Voting from the Pew: The Effect of Senators' Religious Identities on Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Senate

Partisan polarization in the Senate is in part a product of the increased sorting of evangelical Christians into the Republican caucus. The relationship between senators' religious identities, party affiliation, and ideology has changed since the 1970s. Whereas congressional party caucuses in the past were more diverse in their religious composition, evangelical Christian senators have sorted themselves into the party that most closely resembles the values of their religious identities, leading to greater overall polarization.     

Public Approval ofU.S. State Legislatures

The determinants of public approval for state legislatures have not received much attention, but one important finding is that more professionalized legislatures experience lower levels of public support. We argue that this result is an artifact of limited data and problematic model specifications. Analyzing a large national survey sample, we demonstrate that the negative relationship holds primarily for conservatives and to a lesser extent for moderates but not liberals. Additionally, we find that legislative approval in states with term limits and ballot initiatives is no different than in states without these institutions.     

U.S. CLS

This essay offers a brief account of the rise of cls thought in the United States and of its development within a largely hostile legal academy. As the essay suggests, cls thought has been variously deformed, arrested, normalized, and diffused – leaving the contemporary American legal academy in a state of suspended animation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Radicalization of U.S. prisoners

Research Summary
Concern has been expressed that prisoner radicalization poses a high probability threat to the safety of the United States. Although the threat of terrorist acts planned in prison is known to be above zero because of a nearly executed terrorist plot hatched in a state prison, the central finding of this research is that the actual probability is modest. The reasons for a modest probability are fourfold: Order and stability in U.S. prisons were achieved during the buildup period, prison officials successfully implemented efforts to counter the importation of radicalism, correctional leadership infused antiradicalization into their agencies, and inmates' low levels of education decreased the appeals of terrorism.
Policy Implications
The prison environment permits a great deal of information to be collected on the activities and, more difficult to detect, planned activities of inmates after they are released. This environment requires the attentive observation of staff, collection of information from inmates, and efforts at different levels of a correctional agency to assemble, collate, and assess information; much of it is likely to be false and some will be vital.     

U.S. Social Structure and Imprisonment

An article by Joubert, Picon and McIntosh (1981) is found to contain several serious methodological flaws. A second analysis using a similar data set suggests that these methodological problems may have caused them to draw erroneous conclusions regarding the effects of social structural variables on prison admission and release rates.     

制约与配合：美国司法体系中的检察官

美国并无独立的检察系统,联邦以及地方法院都设有检察官办公室。联邦检察权由联邦总检察长即司法部长行使,即使其本人并不直接办理或监督具体案件。总检察长依靠被授权办案的分支机构和联邦检察官完成其法定职责。     

对"牛吃麦"案例的另一维度的解释——英、美土地制度和财产制度的变迁

科斯定理是从经济效益的角度来分配权利的,它的"拍卖式"法律价值取向贯穿于美国土地制度与财产制度的发展历程.在与科斯定理相关的"牛吃麦"案例上,美国初始选择了"圈出"规则,后又转向"圈入"规则,其规则的变动始终遵循着"经济效益最大化"原则;而英国自始至终选择了"圈入"规则,早期是为了维护公共财产利益,之后是为了维护私有财产利益,在这过程中,"权利保护原则"是其不变的宗旨.科斯定理纯粹从经济效益的角度来解释有着相同法治渊源与传统的英、美两国在"牛吃麦"案例上所适用规则的差异性,欠缺历史维度的法律分析.     

Measuring U.S. innovative activity: business data at the U.S. Census Bureau

Innovation is seen as a source of strength and vitality in the U.S. economy. Better measures of innovative activity—including but not limited to innovation alone—could improve what we know about the sources of productivity and economic growth. The U.S. Census Bureau collects data on some measures of innovative activity that research shows affect economic performance. But understanding how the effects work requires more than just measures of innovative activity. It also requires solid statistical information about core measures of the economy so we can rule out the possibility that a measure of innovative activity merely proxies for something omitted from or measured poorly in the core data. Gaps in core measures can be filled by better integrating existing data and by more structured collections of new data. Versions of this paper were presented at the NSF/SRS Workshop, Advancing Measures of Innovation: Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, Arlington VA, June 6–7, 2006, and circulated to the Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. This paper is unofficial and thus has not undergone the review accorded to official Census Bureau publications. Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Jeffrey Mayer, Thomas Mesenbourg, and Daniel Weinberg, and the editors made valuable comments. However, the views expressed in the paper are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau.     

