Weapon choice and American political violence

Research Summary
The criminal use of firearms presents a unique challenge to policymakers and is the subject of scientific study in fields such as criminology, public health, sociology, and law. Previous research has described firearm use by terrorists in the United States as uniformly common; however, little systematic attention has been focused on this phenomenon. Although valuable, progress in this area has been hampered by the absence of reliable quantitative information. Using data from the American Terrorism Study and the U.S. Sentencing Commission, we examine the firearm-offending characteristics of 923 federal felons and 336 terrorists.
Policy Implications
Findings indicate that many systematic differences exist between terrorists and other types of federal felons and that terrorists are more likely than other felons to be convicted of firearm-related crimes. We recommend that official efforts to monitor weapons sales—such as the Brady Act—continue to include those named on the terrorist watch list and that those named on the list be subject to additional law-enforcement scrutiny when attempting to purchase firearms. These efforts should be coordinated by federal law-enforcement agencies to facilitate the effective use of existing antiterrorism mechanisms in both blocking purchases and garnering intelligence on terrorists attempting to obtain firearms.     

Freedom and choice in constitutional law

The constitutional rights of children, the mentally ill, and other legally incompetent persons have been the subject of much litigation in the past twenty years. In this Article, Professor Garvey develops a general theory to explain the different ways in which persons of diminished capacity can be said to enjoy constitutional protections. He first notes that, of the various constitutional provisions, only one kind - freedom, which protect the right to make choices - pose serious difficulties when applied to persons of diminished capacity. He then proposes a hierarchy of ways in which we can attribute freedoms to such persons: the laissez-faire notion that all persons (including incompetents) are to be treated identically, the instrumental idea that granting freedoms to incompetents achieves extrinsic goals such as training, and the surrogate notion that persons who cannot make choices for themselves should be able to have those closest to them choose on their behalf. Professor Garvey concludes that, when these options fail and the state takes an incompetent person under its control, the state owes to the incompetent the full package of duties owed by other guardians to those under their control, including treatment in the case of the mentally ill or education in the case of children.     

The choice of crime: An empirical analysis of juveniles' criminal choice

This article applies the theory of individual rational choice to micro data on the criminal activity of juveniles. The individual choice model is developed and applied to data on 1,171 files on property offenses adjudicated by the Family Court between 1972 and 1976.It is found that the type of crime chosen, as indicated by the charge at the time of arrest and the final charge, is influenced by sex, age, number of prior referrals to the court, ethnic extraction, and place of residence of the juvenile. As the effect of each of these individual characteristics on the probability of selecting the various crimes differs, the choice of crime exhibits dynamic features; as the individual age increases, and as the number of prior referrals to court increases, the probabilities of selecting particular crimes change. These features are examined by generating the probabilities and examining the patterns which emerge.     

政府规制的政策目标与政策选择

本文分析了政府规制的两种政策目标观—目标的公共利益取向和部门利益取向，并从规范的角度出发，论证了政府规制作为公共政策中的一种特殊类型，其政策目标应该而且能够体现公共利益。同时本文还指出，在公共利益这一政策目标指导下，政策工具或方案应该从多方面进行分析选择，包括对政策效率、效益和政策环境的分析。     

Open access, social norms and publication choice

The aim of this paper is to shed light on scholarly communication and its current trajectories by examining academics’ perception of Open Access, while also providing a reference case for studying social norm change. In this respect, the issue of publication choice and the role of Open Access journals casts light on the changes affecting the scientific community and its institutional arrangements for validating and circulating new research. The empirical investigation conducted also offers a useful vantage point for gauging the importance of localised social norms in guiding and constraining behaviour.     

Multiple choice examining in law

This article will review the place of assessment in Higher Education. In investigating alleged over‐assessment in higher education, it is argued that an excess of one form of assessment over another limits student learning. How this imbalance has a detrimental effect on learning is identified, before solutions for the individual lecturer and institutions are considered. The author draws on existing literature, but also contributes his own experience and his research in the UK and USA.     

The Medicare approach: political choice and American institutions

The most significant health reform in American history was the passage of Medicare in 1965, but this was an accomplishment born of defeat. Medicare was designed and understood by its early promoters as an approach to health reform, not simply as a discrete program for a distinct target population. Although Medicare incrementalism has tended to be shunted aside when the opportunities for health reform are most promising, the final years of the Johnson administration reveal previously underappreciated efforts to expand Medicare eligibility to large new population groups and offer insights into the continuing potential of Medicare incrementalism in our own time.     

Normative and rational choice accounts of human social behavior

Two approaches to the problem of explaining social order are compared: the rational choice approach (as represented in Coleman'sFoundations of Social Theory) and the normative or social control approach, in which rules and rule-following play the central role. Considered in terms of Coleman's own criteria for social theory, only the social control approach seems plausible. In particular, the rational choice approach is circular in that it necessarily presupposes the existence of rules and rule-following, while its pretense is to be able to explain social order in non-normative terms. The social control approach accounts for social order in terms of the existence of social rules and the innate capacity of human beings to learn to follow such rules.