Legislation & Statutory Interpretation最新文献

{"title":"The Impact of Shifting from an Annual Federal Budget Cycle to a Biennial Budget Cycle: A Look at the States and the Implications for Congress","authors":"A. C. Warnick","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1081608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1081608","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses a public choice framework to consider the impact of Congressional adoption of a biennial federal budget. The introductory chapters detail the evolution of the current Congressional annual budget and explain how budgetary institutions affect the power structures inside Congress. The relevant public choice literature on budgetary institutions is also explored. Proponents of biennial budgeting argue that changing to a biennial process will provide several benefits to Congress: reduced discretionary spending through more Congressional control over the process, more time for oversight of programs, and greater transparency. Chapter 3 constructs a model of state spending to examine the relationship between budget periodicity and spending by constructing a model of state spending. In contrast to most of the literature on budget periodicity, this chapter finds a positive relationship between spending and biennial budgets. Chapter 4 conducts two case studies of states that have recently moved from annual budgeting to biennial budgeting to determine how the changes affected the influence and power of Appropriators relative to Authorizers. Anecdotal evidence from Connecticut suggests Appropriators' influence is negatively affected by a move to a two-year budget. Campaign contribution evidence from Arizona confirms that interest groups perceive this reduction in the power of Appropriators and, accordingly, donate less to Appropriators relative to Authorizers following a shift to biennial budgeting. Chapter 5 considers whether timing and transparency problems under an annual budget are technical issues that could be cured by extending the budget period and finds that instead these problems the political realities facing legislators. Thus, changing the budget period will not fix these issues and may exacerbate them. This dissertation finds that moving to a federal biennial budget process would increase the pressure on Congressional budgeters to spend, shift power away from Appropriators, and not solve timing and transparency problems in the federal budget.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"215 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116304289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Trading Policy: Constituents and Political Party in U.S. Trade Policy","authors":"N. Weller","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1018486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1018486","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have argued that constituent interests and political parties affect voting on trade policy legislation in the U.S. Congress. The existing empirical research on trade policy voting, however, has not utilized research designs that allow us to disentangle how constituents and parties affect legislative voting. In this paper we apply one-to-one matching research designs to compare the effects of constituency and party on trade policy voting in both the U.S. House and Senate. The research design allows us to account for a variety of different constituent factors that could influence voting, and then determine if party has any effect beyond constituent interests. The results suggest that party plays a significant role in legislative voting on trade policy once we account for constituency effects. Between 1824 and 1930, political party almost completely determines trade policy votes and although the effect of party is weaker since 1930 it is still significant. These results suggest that to understand the political economy of trade policy we need to incorporate the way that partisan politics affects trade policy.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123398763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions","authors":"Adam Thierer","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.976936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.976936","url":null,"abstract":"At the heart of the debate over age verification requirements for social networking lie the same concerns that have motivated previous Internet regulatory initiatives: underage access to objectionable material and fears about child predators. However an age verification requirement could have many unintended consequences involving privacy and First Amendment issues. Since most websites today contain some aspect of user interaction, lawmakers would have great difficulty in defining social networking sites when drafting legislation or mandates. Moreover, collection and verification of the personal information of minors raises serious concerns of privacy and data protection. Logistical issues include access to documents minors would need for verification of identity and age, as well as documents which could be easily falsified in the online environment. Using any sort of government issued identification for verification would require establishing a centralized database to coordination with websites, raising questions regarding who would control these databases. Other proposals suggest sites seek parental permission or contact a child's school for verification of age, which can be easily circumvented and could put undue burden and costs on schools. Even with these measures, popular networking sites may in turn be pushed offshore, out of reach of US laws. Policymakers should not present age verification mandates as a comprehensive solution that could provide a false sense of security for both parents and their minor children who use social networking websites. Education and parental involvement still should play a vital role in keeping children safe online. Policymakers and law enforcement should also focus their efforts on the prosecution of online predators under existing laws and ensure adequate punishment for the crimes.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125085611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fda New Drug Approval Times, Prescription Drug User Fees, and R&D Spending","authors":"J. Golec, J. Vernon, R. Lutter, C. Nardinelli","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.931153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.931153","url":null,"abstract":"FDA-approval times have declined significantly since the enactment of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) in 1992. As a result, present value expected returns to pharmaceutical RD thus, the social benefits of PDUFA (over and above the benefits of more rapid consumer access) are likely to be substantial.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126413983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gasping for Breath: The Administrative Flaws of the Federal Hazardous Air Pollutant Program","authors":"V. Flatt","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.929211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.929211","url":null,"abstract":"This article explains the continuing problems with protecting human health under the current Federal Clean Air Act's Hazardous Air Pollutant (HAP) program. In particular, the article focuses on the difficulties in protecting the public from residual health risks, when maximum technological controls have been put into place on all sources. The article then examines the causes of this problem, concluding that they can be traced to problems in the statutory implementation and enforcement regime concerning residual health risks. This problem is not unique to health protection with air toxics and is consistent with general theories of implementation of public health protection statutes. The article then surveys fourteen states that have stricter protections than the federal government for residual risk from air toxics, and analyzes these states' success in reducing air toxic concentrations. The article then explores the commonalities of the programs of the most successful states, and from that produces recommendations for improving the federal HAP program.