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The article presents the discussion on COVID-19 vaccine booster doses being safe and maintaining protection after receipt of a primary vaccination series. Topics include continued risk for COVID-19–related illness and the benefits and safety of bivalent booster vaccination; and vaccination improving COVID-19 bivalent booster coverage among adolescents and adults.

Does groupthink affect court deference to the government in times of heightened security concerns? We argue that male judges serving in homogeneous panels in federal appellate courts modified their behavior post-9/11, but that the presence of a female on the panel mitigated these effects. Using data on the U.S. Court of Appeals from 1978 to 2008 in search-and-seizure cases, we argue that women can safeguard against groupthink effects that otherwise trend toward a more deferential, less rights-oriented approach in times of heightened security. Our findings suggest women mitigate their male colleagues' shift toward more deferential decisions by affecting panel outcomes that are more consistent with peacetime decisions. These results suggest the important role women exert in collegial panels beyond direct voting patterns. In times of heightened security concerns, panel diversity can avoid groupthink that might stand in the judiciary's way of providing an effective check on executive and legislative power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly common involvement of the United States in military conflict resonates throughout American political institutions and affects the balance of power in important ways. We examine one particular aspect of executive augmentation of power in times of war—legislative deference—and move beyond a binary approach to the effect of war. Instead, we contend that executive advantage depends on the salience and severity of the conflict. Matters of war often drive upward the prevalence of security concerns in public discourse. Although this can leave the president to compete with Congress on a much more friendly playing field, perceptions of the war’s development can turn the tide. We empirically test our hypotheses with data spanning a 50-year period and find that the salience and severity of war matter, though not equally for both chambers of Congress. The findings hold implications for how we understand the institutional balance of power within and across conflicts, which represents a major aspect of American constitutional design and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the state court literature assumes that decisions reached by state courts of last resort are independent of other state courts of last resort. Each state court has its own ideology as well as a particular set of institutional constraints and confronts different governors, publics, and state legislatures in rendering decisions. Scholarly research and its assumption of the independence of state-level judicial decision making and policy impact stands in marked contrast to much of the literature on the state-level adoption of policy. This diffusion literature has shown that states learn from and emulate similarly situated states that have previously adopted the policy under consideration. These national or state legislatures look to other nations and states for leadership in particular policy domains. In this manuscript, we apply the concept of diffusion to state courts. We do so through the examination of three waves of court-ordered state education finance reform. Using a dyadic data set covering the period from 1974 until 2002, we find that state courts do emulate other state courts but that emulation is different from legislative emulation and different for each wave of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the effects of the 9/11 terror attacks on the treatment of government interests on the Supreme Court of Canada. The author deals with the question of how much civil freedom can still guarantee the safety in Canada. An analysis of decisions by the Canadian Supreme Court for or against the governments position before and after the attacks, and evaluations of interviews with Canadian lawyers are presented, that show that the Canadian government is protecting the individual rights of its citizens.