Law as a Parasitic Discipline

British university law schools are undergoing a radical change in the nature of legal research and scholarship. They were once dominated by pure doctrinal analysis but the new generation of legal scholars are either abandoning doctrinal work or infusing it with techniques and approaches drawn from the humanities and the social sciences. This essay argues that this change will lead to a greater ability to provide law students with a truly liberal education and will also enable the law school to take a much greater part in the intellectual debates to be found elsewhere in the university.     

Economic growth and environmental quality are compatible

Man's relationship to the natural environment and nature's influence upon human life are among the oldest topics of speculation. Until modern times the major reason for concern was the prospect of diminishing returns. It was thought that population and economic growth would press against natural resource limits, and that economic welfare would fall to subsistence levels.In modern times in developed nations the prospect of diminishing returns has been avoided. Population increase has abated to rates which promise stability in population numbers. Technology, capital accumulation, and improvements in labor force have yielded increasing returns. Per capita output grows at 2 or 3 % per year.The modern concern is quality of environment and quality of life. The technology, industrialization and agglomeration which have yielded increasing returns of goods per capita have side effects. These are pollution and crowding, increased needs for public goods, expanded monopoly in the market places, and dilemmas of choice from affluence. The task for modern societies is to bend their enlarged technology and productive power to improving quality of environment and, more generally, quality of life.Presented at the Man and Land Symposium on Economic Growth and the Quality of Life, College of Liberal Arts, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, May 10, 1973.     

Methods for developing relative need criteria to accompany a health care capital expenditure limit

In recent years capital spending in the health care industry has escalated tremendously, and most forecasters agree that needs will increase at an even faster rate throughout the 1990s. As a result of this trend, there is a dire need to develop effective and equitable controls on capital spending in health care. One of the capital payment options under consideration is the establishment of a lid on capital expenditures and the concomitant allocation of capital to health care providers whose applications are the most meritorious. The purpose of this article is to present some ideas and methods for the development of a relative need system to accompany a capital expenditure limit and to supplement and expand the absolute need determinations of the typical CON process.     

Blurring or Shifting of Policy Frames?: Institutionalization of the Economic-Environmental Policy Linkage in the European Community

This article investigates how "policy frames" have shaped the way European Community actors perceive the policy linkage between market integration and environmental policy. The article contends that there are three Community policy frames: conditional, classic, and sustainability. They form alternative "packages" of policy ideas defining the relationship between economic and environmental policy. The article provides an analysis of how actors embed these frames in the Community's institutional framework.To illustrate the general impact of policy frames on the environmental arena, the article explores two cases: waste management policy, and the integration of environmental concerns into the Community's agricultural policy. The article concludes by highlighting the different factors that promote and undermine the formation of "thick" institutional structures likely to integrate environmental and economic policy objectives.     

The association of alcohol-induced blackouts and grayouts to blood alcohol concentrations

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the association between measured blood alcohol concentration (BAC) and the presence and degree of amnesia (no amnesia, grayout, or blackout) in actively drinking subjects. A secondary aim was to determine potential factors other than BAC that contribute to the alcohol-induced memory loss. An interview questionnaire was administered to subjects regarding a recent alcohol associated arrest with a documented BAC greater than 0.08 g/dL for either public intoxication, driving under the influence, or under age drinking was administered. Demographic variables collected included drinking history, family history of alcoholism, presence of previous alcohol-related memory loss during a drinking episode, and drinking behavior during the episode. Memory of the drinking episode was evaluated to determine if either an alcohol-induced grayout (partial anterograde amnesia) or blackout (complete anterograde amnesia) occurred. Differences in (1) mean total number of drinks ingested before arrest, (2) gulping of drinks, and (3) BAC at arrest were found for those having blackouts compared with no amnesia; while differences in drinking more than planned were found between the no amnesia and grayout groups. A strong linear relationship between BAC and predicted probability of memory loss, particularly for blackouts was obvious. This finding clinically concludes that subjects with BAC of 310 g/dL or greater have a 0.50 or greater probability of having an alcoholic blackout.