Maneuvering the mundane minefield: a practical guide to legal opinions in healthcare transactions

This Article examines the multitude of issues presented when attorneys prepare legal opinions for health law transactions. The authors analyze the two major pieces of guidance for the drafting of such opinions, and offer practical guidance and checklists for the preparation of such opinions.     

Genetic variation of three tetrameric tandem repeats in four distinct Israeli ethnic groups.

The allele frequency distributions of three STR loci amplified by PCR have been studied in four Israeli communities: Ashkenazi Jews and three non-Ashkenazi groups, namely Moroccan, Yemenite, and Ethiopian Jews. The loci analyzed were CSF1PO, TPOX, and HUMTHO1. The typing was performed in sequencing polyacrylamide gels under denaturing conditions that could separate alleles with differences of a single base. The population data were analyzed with respect to Hardy-Weinberg (H-W) equilibrium and found that all loci meet the H-W expectations. No-ticeable differences were encountered between the four Jewish ethnic groups studied hereby indicating the importance of establishing a local database to be used in human identity testing in these different Israeli Jewish groups.     

Variations in the Use of Grant Discretion: The Case of ISTEA

The Intermodal Surf ace Transportation Efficiency Act gave stategovernments increased flexibility in spending federal transportationgrant funds. However, most of the flexibility was not used;there are many other potential sources of inflexibility in transportationpolicymaking. States were more likely to use flexibility ifthey were politically liberal, had larger populations and, otherthings being equal, had less metropolitan populations. Statesthat were previously more involved in nontraditional transportationprograms were also somewhat more likely to use flexibility.     

The politics of audit: the federal Office of the Auditor General in comparative perspective

Abstract: The Office of the Auditor General has continued to expand its functions since the legislation of 1977. In March 1985 it was in court against the Government of Canada, pressing a claim that the auditor general (AG) required all of cabinet's papers that may have touched on the acquisition by Petro Canada Limited of Petrofina Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the Belgian company Petrofina S.A., in order to complete his review of expenditures from the Canadian Ownership Account. The rationale presented was that the AG needed to see the whole picture of advice tendered to cabinet by officials in order to assess whether cabinet itself had done its homework before authorizing the deal, after which he could give cabinet a “report card.” The Federal Court Justice's Reason for Decision, released on November 1, initially seemed to give the AG even more than he had asked, while the eventual decision of December 6 reintroduced grave ambiguity. The argument of the paper is that the AG'S move into the advice stream, as opposed to the traditional duties of an auditor, constitutes his Office as a force in policy-making, a factor that cannot be reconciled with responsible and representative government. The article compares the OAGS legislation and operating mandate with those of provincial legislative auditors, and those of Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. It concludes that the 1977 legislation should be rewritten so that the OAG would once more work from the base of a replicable, objective financial audit, reporting as broadly as it would wish. Sommaire: Le Bureau du Vérificateur général à continue a é largir ses fonctions depuis qu'il a obtenu la nouvelle lé gislation en 1977. En mars 1985, il faisait comparaître devant les tribunaux le gouvernement du Canada, dans le cadre d'un procès réclamant le droit d'accèb, par le Vérificateur général, à tous les documents du Conseil des ministres concernant l'acquisition, par Pétro-Canada Ltée, de la société Pétrofina Canada Inc., une succursale de la société belge Pétrofina S. A., afin de compléter l'exa-men, par le Vérificateur général, des dépenses effectuées a même le Compte de propriété canadienne. D'après l'argument présenté, le Vérificateur général (VG) devait être au courant de tous les conseils fournis par les fonctionnaires au Conseil des ministres, afin que le VG puisse décider si le Conseil lui-même avait bien fait son travail avant d'autoriser le rachat, après quoi le Vérificateur général serait à même d'évaluer les gestes posés par le Conseil. Les raisons de la décision du juge de la Cour fédérale, publiées le 1^er novembre, semblaient initialement donner au VG encore plus qu'il n'avait demandé, mais la décision éventuellement rendue le 6 décembre réin-troduisait d'importantes ambiguîtés. Selon l'argument de l'article, l'entrée du Vérificateur général dans le domaine des conseils prodigués, contrairement aux devoirs traditionnels d'un vérificateur, fait du Bureau du Vérificateur général une véritable instance décisionnelle pour l'adoption de politiques, facteur incompatible avec la notion de gouvernement responsable et représentatif. L'article compare la législation et le mandat fonctionnel du Bureau du VG à ceux des vérificateurs législatifs provinciaux de la Grande-Bretagne, de la Nouvelle-Zélande et de l'Australie. Il en conclut que la législation de 1977 devrait être reformulée afin que le Bureau du VG axe ses travaux de nouveau sur une vérification financeère objective, la portée de son compte rendu pouvant être aussi large qu'il le veut.     

Elites and the Diffusion of Foreign Models in Russia

Globalization has sparked renewed interest in the diffusion of ideas and norms across boundaries. Although much work has focused on diffusion at the macro-level and on the groups that transmit ideas, few researchers have studied the cognitive processes of political elites as they weigh the merits of various foreign-inspired models. Drawing on a series of original, in-depth interviews with Russian parliamentarians and high-ranking bureaucrats conducted in 1996, this paper makes two contributions to the study of individual-level borrowing in the Russian context. First, the openness of Russian elites to foreign borrowing is investigated; despite the public rhetoric about Russia's uniqueness, a substantial number of Russian elites are willing to borrow from foreign experience – particularly from models of European welfare capitalism. Second, three explanations of why policy-makers prefer to emulate some countries rather than others are tested – because they are similar to their own country either geographically, historically or culturally (comparability); because they have geostrategic prominence (prestige); or because they excel economically and/or politically (performance). Comparability and prestige are found to be of lesser importance than performance to Russian elites when considering the merits of various foreign models. Given that Russia closely approximates a most-likely case for validating explanations stressing comparability, this suggests that the array of foreign ideas that could become part and parcel of Russia's transition process is probably wider than is usually assumed. It also implies that, in general, the regional dimension of diffusion plays a smaller role than previously theorized.