis Mortenson and Nicholas Bagley. Not content to defend the Supreme Court’s current nondelegation doctrine, the article employs history to challenge the doctrine – arguing that the Constitution does not limit Congress’s delegation of legislative power. But the article’s most …