Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Analysis Of The Legal Obstacles To State Pension Reform, Jeremy Stuart Buck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public pension systems are underfunded, straining state budgets. Historically, many states have presumed that they can modify pension benefits only as to newly-hired employees, and that they must leave benefit accruals untouched for current workers. More recently, though, states have begun enacting more fundamental pension reform that modifies future accruals or even reduces cost-of-living allowances for retirees. Nearly all such new reforms have been the subject of one or more lawsuits alleging that the federal and/or state constitution bars the legislature from reducing benefits or accrual patterns. This dissertation examines the legal underpinnings for arguments made against pension reform, and …

Navajo Peacemaking And Māori Restorative Justice: A Comparison Of Process And Procedure, Alethia Z. Fenney

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Due to the failure of some crime control approaches in law enforcement alternatives are being examined to determine their applicability in today's society. One of the approaches gaining criminological attention is "Navajo Peacemaking". another similar style of crime control is the Māori restorative justice process used in New Zealand. The purposed of this research study is to examine and compare these processes to determine their applicability as crime prevention tools in U.S. towns and cities. Walter Miller's Focal Concerns Theory was used to address the difference in motivation between mainstream culture and its subcultures. The results from this study demonstrated …

Access To Spatial Data: The Political Power Of Legal Control Mechanisms, Patrice A. Day

Theses and Dissertations

According to the U.S. Supreme Court (Island Trees School District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 1982), the Constitution presupposes that the free flow of information between the government and the public is essential to maintaining an informed citizenry, which in turn is essential to holding governments accountable. However, local governments are increasingly using various legal mechanisms to limit public access to geographic information (GI), and this in turn can potentially disrupt this balance. Licensing and copyright are two such mechanisms that local government agencies are using to limit GI access and distribution.

If information is power, whoever controls information, controls …

Effects Of Gender Composition Of Target And Sender Dyads On The Tendency To Infer Lies, Byron J. Simoneaux

Doctoral Dissertations

Lying is so common in human behavior that some have labeled it a social skill. Despite the ubiquity of lies, humans have consistently been found to be poor lie detectors. Attempts have been made to improve the accuracy of human lie detection. Unfortunately, the most successful training only improves accuracy slightly above the level of chance. Because of its importance to society, considerable effort has been aimed at developing methods to help determine when people are lying. Researching how and why humans infer that another person is lying has the potential to advance the understanding of lie detection. Researchers have …

The Fourth Amendment After The Usa Patriot Act: Cross-State Comparison On The Effect Of Ideology And Partisanship In State Legislation Of Anti-Patriot Act Resolutions And Wiretapping/Eavesdropping Laws, Zoe Atlas

Honors Theses

The USA Patriot Act, passed in September 2001, changed the standards of Fourth Amendment rights and protections. The USA Patriot Act gave more authority to the government and diminished the rights and privileges given to individual citizens. An eruption of Fourth Amendment legislation and cases arose in the states following the passage of the act and it created a problem for policy and implementation. The legislation presented, for the USA Patriot Act and wiretapping/eavesdropping laws, demonstrated the differences in opinions on these issues on the individual state level. These drastic differences in policy between states created a question of why …

Supply Vs. Demand: Re-Entering America's Prison Population Into The Workforce, Marissa Leigh Enfield

Scripps Senior Theses

Because rejoining the workforce may prevent against ex-offender recidivism, securing gainful employment is one of the best indicators of successful societal reintegration for released prisoners. However, the stigma attached to a criminal history, combined with ex-prisoners’ lack of human capital, may threaten their ability to obtain a job. The present study examines hiring managers’ attitudes towards previously imprisoned offenders applying for positions in their workplace. Using a combination of brief, fictional applicant biographies and surveys, this mixed-groups factorial study explores how hiring managers (N= 28) consider gender, type of offense, and race when an ex-offender is assessed during the application …

Temporal Shifts In Weapon Focus: Comparing Retrograde And Anterograde Effects, William Blake Erickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When an eyewitness suffers an impairment of memory for a criminal's face because the criminal used a weapon during the commission of the crime, this impairment is called the weapon focus effect. Literature provides two explanations for how this effect arises: some implicate the narrowing of attentional cues to the weapon during the commission of a crime because arousal of the victim increases, while others claim that the weapon is merely a novel object in most everyday contexts, and novel objects demand more attention than contextually appropriate ones. The current study employed a simulated crime paradigm taking place in a …

Natural Rights And Equality: The Case Of Injustice In The Senate, Adrian Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the Senate, as it is composed, goes against America's basic ideas of equality. First it examines the foundation of America's ideas of justice and natural rights. This is done by examining both Hobbes and Locke and how they helped influence America's ideals and, more specifically, how equality became a natural right. After that, it takes on whether or not these ideas are still valid to this very day. The thesis proceeds by examining the documents that helped form America and the system of government that got instituted after the second constitutional convention. Subsequently, it …