The Chinese before the courts: Ethnoracial construction and marginalization

Conclusion Justice Field's decision inHo Ah Kow v. Nunan, like the Supreme Court's decision seven years later inYick Wo v. Hopkins,⁴⁵ stands out in the otherwise dreary history of Chinese litigants seeking equitable justice in the courts of the United States.⁴⁶ Although the addition of person to the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment provided the basis for a great many Chinese aliens to seek redress for the violation of their personal and property rights,⁴⁷ the denial of citizenship, affirmed inAh Yup and remaining in force until 1943, stood as a bar to their integration into the American political community and civil society. Until 1943, when the right to naturalization was granted to Chinese aliens as part of a gesture to America's Kuomintang ally in the war against Japan, immigrant Chinese were officially marginalized in America's invidious hierarchy of races. They all too often were made to bear the burden of a juridical interpretation that had originated in the joint and separate employment of a conjectural ethnohistory, a dubious and contradictory ethnology, and, with rare and occasional exception, the judiciary's failure to discover and evaluate the real intent of the classificatory schemas that had begun to stigmatize them when they were first designated as generic Indians or as equally generic blacks. Like blacks, Chinese had been tarred with what Justice Harlan insisted wasthe badge of slavery: race discrimination. But, unlike blacks, Chinese had not been emancipated in 1865.⁴⁸     

The cost of hospital care in the year before and after parasuicide

This study, based in Ireland in the Limerick centre of the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study of Parasuicide, tests the hypothesis that the uptake of hospital services increases significantly following an act of parasuicide. To investigate this, the costs of hospital attendance in the year before and in the year after an act of parasuicide are measured and compared. The sample is comprised of the first 100 individuals who attended an acute general hospital following an act of parasuicide after July 1, 1995. Using a computerized patient record system, every hospital attendance is identified, for each individual, in the 12 months before and after the parasuicide act. This includes every visit to the Emergency Room as well as both general and psychiatric inpatient admissions and outpatient attendances. There was a 50% increase in the uptake of hospital services--32% of the sample attended hospital in the year before compared with 48% in the year after. The total yearly costs for the 100 patients almost doubled from IR 53,652 Pounds (Euro 68,138) to IR 104,454 Pounds (Euro 132,657). Generalizing to the 539 individuals who engaged in parasuicide in the Limerick catchment area, total costs increased from IR 289,184 Pounds (Euro 367,264) to IR 563,007 Pounds (Euro 715,019). This study is an initial step toward the more complex task of estimating to what extent the increased uptake of hospital services is due to the consequences of parasuicide and how much is due to other aspects of the patient's health.     

Counting chickens before they're hatched: The importance of pre-transition planning for presidential success

Presidential transitions are crucial to the process of regime change in the US's federal executive. During this ill-defined and transient period, newly elected presidents prepare their policies and political environment for governing. This article discusses the process and impact of presidential transitions and assesses the extent to which presidential candidates see preparing for governing as being as important as campaigning. The author considers whether presidential candidates undertake any preparations for office during the campaign and if there is any connection between campaigning for the White House and taking over the White House. The conduct and performance of presidential transitions since the Nixon administration are evaluated and critical observations are made of Gore and Bush's attempts during the recent election campaign to progress towards an effective governance strategy rather than just campaign victory.