The struggle over retiree medical benefits: who's on top?

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of litigation addressing an employer's right to unilaterally amend or terminate medical benefits provided to retirees. The sheer volume of these cases and the variety of facts and legal theories have combined to obscure the patterns and trends that actually are emerging from this litigation. This article will describe the context of the struggle over retiree benefits and discuss those leading decisions in which the federal courts of appeals have established their rules for deciding retiree benefits cases.     

Living Under Aboriginal Exemption: Negotiating State Governments' Policies and Practices

This volume of the Australian Journal of Politics and History presents an edited collection of papers delivered by emerging and established researchers at the Second Rethinking & Researching 20th Century Aboriginal Exemption Symposium, co-hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast with La Trobe University in October 2021. The papers reveal the human costs, hardships and legacies of the state policies of Aboriginal Exemption last century which supposedly offered the promise of freedom to Indigenous Australians confined to reserves and missions. Equally, the papers explore innovative and culturally safe ways to investigate and further understand Aboriginal exemption that ensure Ancestors and Elders, who actively negotiated, resisted and subverted its use, are recognised and honoured.     

Immigration as a source of political discontent and frustration in Western democracies

"This article describes the migration context of three sets of Western democracies and then explores plausible linkages between the scale, timing, and characteristics of migration, and the substance and process of migration policies, on the one hand, and support for government, on the other. Trying to move beyond plausibility, I discuss indirect indicators of the impact of immigration on Western publics: attitudes toward immigration policy and immigrants, support for extremist parties, and acts of violence and disorder linked to anti-immigrant or racist motives."     

Explaining “Pain and Suffering” Awards: The Role of Injury Characteristics and Fault Attributions

The present research explored factors thought to affect compensatory awards for non-economic ham (pain and suffering) in personal injury cases. Experiment 1 showed that the nature and severity of the plaintiffs injury had a strong effect on perceptions of the extent of harm suffered and on award amounts. The parties' relatively active or passive roles in causing the injury affected assessments of their degree of fault, but perceived fault had little influence on awards. Experiment 2 replicated with more varied cases the strong impact of injury severity on harm perception and on awards for pain and suffering. In both studies, the disability and the mental suffering associated with injuries were stronger predictors of awards than were pain and disfigurement.     

Candidate Character vs. The Economy in the 1992 Election

The outcome of the 1992 U.S. presidential election has been explained largely as a function of perceptions of George Bush's economic performance. The economy submerged questions about Bill Clinton's character, awarding the advantage to the Democrat. In this article, we evaluate the effect of economic evaluations along with character attacks on candidate support in the 1992 presidential contest. Claims that the economy submerged character have been somewhat exaggerated. But while character remains an important issue in presidential evaluation, its role in judging candidates cannot be taken at face value. We show that both economic evaluations and character judgments are highly politicized. The findings indicate that those protesting Clinton's character turned almost exclusively to Bush. Those protesting Bush's economic record turned to both Perot and Clinton. Still, the economy did not trump character. The troubles of both major party candidates fueled a strong protest vote that contributed to Perot's strong showing.