The Aggregate Harmony Metric and a Statistical and Visual Contextualization of the Rehnquist Court: 50 Years of Data

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.31228/osf.io/ekh6d ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peter A. Hook

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Half Century ◽

Rehnquist Court ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Annual Term ◽

Measures Of Agreement ◽

Software Measures

The November 2006 issue marked the fiftieth year that the Harvard Law Review published its annual matrix of the inter-agreement amongst all of the Justices for a particular term. These matrices include both raw numbers and percentages as to how often any two Justices sided together on cases for that particular term relative to the amount of cases the two Justices heard together. Aggregating this data over the fifty-year span allows for some important insights and benchmarks as to the last half century of the Supreme Court—the 1956 to 2005 Terms. These aggregated matrices of agreement allow for interesting visualizations of the Supreme Court, both longitudinally and year by year. Using existing software, measures of agreement (and disagreement) allow for the Justices to be distributed spatially as to their ideological sympathies. The fifty-year perspective also allows scholars of the Court to set empirical benchmarks to evaluate individual terms. This article introduces a new metric of annual, term, Court agreement known as the Aggregate Harmony Metric. Published in and cite as: Peter A. Hook, The Aggregate Harmony Metric and a Statistical and Visual Contextualization of the Rehnquist Court: 50 Years of Data, 24 Const. Comment. 221 (2007).

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Malpractice & Negligence: Cal. Supreme Court Clarifies Negligence Provisions under State’s Elder Abuse Act

The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics ◽

10.1017/s1073110500012973 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 203-203

Author(s):

Kendra Carlson

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Supreme Court ◽

Health Care Providers ◽

Elder Abuse ◽

Skilled Nursing Facility ◽

Pressure Sores ◽

Care Providers ◽

Nursing Facility ◽

Skilled Nursing ◽

The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of California held, in Delaney v. Baker, 82 Cal. Rptr. 2d 610 (1999), that the heightened remedies available under the Elder Abuse Act (Act), Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 15657,15657.2 (West 1998), apply to health care providers who engage in reckless neglect of an elder adult. The court interpreted two sections of the Act: (1) section 15657, which provides for enhanced remedies for reckless neglect; and (2) section 15657.2, which limits recovery for actions based on “professional negligence.” The court held that reckless neglect is distinct from professional negligence and therefore the restrictions on remedies against health care providers for professional negligence are inapplicable.Kay Delaney sued Meadowood, a skilled nursing facility (SNF), after a resident, her mother, died. Evidence at trial indicated that Rose Wallien, the decedent, was left lying in her own urine and feces for extended periods of time and had stage I11 and IV pressure sores on her ankles, feet, and buttocks at the time of her death.

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Medical and Legal Issues Raised by the Protz Decision Issued by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Guides Newsletter ◽

10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2017.julaug03 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (4) ◽

pp. 12-13

Author(s):

LuAnn Haley ◽

Marjorie Eskay-Auerbach

Keyword(s):

Supreme Court ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Workers Compensation ◽

Sixth Edition ◽

Complex Concept ◽

The Supreme Court ◽

Compensation Claims ◽

Recent Edition ◽

Impairment Ratings ◽

Definition Of

Abstract Pennsylvania adopted the impairment rating provisions described in the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides) in 1996 as an exposure cap for employers seeking predictability and cost control in workers’ compensation claims. In 2017, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania handed down the Protz decision, which held that requiring physicians to apply the methodology set forth in the most recent edition of the AMA Guides reflected an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power to the American Medical Association. The decision eliminates the impairment-rating evaluation (IRE) mechanism under which claimants were assigned an impairment rating under the most recent edition of the AMA Guides. The AMA Guides periodically are revised to include the most recent scientific evidence regarding impairment ratings, and the AMA Guides, Sixth Edition, acknowledges that impairment is a complex concept that is not yet defined in a way that readily permits an evidence-based definition of assessment. The AMA Guides should not be considered standards frozen in time simply to withstand future scrutiny by the courts; instead, workers’ compensation acts could state that when a new edition of the AMA Guides is published, the legislature shall review and consider adopting the new edition. It appears unlikely that the Protz decision will be followed in other jurisdictions: Challenges to using the AMA Guides in assessing workers’ compensation claims have been attempted in three states, and all attempts failed.

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