Downsizing, A View from the Inside

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is getting smaller. Total nondefense staffing in the federal government has declined by about 3 percent over the past fifteen years. Within this total, a number of agencies have absorbed reductions of over 17 percent, including USDA. This article begins with a brief history of USDA Next, it describes the distinction between the downsizing efforts of the 1980s and those that have occurred in the 1990s with respect to what has turned out to be a drastically different programmatic and political climate.     

Reactions to incongruous negative life events

We hypothesized that incongruous misfortunes generate stronger affective reactions and perceptions of injustice than do equally severe and equally probable congruous misfortunes. Incongruous misfortunes are defined as ones that bring to mind thoughts or images of the misfortune either happening to a different person or happening to the same person by a different means. In a series of studies, victims of incongruous negative life events (e.g., wartime casualties of “friendly” five) were expected to experience stronger reactions of regret, shock, outrage, and perceived injustice than victims of more congruous versions of the same events. Differences between reactions to incongruous misfortunes and subjectively improbable misfortunes are explored.     

Tribes and States: A New Era in Intergovernmental Affairs

The history of tribal-state conflict and the role of the federalgovernment is nearly two centuries old. In recent years, themost contentious source of conflict between American Indiantribes and states has been Indian gaming. The Congress attemptedto compromise and resolve the issue by passing the Indian GamingRegulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, but the law has only exacerbatedand opened up new avenues of conflict. The scope and stakesof Indian gaming can be seen in the history of Indian gamingin New Mexico where the defects in IGRA have been readily apparent.As Indian gaming has grown, so have efforts to curtail it andother aspects of tribal sovereignty, including tribal sovereignimmunity. These efforts are currently underway in the Congress.     

Are expert penmen better than lay people at producing simulations of a model signature?

Although forensic signature examination is considered to be an identification science, it is a theoretical possibility that an individual may learn to forge another person's signature that is free from indications of simulation behaviours. This proposition was tested in a signature blind trial that was administered to 42 forensic handwriting examiners (FHEs). Participants expressed opinions on the authorship of 100 questioned signatures. The questioned signatures comprised a mixture of genuine, disguised and simulated signatures. Calligraphers formed part of the population of individuals who provided simulated signatures for the trial. A total of 3100 opinions were expressed of which 1254 were correct, 224 misleading and 1622 were inconclusive. Of the opinions expressed regarding the simulated signatures, the misleading score for the calligraphers' forgeries were approximately four times that of the lay persons' forgeries. These results provide strong evidence in support of the proposition that calligraphers are more skilled at simulating signatures than are lay people and can produce forgeries that some FHEs have difficulty detecting.     

Justice foundations for the Comprehensive Law Movement

Authors examining the developing dispute resolution alternatives to the adversarial system have identified nine converging "vectors" or alternatives in what has been termed the Comprehensive Law Movement. These authors have sought to understand how the developing vectors can remain separate and vibrant movements while sharing common ground. Some analyze these developments as being within law and legal practice, others see them as alternative approaches to law, and still others take a combined approach. It will be impossible to understand how these vectors have meaningful differences from law and legal practice if the search is limited to looking within law and legal practice. It will be impossible to understand how these vectors have meaningful commonalities with law and legal practice if the search is limited to looking external to law and legal practice. Instead of comparing the vectors with the adversarial system, higher order criteria are required. What is needed is a comprehensive and internally consistent super-system of norms; one that can be used to evaluate the adversarial system and the evolving vectors on an equal footing. An Aristotelian natural law virtue theory of justice can: (a) provide a functional guiding definition of justice; (b) serve as a comprehensive and internally consistent super-system of norms; and (c) provide the theoretical and evaluative foundation required to clarify the relationships among the adversarial system and the developing vectors. Finally, it will become clear why the Comprehensive Law Movement might be more appropriately conceptualized as the Comprehensive Justice Movement.