Racial Diversity and Judicial Influence on Appellate Courts

This article evaluates the substantive consequences of judicial diversity on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Due to the small percentage of racial minorities on the federal bench, the key question in evaluating these consequences is not whether minority judges vote differently from nonminority judges, but whether their presence on appellate courts influences their colleagues and affects case outcomes. Using matching methods, I show that black judges are significantly more likely than nonblack judges to support affirmative action programs. This individual‐level difference translates into a substantial causal effect of adding a black judge to an otherwise all‐nonblack panel. Randomly assigning a black counterjudge—a black judge sitting with two nonblack judges—to a three‐judge panel of the Courts of Appeals nearly ensures that the panel will vote in favor of an affirmative action program. These results have important implications for assessing the relationship between diversity and representation on federal courts.     

Case Studies and EU Politics: A Reply to Miklin

A recent article in West European Politics by Eric Miklin attempted to shed light on the decision-making process in the European Union. The argument presented was that individual ministerial ideological preferences can affect a government's bargaining position in the Council of the European Union. Miklin proposes that under certain conditions national ministers may enjoy substantial freedom. This brief reply identifies three main problems with Miklin's approach: a case selection bias, ministerial autonomy, and an examination of where decisions are made.     

The Right to Know? State Politics of Fracking Disclosure

U.S. energy firms are increasingly expanding their production of natural gas oftentimes by relying on a controversial extraction technique known as hydraulic fracturing. While proponents cite a litany of benefits including economic development and reduced carbon emissions, opponents articulate concerns typically centering on environmental quality. Caught between these opposing points of view, states are turning to disclosure requirements. Yet all disclosure statutes are not created equally. In order to better understand this variation, I utilize Abel, Stephan, and Kraft's (ASK) 2007 performance model, which evaluates the effectiveness of information‐based disclosure rules for industry. The model here, however, is applied in an attempt to understand why disclosure regulations emerge and vary across states. Results generally validate the ASK approach but with one caveat. I find that in the context of differing disclosure regulations, the ASK model's pollution severity/risk measure may be refined by including risk perception.     

Scientific,Institutional and Personal Rivalries among Soviet Geographers in the Late Stalin Era

Scientific, institutional and personal rivalries between three key centres of geographical research and scholarship (the Academy of Sciences Institute of Geography and the Faculties of Geography at Moscow and Leningrad State Universities) are surveyed for the period from 1945 to the early 1950s. It is argued that the debates and rivalries between members of the three institutions appear to have been motivated by a variety of scientific, ideological, institutional and personal factors, but that genuine scientific disagreements were at least as important as political and ideological factors in influencing the course of the debates and in determining their final outcome.     

HELPING CLIENTS TRANSITION TO INDEPENDENT LIVING

There is growing recognition and concern that too many of the 20,000 foster youth who age out of the child welfare system each year 1 in this country do so without the basic necessities of housing, education, employment, and health care. The purpose of this article is to outline the problems facing foster youth as they leave care and to detail, as a case study, the steps taken by KidsVoice, a Pittsburgh legal services organization representing almost 5,000 dependent children each year, to help youth in foster and substitute care transition more successfully to adulthood and independent living.     

Good and Evil in Indian Buddhism: The five Sins of Immediate Retribution

Indian Buddhist sources speak of five sins of immediate retribution: murder of mother, father, an arhat, drawing the blood of a buddha, and creating a schism in the monastic community. This category provides the paradigm for sinfulness in Buddhism. Yet even these sins can and will, be expiated in the long run, demonstrating the overwhelmingly positive nature of Buddhist ethics     

Ethics at Phase 0: Clarifying the Issues

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) recently issued documents encouraging sponsors to consider microdose testing before launching Phase I trials, and many commentators predict that such methodologies will be applied more routinely in drug development. However, exploratory testing has provoked several ethical criticisms. Skeptics question the value and validity of microdose trials, and whether they present a reasonable balance of risks and benefits for subjects. Another major criticism is that such studies serve mainly commercial ends. The present article explores these and other ethical concerns for studies conducted in the oncology setting. It concludes that microdosing is not inconsistent with prevailing practices in Phase I research, and that in principle, such studies could strengthen the ethical basis for Phase I trials by providing them better evidentiary justification.