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The 2021 American Rescue Plan included the temporary expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC)--the largest individual income tax credit program in the United States--for most families with children. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, how did the public perceive this social policy benefit for families, especially in relation to other traditional social programs? By focusing on the CTC, an understudied policy area, and presenting original survey data, this paper first shows that, while the majority of respondents favored the CTC, levels of support for these benefits were lower than support for other social programs. Second, the paper suggests that, compared to older people and people with disabilities, Americans view families as part of the "undeserving" population. Third, by presenting panel data, we show that there is no change in levels of CTC support even among recipients of these benefits. Overall, these findings shed light on important challenges to the development and implementation of family policy in the USA, as well as the possibility of recalibrating the US liberal welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, striking racial disparities in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates were one of the core patterns of the virus. These racial disproportionalities were a result of structural factors--laws, rules, and practices embedded in economic, social, and political systems. Public policy is central among such structural features. Policies distribute advantages, disadvantages, benefits, and burdens in ways that generate, reinforce, or redress racial inequities. Crucially, public policy is a function of power relations, so understanding policy decisions requires attentiveness to power. This paper asseses statistical associations between racial power and state anti-eviction policies. Charting the timing of state policy responses between March 2020 and June 2021, I examine correlations between response times and racial power as reflected in state populations, voting constituencies, legislatures, and social movement activities. Ultimately, I do not find any significant associations. The null results underscore the complexities and difficulties of studying race, power, and public policy with theoretical nuance and empirical care. While the findings leave us with much to learn about how racial power operates, the conceptualization and theorizing offered in the paper, instructively underscore the value of centering racial power in analyses of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs) promise increased accountability from governmental actors. OIGs do so by monitoring governmental programs and operations and providing their findings to legislative or executive decision makers and/or the public. These offices have enjoyed a particular popularity in the United States in the last 40 years; however a close examination of these OIGs demonstrates that, particularly on the state and local levels, there is vast variation in their designs. Using both original qualitative and quantitative data this paper examines the extent to which OIGs on the state and local levels vary from an archetypal OIG. The paper demonstrates that while design variations occur as the new institution is adopted in new places, sometimes deviations from the archetype are attributable to an intentional effort, based on a recognition of and reaction to the potential power of an OIG structured according to a theoretically ideal model, to restrict the office in ways that have the potential to undercut effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police departments in the United States have been increasingly involved in placing their sworn officers in off-duty jobs. Individual officers, commanders or union representatives in a number of police agencies earn commissions by brokering off-duty jobs for fellow officers, a practice the US Department of Jus tice characterized as an “artery of corruption” in the New Orleans Police Department. In response to actual or potential corruption by entrepreneurial officers and unions acting as employment brokers, many police agencies now directly place officers in off-duty jobs. Corruption has tainted agency-managed officer placements as well, leading to corruption charges against Pittsburgh's Police Chief and bringing into stark relief how departments generate business and account for commissions earned by placing fully uniformed officers in private employment via “police details”—as the practice is commonly called. This paper looks at “police details” in terms of the realized and potential types of corruption they engender, and the kinds of off-duty employment activities that pose integrity threats, both for the individuals involved and for their law enforcement agencies. The paper concludes by discussing public policy questions raised when police agencies and officers monetize taxpayer-funded training, symbols of office and equipment in order to command premium wages in off-duty employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the common understanding, tort law is the branch of private law whose set of positive rules, institutions, and procedures aims to shift the costs of accidents from the victim to a different subject. Similar accounts of tort law are widespread and uncontested, yet they fail to do justice to the overall role tort law plays in societies. Tort law does not live in legislatures, law firms, courts, and law books only. It also lives "in the shadow" of the official system of adjudication: in the offices of insurance companies; in people's notions about injury and risk, responsibility and justice; in the languages and images associated with law in mass-generated popular culture; as well as in public debates about what values should be protected and promoted, at what costs, and at the expense of whom. On the assumption that tort law is at the same time a product and a constituent of the very cultural framework in which it is embedded, the aim of this paper is to explore its cultural dimensions in a broad comparative perspective. Combining insights from legal anthropology, socio-legal literature, legal history, and comparative law, the article tries to understand the role that, in Western and non-Western legal traditions, tort law plays in responding to, and managing social conflicts. In this perspective, the paper studies the cultural frameworks that sustain the adjudication process outside and inside the courtrooms, and analyzes how notions, practices, and remedies of tort law "in action" vary across different social and cultural settings. It then puts forward some conclusions about the extent to which tort law notions, ideas, concepts, categorizations, and perceptions influence and, reciprocally, are influenced by the cultural framework of which they