Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital: capping medical practice reform in Illinois

On February 4, 2010 the Illinois Supreme Court struck down Illinois' medical practice reform bill, P.A. 94-677, when it decided Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital. Although the court only considered the unconstitutionality of the cap on non-economic damages contained in that bill, an inseverability provision resulted in the invalidation of all of its provisions. The end result of the Lebron decision extends much further than the striking of the cap on non-economic damages. It affects such areas as medical liability insurance law, physician discipline, public disclosure of information, the admissibility of physician statements into evidence, and expert witness standards. The Lebron holding has raised a significant obstacle to the implementation of a wide range of legislative measures intended to improve both the delivery and quality of healthcare services in Illinois. This article explains the impact of Lebron in these collateral, but important, areas of the law.     

The Cost of Terrorism: The Relationship Between International Terrorism and Democratic Governance

After Al Qaeda's destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, many democracies reacted to the event, and to international terrorism in general, by passing laws restricting civil liberties and political rights, raising questions about the balance between security and liberty. Such laws have produced alarms among civil libertarians, worldwide. Are the alarms justified? In this article we analyze the relationship between the yearly number of international terrorist attacks in 24 countries from 1968–2003 and (a) measures of civil liberties and political rights as provided by Freedom House, and (b) levels of democracy as measured in the Polity IV scales. We take the number of international terrorist events, by country, from data provided by the Memorial Institute of the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) http://www.tkb.org/Home.jsp. Our analysis indicates that there is, generally, no relationship between the number of international terrorist events and the levels of civil rights, political rights, or democracy as measured by the Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. When there is a statistically significant relationship, it is negative, opposite to what is predicted by the tradeoff hypothesis.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LIBERTY IN THE ARAB AND ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST

The following papers were the basis for a panel at the annual meeting of the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG) in Washington, D.C., October 23, 1993. See below for the participants' affiliations     

COMMENTS ON NETWORK NEUTRALITY

The term "price discrimination" has been used to vilify itspractitioners since the term's inception in economics. Pricediscrimination is considered evil because discrimination isconsidered, in most contexts, as evil. If instead we describedthis common phenomenon as price distinction instead of pricediscrimination, the general field of thought on the matter would,most likely, be extremely different. If a producer engages in"distinguishing" prices instead of discriminating prices, theworld would be a more rational place, because economic discriminationis so often socially beneficial. The network neutrality argumentis no different. The debate essentially addresses the issueof limiting a network provider's ability to engage in pricedistinction before the fact. The model of a toll road presents an acceptable framework foranalyzing network neutrality. It has been used frequently toanalogize the Internet     

African American Oxford House residents: sources of abstinent social networks

The current study found that African American residents of Oxford House (OH) used Narcotics Anonymous (NA) at high rates, and that both OH and NA strongly contributed to abstinent social networks. Having siblings and other family members in one's network predicted substance use among network members, whereas spouses, parents, and children did not have an effect on the rate of substance use. These findings suggest that OH and NA may be effective sources of abstinent social support for African Americans recovering from substance abuse. However, family members are well represented in the support networks of African Americans in OH.     

Stress and coping: the roles of ethnicity and gender in substance abuse recovery

This study investigated ethnic and gender differences in reported resource losses and gains for recovering substance abusers living in Oxford Houses (OH). Participants (n = 829) completed a version of Hobfoll's (1998) Conservation of Resources (COR) Evaluation. Results indicated significant individual differences in resources, based on gender, ethnicity, and the length of OH residential stay. Men reported fewer resource gains and losses than women. With respect to ethnicity, African-Americans reported greater gains and losses in resources than European-Americans. Individuals with less time in an OH also reported having experienced more losses in the past 3 months.