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121436888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is the Tax System Beyond Reform?","authors":"G. Yin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.893888","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.893888","url":null,"abstract":"Immediately after the 1994 election giving the Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, Congressman Bill Archer (R., Tex.), who was in line to become the new chairman of the House tax-writing committee, announced his intention to abandon the income tax system altogether. According to Archer, the current system is too broken to be fixed and therefore needed to be replaced with something completely different, such as a national retail sales tax.This paper first explains why a national sales tax is not a viable alternative as a complete replacement for the income tax. Although Archer retired from the Congress after the 2000 election without having made any progress on his objective, subsequent events have made clear the continuing interest in this plan. The paper describes and analyzes H.R. 25, a bill to replace all income, payroll, and estate and gifts taxes with a national sales tax. This proposal was recently popularized in a book entitled, The FairTax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS, authored by Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder, the lead sponsor of H.R. 25.Second, the paper explains why Archer's pessimism about reforming the income tax may be well placed, although perhaps not for the reasons he had in mind. The paper explains why the current legislative process is not conducive to enacting the type of amendments necessary for real tax reform.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125533862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Much Ado About Nothing: Kelo v. City of New London, Sweet Home v. Babbitt, and Other Tales from the Supreme Court","authors":"Marcilynn A. Burke","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.895008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.895008","url":null,"abstract":"This Article traces and analyzes an emerging trend in constitutional and land use law and the rhetoric that embodies it. The Article examines the potential impacts of rhetoric that the Supreme Court's ruling Kelo v. City of New London has fanned into a flame. The rhetoric paints a picture of imbalance, pitting small landowners against inept government officials who are taking private property. And purveyors of this rhetoric contend that activist judges are simply rubber stamping this land grab. A reform movement has emerged to solve the problems that the stories portray. Yet, there is a palpable disconnect between the rhetoric plied in the nation's media and the reality of eminent domain. This Article demonstrates that the rhetoric and suggested reform are best viewed in the context of what has been dubbed the Constitution in Exile movement. This movement seeks to restore what it considers the original meaning of many constitutional provisions including public use. Exposing and challenging that movement, the Article contends that the movement merely seeks particular ideological outcomes that it masquerades as a rigorous interpretative theory.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121995082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is There a Duty to Legislate for Linguistic Minorities?","authors":"R. Dunbar","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-6478.2006.00354.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2006.00354.x","url":null,"abstract":"In April 2005, the Scottish Parliament passed the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, requiring certain public bodies in Scotland to provide some services through the medium of Gaelic. This Act was modelled to a certain degree on similar legislation for Welsh, the Welsh Language Act 1993. Both Welsh and Gaelic, and to a lesser extent Irish in Northern Ireland, benefit from a range of other measures of legislative support. Many other languages are, however, spoken in the United Kingdom, and their speakers have needs and expectations. In this article, the extent to which a state is obliged to legislate for these is assessed. Fundamental principles such as the right to freedom from discrimination, equal protection of the law, substantive equality, and the protection and promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity may argue for legislative intervention and support, and the provision of such support to linguistic minorities must itself be non-discriminatory.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125315867","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Rule Against Perpetuities for the Twenty-First Century","authors":"F. Schneider","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.887921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.887921","url":null,"abstract":"The common law rule against perpetuities maintained alienation of property by voiding interests in property that did not vest within a life in being at the creation of the interest plus twenty-one years. The rule was applied strictly, often producing harsh results. The courts used a what-might-happen test to strike down nonvested interests that might not have vested in a timely manner. During the last half-century, many legislatures have softened the application of the rule against perpetuities by enacting wait-and-see provisions, which require courts to decide cases based on the facts as they actually developed, and reformation, which allowed some nonvested interests to be reformed to save them from invalidity. This paper describes the common law rule. Then it traces the modern developments, including promulgation of the widely adopted Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities, which includes an alternate 90 year fixed wait-and-see period to be applied in place of the common law's lives in being plus twenty-one years. The paper continues by exploring the policies which underlie the rule against perpetuities. Then, after finding that there is no significant movement to repeal the rule except for trusts, it is established that proposals for that federal law, including federal transfer taxes, cannot and should not be used to implement the policies served by the rule itself. There is a continuing need for state rules against perpetuities. The paper proposes that the rule be modified to make it more understandable and easier to apply. The proposed rule would replace lives in being plus twenty-one years with a fixed term of years. This would eliminate most of the difficulties encountered in application of the rule. Wait-and-see and reformation are part of the proposed rule. The proposed rule provides for determination of valid interests at the end of the fixed term of year Rule and contains a definition of \"vested\" to enable judges and attorneys to apply the rule in cases which will arise many years in the future.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115109719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"'Lawful Activity' Laws","authors":"M. Finkin","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.718103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.718103","url":null,"abstract":"U.S. law proceeds from the assumption that, absent restriction by positive law, an employee has ceded to an employer the right to regulate the employee's engagement in lawful off-duty activities, on pain of discharge. Four states have legislated in general derogation of that rule. This paper explores the economic and ideological assumptions of the rule and examines how the laws directed against it have fared juridically. It compares the approach taken in Europe using three countries - France, Germany, and the United Kingdom - for illustrative purposes. It argues that the United States could and should recast the conception of the employee embodied in the U.S. rule toward the one adopted in Europe and legislated here in a very few states.","PeriodicalId":297504,"journal":{"name":"Legislation & Statutory Interpretation","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117130148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}