Committees and Legislative Strengthening: The Growing Influence of Committees in Ukraine's Legislative Process

The Ukrainian legislature is in the process of transforming from a ‘rubber stamp’ institution of the Soviet type into an ‘institution that matters’ in a new democratic state. The practice of democratic institution building in the post-Soviet countries presents multiple examples of powerful executives who gained dominance in legislative processes. What path has Ukraine taken and what can explain its specific characteristics? This article charts the growth of committees here as a marker of legislative institutionalisation in Ukraine. The study finds that Ukrainian legislative committees defy prevalent regional trends and, contrary to expectations, have asserted independent roles. It then discusses factors that may account for this unique regional development – the role of a dual executive structure and the Ukraine party system.     

Juvenile Court Conference Committees,El Paso County,Texas

Ideally our task should be in organizing the neighborhood — the grass roots level — so that there is an identifiable group of responsive and responsible people whose aim is not living for themselves but for others. We will in time discover that that is the only path to self fulfillment. Foreword by William O. Douglas, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court: Children Without Justice, a Report by the National Council of Jewish Women by Edward Wakin.     

The Rise of Committees

Committees are of increasing importance in the process of EC policy-making, particularly in regulatory fields which touch upon politically sensitive issues. This article discusses the problems which have arisen due to the unforeseen emergence of committees within the institutional framework of the Community. It examines the main institutional conflicts in relation to committees and argues that parliamentary disdain for Comitology notwithstanding, the use of committees in the area of social regulation may be explained through a 'Member State-oriented' understanding of the institutional balance of powers. Committees may thus not only contribute to more effective decision-making, but may also secure a degree of subsidiarity. The increasing reliance on committees, however, might nonetheless be argued to detract from the general legitimacy of Community decision-making, especially since committees remain creatures of pragmatism. This article accordingly argues that the lack of transparency within committees, and the absence of general procedural rules upon the activities and composition of committees, should now be compensated for through the evolution of formal and generalisable procedural rules.     

The Influence of the Popular Press on Criminal Justice Policy

Forty years ago Donald Taft suggested that newspapers advocate correctional methods in a manner which reflects popular opinion and personal editorial biases, rather than scientific fact. In order to test this hypothesis a content analysis of the New York Times was undertaken covering the period (1890–1914) when first the French Bertillonage System of criminal identification and later when the British fingerprint system was finally introduced into the New York State justice system. The findings of this study indicate that the personal editorial biases of the New York Times may have played a leading role in blocking an effective crime detection technique (fingerprinting) from the New York State justice system for at least a decade, and these biases may have been rooted more in an anti-British pro-French stance of the newspaper than in ignorance of scientific testing.     

The Standing Committees and the Ministries

The 23rd Congress of the CPSU posed the task of enhancing the role of the supreme Soviets and defined the principal directions to be followed in solving this task. The most important of them are the further improvement in the activity of the standing committees [postoiannye komissii], which contribute to the development of socialist democracy, the improvement in the work of the supreme Soviets and the agencies of state administration, and the activization of deputies. At the first session of the seventh Supreme Soviet [sed'mogo sozyva] of the USSR, the report by N. V. Podgorny, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, "On Organizing the Standing Committees of the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities," emphasized the major role of the standing committees in social and economic development and expressed confidence that their functioning would promote the fulfillment of the tasks facing the country. (1) The seventh supreme Soviets of the USSR and of the union republics carried out a number of practical measures to implement the instructions of the party to increase the role of the standing committees.     

The Electoral Connection and Legislative Committees

This article examines whether the career needs of legislators – to be re-elected or to move on to another political post – allow us to explain the rules governing committee structures and the committee assignments individual legislators obtain. It uses the institutional variations provided by Argentina, Costa Rica, and Venezuela to test hypotheses about committee assignments and committee assignment mechanisms. It finds that incentives created by candidate selection procedures and electoral rules show some relationship to committee assignments, but with a good deal of variation across national cases and individual careers.     

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influences the public's agreement with the Court's rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policymaking operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.     

The Standing Committees: Techniques of Monitoring

Note from the editors of Sovety deputatov trudiashchikhsia: Continuing the study of the functioning of Soviets, personnel of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Institute of State and Law looked into the operations of local organs of power in the Latvian SSR. Jointly with practical workers in the field, they prepared a number of scholarly recommendations, including proposals to improve the techniques of monitoring [kontrol'] by the standing committees of district and city Soviets.     

改革开放改变了我的人生轨迹——亲历知识产权教育的美好回忆

1978年12月,党的十一届三中全会确立了改革开放的国策,这不仅使我国从此走上了国强民富、政治民主的道路,也改变了我的人生轨迹,使我由一名北大物理系教师转变成为知识产权法律的教学研究人员。在这改革开放的三十年,我的后半生亲历了中国知识产权制度的建立、发展和完善,值得     

Partisan Stacking on Legislative Committees

One aspect of the partisan model for legislative committee development that is rarely studied is the degree to which the majority party seeks to control legislative committees—and, thereby, chamber decisions—via numerically “overproportional” majority party representation on standing committees. This form of “party stacking” is often mentioned in the literature but has received little systematic examination and hypothesis testing. Using data from state legislative committees for all 49 partisan legislatures in the 2003–04 and 2005–06 sessions, we found support for the partisan model: majority party stacking is associated with a slim majority party advantage in a state legislative chamber.