are an expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to a larger research agenda concerning the possibility of meaningful transatlantic dialogue about private-law reform. Both the European Union and the United States regulate private autonomy extensively. In spite of contextual similarities, however, there are several barriers making dialogue among legal scholars difficult. In particular, the conversation about social justice--by now an important element of private-law reform within the European Union--is less prominent in American contract law scholarship. In U.S. legal academia, social justice is a matter for moral philosophers, development economists, and constitutionalists, and also provides normative frameworks for current property and torts debates, but its impact on contracts scholarship has declined over the past few years, and efficiency discourse has often replaced social justice parlance. Against this background, this paper takes a close look at a recent transatlantic exchange in matters of private-law reform--a Chicago Law School conference on a proposed Common European Sales Law-- and identifies a few counter-intuitive points of convergence between U.S. and European scholarship. Along the way, the paper also highlights structural and discursive incompatibilities, but concludes that the dialogue is, as a whole, valuable and should be kept alive. In designing post-national rules for private autonomy, Europe may draw better lessons from U.S. regulatory experiences if it first deconstructs the wholesale pro-market rhetoric of otherwise relevant literature. When this is done, the payoffs of American commentaries become more appreciable. Taking the lead from some Chicagoan insights, this paper recommends customizing the empirical investigation of EU markets so as to factor socio-economic asymmetries into the equation of private-law reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasingly sophisticated antidiscrimination laws, discrimination and inequality have proved remarkably resilient. This prompts questions about the limits of law's ability to achieve social change. One way forward is to fashion new legal tools, which impose duties to promote or achieve equality, rather than focusing on individual rights against specific perpetrators. In the past decade in Britain, such fourth generation equality laws have been developed in a distinctive format, requiring the decision-maker to "have due regard" to equality, rather than taking action to achieve such objectives. This standard has triggered a spate of judicial review cases, particularly in response to austerity measures imposing deep budgetary cuts on disadvantaged groups. This Paper's aims are two-fold. The first is to examine the judicial approach to the due regard standard in the light of recent regulatory theory. Do courts consider the due regard standard as a signal for deference, or can it be understood as an example of "reflexive law," facilitating deliberative decision-making rather than imposing external standards likely to meet with resistance from the regulated body? The Paper concludes that courts have struggled to deal with the regulatory challenges presented by the "due regard" standard, wavering between appropriate and inappropriate intervention. The second aim is an analysis of whether a deliberative standard is appropriate in the equality context. The record of judicial review cases demonstrates that such a standard risks legitimating or simply reconfiguring existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Paper explores the interrelationship between U.S. and EU disability discrimination law in terms of founding principles, implementation and practice. It addresses the evolution of a "civil rights" model (broadly based on a social construct of disability) which underpins discrimination law in the United States, and its subsequent adaptation in the EU context to fit with a broader European social model. This Paper also examines the role of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in furthering the shift from civil rights approaches to locating disability rights within a broader theory of social justice, and the significance of the EU's conclusion of procedures necessary to ratify the Convention. Finally, it offers some perspectives on the future of a transatlantic dialogue on ensuring that people with disabilities are viewed as rights-holders, supported, and enabled to exercise their rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An adequate assessment of crisis management failure (and success) requires a validated causal theoy. Without such a theory, any assessment of crisis management performance amounts to little more than a "just so" story. This is the key argument of this paper, which describes how hindsight biases and selective use of social science theory gave rise to a suggestive and convincing - but not necessarily correct - assessment of NASA's role in the Columbia space shuttle disaster (l February 2003). The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) identified NASA's organizational culture and safety system as a primary source of failure. The CAIB report reads as a stunning indictment of organizational incompetence: the organization that thrilled the world with the Apollo project had "lost" its safety culture and failed to prevent a preventable disaster. This paper examines the CAIB findings in light of the two dominant theoretical schools that address organizational disasters (normal accident and high reliability theory). It revisits the Columbia shuttle disaster and concludes that the CAIB findings do not sit well with the insights of these schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinctiveness of European from American regulatory cultures or traditions is a matter of longstanding controversy. Two recent books--The Politics of Precaution by David Vogel-- and The Reality of Precaution, edited by Jonathan Wiener with several others--have made notable contributions to this debate. Both books argue that regulatory cultures or traditions are incapable of explaining current differences between American and European approaches to precaution, which they define as regulatory stringency. For Wiener, this conclusion derives from the inconsistency of patterns of stringency between the United States and Europe. Vogel argues that while the stringency of current European environmental regulation indeed exceeds that of its U.S. counterpart, the split is unstable and opened relatively recently. In combination, the books aspire to put to rest an entire family o f historical-institutional explanations for cross-national regulatory differences in the transatlantic context and beyond. This essay draws from legal history to argue for an alternative position: legal traditions and their associated administrative-law principles are highly relevant to current transatlantic