Race-Based Peremptory Challenges: An Empirical Analysis of Litigation from the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2002–2006

This paper examines race-based peremptory challenges. Such challenges occur during the voir dire jury selection process. The process allows both the defense and the prosecution to strike jurors who they believe will not decide cases fairly. However, in the case of Batson v. Kentucky 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that race could not be used as a factor in eliminating prospective jurors. This paper examines federal litigation for five years in which it was alleged that race was used as a factor in removing a juror. An examination of the cases revealed that most of the cases involved sole male litigants who allege that there were multiple race-based peremptory challenges used in their cases. Moreover, most of the cases that led to the allegations involved violent offenses. Other case characteristics are noted, but of most significance was the finding that most appellants lost their cases. As such, the courts felt that most of the challenges were, in fact, race neutral. The implications of this research are discussed. This study was funded by an undergraduate research grant from Penn State University.     

The “Science of Science Policy”: reflections on the important questions and the challenges they present

Developing the “Science of Science Policy” will require data collection and analysis related to the processes of innovation and technological change, and the effects of government policy on those processes. There has been much work on these topics in the last three decades, but there remain difficult problems of finding proxies for subtle concepts, endogeneity, distinguishing private and social returns, untangling cumulative effects, measuring the impact of government programs in a true “but for” sense, and sorting out national and global effects. I offer observations on how to think about these issues. This paper was presented as the Keynote Address at the NSF Workshop on Advancing Measures of Innovation: Knowledge Flows, Business Metrics, and Measurement Strategies, Arlington, VA, June 2006.     

The reciprocal dynamics of organizing and sense‐making in the implementation of major public‐sector reforms

Abstract: Drawing on a longitudinal study from the early years of implementation of health‐care networks in Quebec, this article describes how public‐sector managers deal with complex challenges when both organizational structures and organizational strategies are radically transformed simultaneously. The new organizations studied had to completely re‐shuffle roles and responsibilities of their management teams while making sense of their new mandate of developing a population‐focused approach to health problems – all the time maintaining day‐to‐day operations. The four health‐care networks studied proceeded somewhat differently to meet these reciprocal challenges. The study reveals the importance of balancing organizing initiatives (focused on structures) with “sense‐making” initiatives (focused on strategies), of developing capacities for sense‐making through the creation of key “sense‐maker/sense‐giver” positions whose occupants are able to ensure that conceptual activities engage people working at different levels, even as organizational structures are in flux, and of mobilizing external constraints and influences as opportunities and resources in sense‐making and organizing. Sommaire : Se fondant sur une étude longitudinale des premières années de la mise en œuvre des réseaux de soins de santé au Québec, cet article décrit la manière dont les gestionnaires du secteur public font face à des défis complexes, alors que les structures et les stratégies organisationnelles sont radicalement transformées simultanément. Les nouveaux organismes étudiés ont dû complètement remanier les rôles et les responsabilités de leurs équipes de gestion et comprendre leur nouveau mandat d'élaborer une approche axée sur la population pour ce qui est des problèmes de santé, tout en maintenant leurs activités au jour le jour. Les quatre réseaux de soins de santéétudiés ont travailléà relever ces défis réciproques d'une manière assez différente. L'étude révèle l'importance de trouver un équilibre entre les initiatives consistant à organiser (axées sur les structures) et les initiatives consistant à interpréter les faits (axées sur les stratégies) ; de perfectionner les capacités à interpréter les faits grâce à la création de postes clés d'«interpréteurs de faits», dont les titulaires veilleraient à ce que des activités conceptuelles fassent intervenir les gens travaillant à différents niveaux même lorsque les structures organisationnelles fluctuent continuellement; et enfin de tirer parti des contraintes et influences externes comme autant d'occasions et de ressources pour interpréter et organiser les faits.