Regulatory Restrictions Across U.S. Protein Supply Chains

Food regulations protect consumer health, mitigate environmental concerns, and promote animal welfare, but they can also hinder innovation, limit entrepreneurship, and generate higher consumer prices. This study examines the number of federal and state regulatory restrictions affecting the beef, pork, poultry, sheep, goat, and seafood industries, including processing, wholesale distribution, and retail sales. We also examine state regulatory heterogeneity associated with animal protein products. Our results suggest that protein supply chains have become subject to tens of thousands of regulatory constraints over the past half-century. We also find substantial heterogeneity in the number of state restrictions associated with animal production, indicative of large differences in the amount of administrative law across states. Results highlight that the patchwork approach of U.S. food policy creates overlapping, cumbersome guidelines for manufacturers, and given the interconnectivity of modern food supply chains, the framework can create additional hurdles for interstate commerce.

US Supreme Court hears carefully chosen gun case

Significance The case, which concerns the power of a state to prohibit the carrying of concealed handguns, involves the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”. The outcome may see the Court restrict state regulatory power in unprecedented ways. Impacts This case could continue a trend begun in 2008 that has broadened the scope and applicability of the Second Amendment protections. The Court could adopt an ends-and-means evaluation that would permit greater variability for state restrictions on guns. Other interest groups will pursue well-chosen cases before the newly conservative court.

From the Idea of Start-Up to Setting-Up Unicorn-Company

The article investigates history of establishment and development of start-up unicorn-companies with capitalization over $ 1bn. The authors analyzed key types of unicorn-companies (unicorns, decacorns quinquagintacorns, gectacorns), identified their principle characteristics, showed criteria and factors of their success. The role of venture funds was studied, as they are major investors into promising business-projects. The article described trends of the 1-st half of 2020, the time of state restrictions and pandemic, such as distant work, IT entertainments, could services, on-line delivery, marketplaces, drop in business activity, which require clients' presence. It also showed the process of business-projects' passing from start-ups to companies with high capitalization. The authors pointed out that to create a successful company with capitalization of $ 1bn you do not need any special conditions, but there is certain logic concerning how the start-up can become unicorn-company. Basic points of this logic were provided. The authors substantiated the necessity of venture fund promotion among entrepreneurs and investors in order to speed up the start of start-ups and development of business-projects to the level of big companies.

The Border Harms of Human Displacement: Harsh Landscapes and Human Rights Violations

Building on the work of critical migration and border studies, particularly the scholarship on the suffering of displaced people through border-related violence, the article focuses on bordering practices and human rights violations relating to the Syrian civil war. It advances the argument that during peoples’ fragmented journeys to seek safety and protection within and outside of Syria, which are often punctuated by stops and starts, they encounter one or more of three kinds of bordering practices—hardening of borders, expansion of borders, and pushbacks—that can injure them and violate international human rights and often the principle of non-refoulement. The article refers to these encounters as the “border harms of human displacement”. The analysis emphasizes the experiences of people on the move and the cruelties and spatial violence they endure. The latter include lengthy periods of walking and running, travel across hazardous lands and seas, family separation, state restrictions, and mistreatment by border authorities. Yet, in response to such difficulties, they continue to assert their agency by negotiating bordering practices and harsh landscapes.

Suppressing Black Votes: A Historical Case Study of Voting Restrictions in Louisiana

Southern states have used a variety of methods to disenfranchise African American voters. Empirical data on the effectiveness of these measures is rare. We present a unique data source from Louisiana that allows us to empirically document voter registration rates from the end of Reconstruction to the present. Using basic time series data, we document how voter registration rates changed over time in response to state restrictions. We then conduct a second analysis, which focuses on Louisiana’s use of the Understanding Clause to reduce voter registration among Blacks. We show that in parishes that used the Understanding Clause, Black registration rates dropped by nearly 30 percentage points, with little effect on white registration. The findings of this paper have important implications for understanding the potential for discrimination in the enforcement of modern, ostensibly nonracial, voter eligibility requirements, such as voter ID laws, which grant substantial discretion to local officials in determining voter eligibility.