Judges and their Audiences

Author(s):  
Lawrence Baum

In the most widely accepted conception of judges’ relationships with their environments in the United States, influence on judges from the world outside their courts is a result of their strategic efforts to shape the content of legal policy. This chapter presents an alternative conception, one in which judges are influenced by the outside world largely because they care about what other people think of them. This alternative conception of judicial audiences helps to explain why judges sometimes take the general public and the other branches of government into account when they make decisions. It also calls attention to the role of elite groups in shaping the choices of judges, most notably Supreme Court justices. In turn, growing ideological polarization among elites may have changed patterns of elite influence on judges and thus judges’ behavior as decision makers.

Author(s):  
Hiroshi Honda

Regulatory engineering came to be increasingly needed by extensive people of our society to maintain safety, security, and sustainability of the environment, economy, energy, mineral and other resources of our planet among others, as engineering is increasingly globalized to meet the needs and wants of a variety of people and society in the world. The ASME/VUPRE Conference on Vulnerability, Uncertainty and Probability Quantification in Regulatory Engineering was to be held in Washington, D. C. on August 16–18, 2012 or thereafter. The current paper provides an overview of the planned conference presentations and discussion, based on the topics planned, and abstracts submitted among others, as well as those for IMECE2012 Session 5-7-2 Globalization of Regulatory Engineering, and the author’s paper on fatigue and fracture issues of an offshore structure, etc., and role of regulatory engineering, prepared for the 9th International Conference on Fracture and Strength of Solids (FEOFS2013) on June 9–13, 2013 in Jeju, South Korea. Possible impacts of the outcome on the regulatory agencies, regulated communities, scientists and engineers, and general public in the United States, Europe and Japan among other nations and regions are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Henry Shue

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992 establishes no dates and no dollars. No dates are specified by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states, and no dollars are specified with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The convention is toothless because throughout the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee during 1991 to 1992, the United States played the role of dentist: whenever virtually all the other states in the world (with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to convention language with teeth, the United States insisted that the teeth be pulled out. The Clinton administration now faces a strategic question: should the next step aim at a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases (GHGs) or at a narrower protocol covering only one, or a few, gases, for example, only fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2)? Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener (1992) have argued for moving directly to a comprehensive treaty, while Thomas Drennen (1993) has argued for a more focused beginning. I will suggest that Drennen is essentially correct that we should not try to go straight to a comprehensive treaty, at least not of the kind advocated by Stewart and Wiener. First I would like to develop a framework into which to set issues of equity or justice of the kind introduced by Drennen. It would be easier if we faced only one question about justice, but several questions are not only unavoidable individually but are entangled with one another. In addition, each question can be given not simply alternative answers but answers of different kinds. In spite of this multiplicity of possible answers to the multiplicity of inevitable and interconnected questions, I think we can lay out the issues fairly clearly and establish that commonsense principles converge to a remarkable extent upon what ought to be done, at least for the next decade or so.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Damian Kaźmierczak

Using a sample of 1,705 convertible bonds issued by manufacturing and service companies from the United States (1,138 issues); Europe (270); and Asia (297) between 2004 and 2014 this paper investigates the role of callable convertibles in the corporate investment process. This research shows first that callable convertibles are used to finance investment projects particularly by American firms which may exercise new investment options to improve poor financial performance. Secondly, the same strategy may be followed by European companies, but they seem not to carry out investments on as large a scale as American firms. Thirdly, the research results do not provide evidence that Asian enterprises use callable convertibles for investment purposes: they likely use these instruments for different reasons.


Author(s):  
N. Gegelashvili ◽  
◽  
I. Modnikova ◽  

The article analyzes the US policy towards Ukraine dating back from the time before the reunification of Crimea with Russia and up to Donald Trump coming to power. The spectrum of Washington’s interests towards this country being of particular strategic interest to the United States are disclosed. It should be noted that since the disintegration of the Soviet Union Washington’s interest in this country on the whole has not been very much different from its stand on all post-Soviet states whose significance was defined by the U,S depending on their location on the world map as well as on the value of their natural resources. However, after the reunification of Crimea with Russia Washington’s stand on this country underwent significant changes, causing a radical transformation of the U,S attitude in their Ukrainian policy. During the presidency of Barack Obama the American policy towards Ukraine was carried out rather sluggishly being basically declarative in its nature. When President D. Trump took his office Washington’s policy towards Ukraine became increasingly more offensive and was characterized by a rather proactive stance not only because Ukraine became the principal arena of confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation, but also because it became a part of the US domestic political context. Therefore, an outcome of the “battle” for Ukraine is currently very important for the United States in order to prove to the world its role of the main helmsman in the context of a diminishing US capability of maintaining their global superiority.


1974 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 23-37

The world economic position and prospects have worsened further in the last three months. In the United States and Japan, in particular, recessionary conditions are proving to be more marked and more prolonged than we had expected, and it looks as though by the end of the year all the major industrial countries, with the possible exception of France, will have experienced at least one quarter in which output has fallen or at best shown no appreciable rise. The other developed countries have fared better, but we no longer expect there to be any growth of output in the OECD area either in the second half of the year or in the year as a whole. In 1975 the position should be rather better, at least by the second half. We expect OECD countries' aggregate GNP to grow by about 2 per cent year-on-year and nearly 3 per cent between the fourth quarters of 1974 and 1975.


2019 ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Susana Sueiro Seoane

This chapter analyzes Cultura Obrera (Labor Culture), published in New York City from 1911 to 1927. Pedro Esteve, the primary editor, gave expression to his ideas in this newspaper and while it represented Spanish firemen and marine workers, it reported on many other workers’ struggles in different parts of the world, for example, supporting and collecting funds for the Mexican revolutionary brothers Flores Magón. This newspaper, as all the anarchist press, was part of a transnational network and had a circulation not only in many parts of the United States but also in Latin American countries, including Argentina and Cuba, as well as on the other side of the Atlantic, in Spain and various European countries.


2019 ◽  
pp. 125-136
Author(s):  
Allan Metcalf

For the most part, the gradual expansion of the meaning of “guy” to include everyone, male and female and GLBTQ, has slipped by without particular notice by the general public, and even by linguists. There’s no mystery about Guy Fawkes being the starting point that leads as far from that beginning as groups of women calling each other “you guys,” but neither is there much interest—except in two quarters that object: the feminist movement and the Old South of the United States. Feminists who want the inherently sexist English language to become gender neutral object to the expansion of “guys” to include women as well as men. As a result, some people try to avoid “guys,” though the alternatives aren’t that obvious, at best a plain “you all.” The other objection comes from Southerners, who don’t so much object to “guys” as keep to their well-established older alternative “y’all.” The boundary between “guys” or “you guys” and “y’all” has remained firm for the last century, perhaps getting its strength as one last means of holding the line against the northern states.


Author(s):  
Carson H. Varner ◽  
Katrin C. Varner

This paper examines developing issues and attitudes that unite and divide the United States and the European Union as the discussion and regulation of agriculture evolves. While some terms, such as “organic,” are defined in law in both the United States and European Union, the increasingly used “sustainability” is an evolving concept. The main sustainability issue is how to provide food and fiber for a rapidly growing world population. In this context, the role of biotechnology is questioned. Americans tend to favor what are sometimes called genetically modified crops, while Europeans remain cautious. Europeans lean more toward organic farming, while Americans assert that much of the world will starve if organic methods are required. This paper reviews the directions that the discussion of these issues is taking and will show areas of agreement and where the two sides diverge.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document