Diminished Lives and Malpractice: Courts Stalled in Transition

Medicine is still largely a pre-Darwin, pre-Newton enterprise…. We do not yet understand the underlying mechanisms of the major illnesses which plague humanity, and therefore much of what is done in the treatment of illness must still be empirical, trial and error therapy. We are compelled by our limitations to resort to shoring things up, applying halfway technology, trying to fix things after the fact.¹     

Principles of Autonomy*

Autonomy has two faces, individual autonomy and institutional autonomy. Political systems not only deal with demands for individual freedom, the traditional rights of citizens to freedom of opinion, association and contract. Institutional autonomy is a pervasive property of all kinds of political systems. To international political systems just as to local and regional political systems, autonomy is a basic property. Both types of systems face the difficult task of maintaining stable relations with the nation state, securing an amount of control for the nation state while retaining some autonomy for themselves. The demand of various regions for independence or semiindependence within nation states has been a dominant theme in the politics of the sixties and the seventies. The autonomy of the nation state is its sovereignty. International political systems present a threat to the autonomy of the nation state, while at the same time they may provide mechanisms by means of which other sources of infringements on autonomy may be counteracted. Autonomy is a fundamental political property. A theoretical understanding of autonomy is conducive to the explanation of those aspects of political systems that are related to stability. Such an interpretation may place autonomy in an equilibrium analysis of how demand and supply of autonomy interacts with other basic political properties like influence and control.     

Understanding judicial discretion

The main aim of this paper is to clarify the dispute over judicial discretion by distinguishing the different senses in which claims about judicial discretion can be understood and by examining the arguments for these various interpretations. Three different levels of dispute need to be recognized. The first concerns whether judges actually do exercise discretion, the second involves whether judges are entitled to exercise discretion, and the third is about the proper institutional role of judges. In this context, the views of Dworkin, Raz, Perry, Greenawalt, and Sartorius are examined. Finally, it is suggested that a resolution of the judicial discretion controversy requires a satisfactory theory of the justification of judicial decisions.     

Working with local NGOs: WaterAid's programme in Nepal

This article describes the evolution of WaterAid's programme of work in Nepal, based on the author's experiences while working as WaterAid's Representative Engineer in Nepal from 1987 to 1991. It examines how WaterAid's philosophy of working in partnership with local organisations was actually put into practice. Various problems and constraints are identified and discussed, and certain points are highlighted which may be of general interest to other external support agencies working in similar ways in other countries and sectors. The overall conclusion is that this programme represents a viable methodology for an international NGO to achieve useful results in supporting local NGOs working in development.     

Conventional Politics for Unconventional Drilling? Lessons from Pennsylvania's Early Move into Fracking Policy Development

The emergence of hydraulic fracturing techniques is generating a dramatic expansion of the development of domestic natural gas resources in the United States and abroad. Fracking also poses a series of environmental protection challenges that cut across traditional medium and program boundaries. Formal constraints on federal government engagement thus far devolve considerable latitude to individual states for policy development. This provides an important test of whether recent scholarly emphasis on highly innovative state environmental and energy policies can be extended to this burgeoning area. Pennsylvania has moved to the epicenter of the fracking revolution, reflecting its vast Marcellus Shale resource and far‐reaching 2012 legislation. This article examines the Pennsylvania case and notes that the state's emerging policy appears designed to maximize resource extraction while downplaying environmental considerations. The case analysis generates questions as to whether this experience constitutes an influential state early mover that is likely to diffuse widely or is instead an aberration in a rapidly diversifying state policy development process.     

Gulick and the american presidency: vision,reality, and consequences

One of Luther Gulick's most significant legacies was his conception of the executive. This chapter explores the nature and origins of that conception and shows how it coincided with President Franklin Roosevelt's notions for altering the powers of the presidency. These two conceptions came together in the Brownlow Committee's recommendations and their subsequent promulgation in the Executive Reorganization Act of 1939.

Gulick's notions of an executive were derived from the city manager, a different executive than any with which the authors of the Constitution were familiar. It thus contributed to one of the most profound changes in our Constitution, reshaped our notion of the presidency, crystallized a new public philosophy about how we govern ourselves, and entrenched a conventional wisdom that underlies the practice of public administration. These results spawned an alliance between presidents, who found it useful to portray themselves as powerful chief executive officers buttressed by the potent symbols of science and efficiency and the nascent field of public administration which gained legitimacy as the obedient scientific managers of the president. An alliance, however, which could not survive the changes of constituencies that began to emerge in the late 1960s.

The presidency has evolved from managerial to plebiscitary and finally to highly politicized with a variety of potentialities not all of which can be viewed as benign, but all of which leave public administration without a role that is simultaneously legitimate and which encompasses the complexity and discretion dictated by our circumstances. The chapter closes with lessons we might draw from Luther Gulick's life and apply to our efforts to fashion a new role for public administration in a government of shared powers.