MDPs May Be Dead After Enron/Andersen, But Subsidiary Businesses Thrive

While some commentators believe that the Enron and Arthur Andersen affair that came to light in 2001 is responsible for the demise of multidisciplinary practices (MDPs), the notion of law firms engaging in MDPs lost most of its momentum during the American Bar Association (ABA) debate of 1999 and 2000. Enron and Andersen weakened whatever support remained for MDPs after the ABA defeat, during which MDP opponents raised legitimate concerns. But Enron and Andersen did not derail all models in which law firms successfully provide nonlegal services. In fact, the law-related services ancillary business model (as referred to by the ABA's Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice) is much more relevant post-Enron. Ancillary businesses, or subsidiary businesses as they are referred to at the authors' law firm of Bingham McCutchen LLP, are not MDPs. When structured and managed in compliance with fundamental principles and regulations, subsidiary businesses give progressive law firms the ability to deliver a comprehensive bundle of integrated services in response to client needs .     

The quality of doctoral programs in deviance,criminology, and criminal justice: An empirical assessment

While information regarding the doctoral programs in any discipline is of obvious and considerable relevance both to those in the discipline and to those seeking access to the best possible sites for graduate training, our knowledge about the quality of doctoral programs continues to be based on little more than speculation and highly ambiguous measures of institutional or departmental prestige. This study attempts to fill this gap for those who have special interests in the related fields of deviance, criminology, and criminal justice by ranking the thirty-six most significant doctoral programs in the nation by means of data derived from the Social Science Citation Index. Perhaps the most striking of our findings—and certainly to us the most distressing finding—is that those departments ranked by our measures as being the highest quality are consistently those which exist within the broader structure of departments of sociology. Given our firm conviction that the discipline of criminology is far, far more than that aspect of it which is closely related to issues of substantive significance to the field of sociology, we can only speculate that those in leadership positions in the growing number of independent schools or departments of criminology or criminal justice are not meeting their obligations to the discipline whose vitality and prospects depend so heavily on the quality of their judgment.     

NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE ADMINISTRATOR

Abstract: It is important to distinguish between the possible and the probable when speculating about developments in technology. It is difficult to foresee the uses which will be made of an invention, and often they are not the uses first proposed. With new technological developments almost anything is technically possible, although practical development of a possibility can be slower and more difficult than expected. Moreover, successful technical development does not guarantee acceptance by the public. Technology impinges on public administration in three ways. It is a tool, it creates new tasks, and new technology can change the expectations within society of the role and function of government and hence the role of public administration. Examples of the use of technology as a tool in public administration are evident in the areas of travel, telecommunications and data processing. Changes in technology create new administrative tasks related to increased public awareness of the dangers of many forms of technology, leading, for example, to consideration of problems of pollution, personal privacy and computer-related crime. New expectations created by the increased information available through technological advances in communication will prompt increasing calls for open planning and public participation in decision making which will in turn lead to increased visibility of administrators and a greater measure of real accountability.     

Assessing Criminal Justice Practice Using Social Justice Theory

In this article, I introduce two of the leading theories of social justice put forth by John Rawls and David Miller. Then, I assess criminal justice practice, from law-making to corrections, in terms of ways in which it is consistent and inconsistent with these theories of social justice. Throughout the article, I also identify ways in which criminal justice practice is inconsistent with social justice. Finally, I make recommendations for reforming criminal justice to make it more consistent with social justice.     

THE WINDS OF CHANGE IN ADOPTIONS LAWS:Should Adoptees Have Access to Adoption Records?

The author focuses on the issues involving the unsealing of adoption records—allowing adoptees to discover who their birth parents are. He first examines the history of adoption and the development of adoption laws in the United States and then discusses currently enacted adoption statutes. Next, the author considers the benefits and disadvantages of unsealing adoption records to the birth parents, the adoptee, and the adoptive parents. He suggest a model law and offers an analysis of its advantages and problems. Through this proposal, the author hopes to assuage many of the problems existing in adoption laws now.     

Outsourcing in US cities, ambulances and elderly voters

This paper develops a public choice model of city service provision, and uses empirical analysis to pin down some of the model’s key assumptions. Many of the largest cities in the United States outsource emergency medical services, and analysis of data from the 200 largest US cities finds that a number of variables are significant determinants of emergency ambulance outsourcing, including the fraction of a city’s voters over the age of 65. This finding provides evidence that elderly voters are important in policy determination, and suggests a particular shape for the model’s contracting cost curve.     

The Iraq Coalition of the Willing and (Politically) Able: Party Systems,the Press,and Public Influence on Foreign Policy

Media outlets in multiparty electoral systems tend to report on a wider range of policy issues than media in two‐party systems. They thus make more competing policy frames available to citizens. This suggests that a “free press” is insufficient to hold governments accountable. Rather, we should observe more challenges to the governments’ preferred frames and more politically aware citizens in multiparty democracies. Such citizens should thus be better equipped to hold their leaders accountable, relative to their counterparts in two‐party democracies. I propose a mechanism through which democratic publics can sometimes constrain their leaders in foreign policy. I test hypotheses derived from my theory with cross‐national data on the content of news coverage of Iraq, on public support for the war, and on decisions to contribute troops to the Iraq “Coalition of the Willing.” I find that citizens in countries with larger numbers of parties confronted more critical and diverse coverage of Iraq, while those with more widespread access to mass media were more likely to oppose the war and their nations likely to contribute fewer troops to the Coalition.