Court Awards of Damages for Loss of Future Earnings: An Empirical Study and an Alternative Method of Calculation

This article examines the effect upon damages for personal injury of methods used in the United States of America to calculate loss of future earnings. The work of lawyers is examined from the perspective of labour economists. The damages calculated by using these alternative methods are compared with those actually awarded in over a hundred cases determined by courts in England and Wales. This interdisciplinary and comparative study reveals that the tort system fails to satisfy one of its main objectives in that it does not provide recipients of damages with 'full' compensation.     

Symposium: Policy analysis for congress. Policy analysis for congress: Lengthening the time horizon

Policy analysis for the Congress is a timely subject. Several policy initiatives have emerged recently from the “first branch.” Others have demonstrated an independent capacity for analysis that is impressive by historical standards. This article introduces a practitioner symposium of three related works on policy analysis for Congress, with appropriate commentary by a distinguished veteran. It argues that because timing is crucial in the congressional policy process, anticipation and advance preparation are central to the effective use of analysis. The other articles illustrate the stages of advance preparation—of the policy analyst, the congressional environment, and the Member for voting—in the form of case studies.     

Assessing Civil-Military Relations and the January 6th Capitol Insurrection

The events of January 6, 2021, when violent rioters attacked the Capitol building in Washington in order to disrupt validation of the 2020 presidential election, forced an unprecedented reckoning with the state of American politics. Members of Congress struggled to account for the rhetoric that gave rise to the event; law enforcement grappled with the challenge of holding accountable those who perpetrated the violence; and journalistic outlets wrestled with reporting a complex web of conspiracy theories and disinformation that gave rise to the insurrection. But for senior military leaders, the question was how to explain the troubling presence of active duty servicemembers and veterans in the first attack on the American seat of government in two centuries. The result is a profound and urgent discussion in U.S. civil-military relations.     

Living Under Aboriginal Exemption: Negotiating State Governments' Policies and Practices

This volume of the Australian Journal of Politics and History presents an edited collection of papers delivered by emerging and established researchers at the Second Rethinking & Researching 20th Century Aboriginal Exemption Symposium, co-hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast with La Trobe University in October 2021. The papers reveal the human costs, hardships and legacies of the state policies of Aboriginal Exemption last century which supposedly offered the promise of freedom to Indigenous Australians confined to reserves and missions. Equally, the papers explore innovative and culturally safe ways to investigate and further understand Aboriginal exemption that ensure Ancestors and Elders, who actively negotiated, resisted and subverted its use, are recognised and honoured.     

Book reviews

Marju Lauristin and Peeter Vihalemm with Karl Erik Rosengren and Lennart Weibull, Return to the Western World. Cultural and Political Perspectives on the Estonian Post‐communist Transition (Tartu University Press, Tartu, 1997), xvi +387 pp., ISBN 9985–56–257–7

Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg (eds), The Revival of Right‐wing Extremism in the Nineties (Frank Cass, London, 1997), 289 pp., ISBN 0 7146 4676 8 (hb), 0 7146 4207 X (pb)

Arthur Lipow, Political Parties and Democracy (Pluto, London, 1996), 256 pp., ISBN 0 7453 1099 0 (hb), 0 7453 1098 2 (pb)

Gerald F. Gaus, Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), ix + 374 pp., ISBN 0–19–509439–5 (hb), 0–19–509440–9 (pb)

Mark T. Berger and Douglas A. Borer (eds), The Rise of East Asia: Critical Visions of the Pacific Century (Routledge, London, 1997), 308 pp., ISBN 0–415–16167–3 (hb), 0–415–16168–1 (pb)

Paul Anderson and Nyta Mann, Safety First: The Making of New Labour (Granta, London, 1997), 456 pp., ISBN 1–86207–070–9     

The practical labor lawyer: an employers' guide to strike contingency planning

An employer's capacity successfully to survive a strike will depend largely on the extent to which it has anticipated the strike and taken the steps necessary to defend against it. It is the purpose of this article to catalog the factors employers should consider in approaching an imminent strike and devising contingency plans. It attempts to focus on the types of problems, legal and practical, that frequently arise in strike situations, and suggests certain measures that employers may adopt in preparing for, and defending against, the economic impact of a strike.     

Technological, economic, and political feasibility in OSHA's Air Contaminants Standard

In 1989, after almost two decades of substance-by-substance standard setting, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) promulgated its Air Contaminants Standard, imposing new exposure limits for 376 toxic substances encountered in U.S. industry. In marked contrast to earlier regulations, the Air Contaminants Standard has generated relatively little industry opposition. This paper analyzes the standard in the context of the twenty-year debate over the appropriate role for technological feasibility and economic compliance costs in occupational health policy. The political feasibility of the new standard is traced to OSHA's abandonment of "technology forcing" in favor of reliance on "off-the-shelf" technologies already in use in major firms. While important as an embodiment of OSHA's new "generic" approach to regulation, the Air Contaminants Standard cannot serve as a model for future occupational health policy, due to its reliance on informal, closed-door mechanisms for establishing regulatory priorities and permissible exposure limits.