美国环境规制与成本—收益分析

基于对20世纪1970年代环境规制的高社会经济成本的反思,成本—收益分析在美国环境规制领域愈来愈受到重视。关注美国环境行政规制中的成本考量,有助于我们正视环境问题的复杂性,反思本国环境行政实践中的某些盲目和失误,可以避免因为不恰当的规制方式带来更加严重的环境损害后果。     

美国检察机关起诉裁量权刍议

作为拥有一定准司法权的特殊行政机关,美国检察机关所享之起诉裁量权职能明确、内容丰富.伴随检察职能的扩充与演化,美国检察机关在行使这一特色鲜明的行政裁量权时,其裁量权内涵不断得以延伸.近年来,针对起诉裁量权之滥用,美国各级立法、司法机关、检察机关及有关行业协会采取了若干举措加以规制及限制,旨在规范并降低起诉裁量权滥用所带来的负面效果.     

Review of S. B. Chetverikov,Who Makes U.S. Policy and How

This book is devoted to current problems in the working of the organs of government and administration of the United States, the functioning of the mechanism for the development, adoption, and implementation of its political decisions, and the interrelation and coordination of the actions of various links in its governmental machinery. It is a thorough investigation of questions of public law in the United States. The author makes clear the distinguishing features of the development of the governmental mechanism in the USA during the present period, the internal processes occurring in the political system of the imperialist state, and the contradictions inherent in it. Chetverikov directs the reader's attention to a number of issues in the present development of the system of governmental administration in the USA that have been inadequately treated in the Soviet legal literature. They include the rising political role of the bureaucracy and the tendency for it to elude control by the higher authorities, including the president; the unique character of the present stage of the fusion of the government machinery and the monopolies; the formation of a "triple alliance" made up of permanent bureaucracy, monopolist "interest groups" (consisting of lobbying organizations exercising "influence" favorable to the monopolies on government bodies), and the working machinery of Congress; the inflation of the governmental machinery and its "monopolist degeneration."     

美国网络安全政策导向及其启示

互联网已经融入了当代社会的各个领域,并成为了一个国家赖以正常运转的神经系统,而一旦出现网络危机,该国整个社会有可能陷于瘫痪。因此,网络安全已成为国家公共安全的致命威胁。当我们致力于我国网络安全保障体系建设的时候,了解一下美国政府的网络安全政策导向,即确立维护网络安全的国家战略,完善维护网络安全的管理机制,优化网络安全的技术组织结构,健全维护网络安全的法制体系,这对于我们拓宽思路、开阔视野或许是有益的。     

Soviet Piracy of U.S High-Tech Secrets

The explosive expansion of high technology internationally threatens the United States with a nettlesome problem now and in the decade to come. The Soviet Union has increased its espionage to steal high-tech secrets in order to increase its military strength while bolstering a shaky economy. A major national concern is how to protect national security without damaging research and development of new technologies. This paper examines the motivations of the Soviets, current U.S. efforts to combat this threat, and some measures to deal with illegal technology transfers.     

Hidden convergence: toward a historical comparison of U.S. and U.K. health policy

The social science literature on the comparative history of the welfare state offers conflicting accounts of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. At first blush, the comparative history of health care policy in the United States and the United Kingdom seems to affirm the dominant view that the U.S. and U.K. welfare states have diverged substantially during the twentieth century. A comparison of U.S. and U.K. health policy, however, suggests that there are more parallels and points of tangency between the two systems than are readily apparent. The comparative history of health policy over the past century reveals common political and policy challenges and frequent interchanges of policy ideas, and helps uncover the political dynamics behind the development of health policy in the two countries, which can, in turn, help illuminate the contemporary politics of reform in both countries.