conflicts over precaution. The paper's starting point is the distinction between two separate meanings of the precautionary principle, the first prescriptive, and the second permissive. In its prescriptive sense the precautionary principle urges regulators to take stringent mitigation measures in the face of scientifically uncertain risks. In its permissive sense, the principle authorizes the state to regulate when the relevant harms are scientifically uncertain. Conflicts over permissive precaution thus inherently reflect divergent views of the scope of the state's autonomy in the regulation of risk. These disparate views correspond closely, in turn, with relevant differences between the administrativelaw traditions respectively associated with Anglo-American common law and Continental civil law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a theory to explain cross-national variation in administrative law doctrines and practices. Administrative law regimes vary along three primary dimensions: the scope of delegation to agencies, agencies' exercise of discretion, and judicial practices of deference to agencies. Working with a principal-agent framework, we show how cross-national differences in institutions' capacities and the environments they face encourage the adoption of divergent strategies that lead to a variety of distinct, stable, equilibrium outcomes. We apply our model to explain patterns of administrative law in the United States, Germany, France, and Commonwealth jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes the first comprehensive study of the nature and extent of private securities litigation in China, examining whether private securities litigation has been effectively carried out during the first decade since it was formally permitted by China's highest court in 2002. Methodologically, it goes beyond the doctrinal analysis as commonly seen in the extant literature on the subject. Instead it empirically investigates both the quantity and quality of securities civil actions in China. There has been a much lower number than expected of securities civil suits in China during the ten-year study period, but the percentage of recovery in China is significantly higher than that in the United States. The policy implications of the empirical findings are discussed with a view to improving the Chinese legal regime for private securities litigation. In particular, it casts doubt on the popular belief that China should adopt the U.S. -style class action. Furthermore, as the local courts are found to be dysfunctional in handling securities civil cases, a reform proposal is made to give investors more freedom in choosing the court for bringing securities civil actions in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we describe how benefits are transferred from previous non-market valuation research to inform the public policy debate on the allocation of treated wastewater to Riparian Projects in the semi-arid city of Tucson, Arizona, United States. Specifically, we transfer property premiums associated with proximity to riparian habitat to two proposed, and one accidental, urban Riparian Project. The study demonstrates that nearby property owners would likely benefit from wastewater reuse in riparian corridor restoration projects. Furthermore, the variable costs of supplying supplementary treated wastewater to one of the Riparian Projects are covered by incremental property tax revenues. We conclude that there is a window of opportunity to utilize a portion of Tucson's treated wastewater, over half of which is currently discharged at the northern end of the city, for additional in-town riparian restoration projects. Such riparian restoration projects also provide a mechanism for Endangered Species Act compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports results from a 2008 survey of U.S. State agency administrators across all 50 states and 12 different agency types. Agency managers were asked to disclose the extent to which they relied on information from 19 information sources and to weight the value of information from each source. This paper is particularly interested in ascertaining the proportion of agency policies that are based on formal scientific evidence, and the importance of scientific information as a source of influence on agency decisions relative to other potential sources of information. Information is presented by agency type with significant differences across substantive policy areas noted. Using a weighted index approach, we combine the frequency of consultation of an information source with the weight placed on that evidence by the agency administrator in developing programs and practices. Using these weighted scores, we further examine the relationship of these responses to the weight agencies place on information from various sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic engineering (GE) has been used to produce plants with desirable qualities for over two decades, and widespread, world-wide market adoption of engineered crops with pest and disease resistance characteristics has occurred. Genetically engineered organisms (GEOs), including GE crops, have been formally overseen by the U.S. government since the mid-1980s. In this article, our previous work on identifying strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. GEO oversight system is reviewed, and a new analysis of the system based on expert and stakeholder interviews is presented. Using both analyses and an examination of historical controversies surrounding GEOs, three categories of improvements to oversight are identified: democratization of oversight processes, establishing clear mechanisms for inter-agency and -organization coordination, and taking on uncertainty through upstream and fluid approaches. The paper also discusses feasibility issues and barriers associated with implementing changes in these areas, notably the overarching U.S. approach to regulation and legal authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The likely centerpiece of U.S. legislation to address climate change will be a cap-and-trade program that creates a market for greenhouse gases (GHGs). Whether the onset of a cap-and-trade system and additional complementary policies would provide a benefit or a cost to our economy has been the subject of much modeling and debate. This paper argues that while climate policy does not come without cost, modeling of the Lieberman–Warner Climate Security Act demonstrates that these costs are not substantial and can be mitigated by appropriate policy design. Finally, while a well-designed carbon market will be a large factor in lowering costs and driving innovation, complementary policies will be necessary to induce the technological change required to transition the United States to a low-carbon economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]