Feature Channels: Government/Law

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Married couples who undergo long-term separations generally appear to be those who can’t afford to divorce, a new nationwide study suggests.

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New research out of the University of Cincinnati is believed to be the first to examine the relative impact of militarization and corruption on civilian populations. The findings reveal that a specific form of military organization—praetorian militarization—as well as national-level corruption—both adversely affect the well-being of citizens.

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Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate's pipe bomb dismantling mechanism is sophisticated enough to preserve forensic evidence for tracking down the perpetrator.

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AERA filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The association is joined by seven other scientific societies in urging the Court to consider an overwhelming body of scientific evidence relevant to the case.

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Ronald Levin, JD, the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, testified before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law regarding the “retrospective review” process for federal agency rules.

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Act consolidates existing eligibility categories, eliminates asset tests, and provides more federal funding for new categories, enabling more people to obtain Medicaid coverage.

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Research that used mitochondrial DNA-based testing to compare the extent of fraudulent labeling of black caviar purchased before and after international protection shows conservation benefits.

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The researchers argue that while hunger and obesity are caused by a perfect storm of multiple factors acting in concert, the efforts to counter them have been narrowly focused and isolated. Overcoming the many barriers to achieving healthy nutrition worldwide, the researchers argue, will instead require an unprecedented level of joint planning and action between academia, government, civil society and industry.

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A new poll by the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication reveals support for voter identification laws is strongest among Americans who harbor negative sentiments toward African Americans.

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The state of New York took a positive step to protect youth from the dangers of skin cancer by prohibiting the use of indoor tanning beds by those 16 and younger, and requiring 17-year-olds to obtain parental consent. This law is based on significant scientific evidence that indoor tanning is undeniably linked to increased risk of developing melanoma and other forms of skin cancer.

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The growing scandal over the manipulation by British banks of the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, creates complex legal issues for U.S. financial regulation, according to an Indiana University Maurer School of Law expert.

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David R. Just, leading behavioral economist and associate professor of economics in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, discusses pending Farm Bill legislation that would reduce funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by up to $16 billion over the next decade. Such legislation would strictly hold all recipients to the income test requirements, disqualifying millions of households from getting aid that now qualify despite not meeting the income tests.

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Sixty percent of persons incarcerated for gun crimes in the thirteen U.S. states with the most lax standards for legal firearm ownership were not legally prohibited from possessing firearms when they committed the crime that led to their incarceration. But 29 percent had criminal records or would have been too young to legally possess a firearm in states with the strictest standards for gun ownership.

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News reports indicate that Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, dropped confidential information from a Justice Department wiretap application into the Congressional Record last week. “While the executive branch sometimes seeks civil or criminal penalties against those who reveal confidential information, it cannot seek such penalties against Issa because the speech or debate clause of the constitution protects members of Congress when they expose sensitive information in the Congressional Record,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

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“The Republicans in the House of Representatives apparently believe that they can get some political traction in the ‘Fast and Furious’ controversy, and plan to increase the political pressure on the Obama administration to disclose additional information by holding Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt,” says Kathleen Clark, JD, government ethics expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “The criminal contempt is essentially symbolical,” Clark says. She notes that the federal prosecutor actually works for Holder, and almost certainly will not prosecute his boss.

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“Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion on the Affordable Care Act mostly conforms with the way I previously understood the taxing power of the federal government,” says Adam Rosenzweig, JD, tax law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Rosenzweig says that there were two important pieces of the Roberts opinion from a tax standpoint.

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“I expected the Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA), however, two elements of this decision are very surprising: the fact that the mandate survives under the taxing power while failing under the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause, and the fact that Chief Justice Roberts was in the majority without Justice Kennedy,” says Gregory Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Roberts’ vote looks to me, as a first impression, like a brilliant piece of judicial strategizing.” Magarian is a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk 
for Justice John Paul Stevens.

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The following experts in federal healthcare law are available to speak with the media in advance of, and following the United States Supreme Court decision on healthcare, which is expected to be announced on Thursday, June 28, 2012.

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Three provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) intended to enhance care transitions and prevent avoidable outcomes for the Medicare population are found to have inadequately addressed the needs of older, vulnerable recipients of long-term services and supports, according to George Washington University School of Nursing Assistant Research Professor Ellen Kurtzman, MPH, RN, FAAN.

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The American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) applaud the U.S. Senate's passage today of the 2012 Farm Bill.

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The ethical principles that have for centuries shaped the relationship between patient and physician should also guide legislators, regulators -- and justices of the highest court -- charged with crafting U.S. health care policies that demarcate the boundaries of a physician's business practice, an Indiana University professor argues. This is all the more pressing with the "creeping commercialization" that now characterizes medicine in the form of physician-owned specialty hospitals, according to an analysis published in the June issue of the American Business Law Journal.

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Indiana U. experts in Constitutional and health law, public health, business ethics and health policy can discuss the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling concerning the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

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Critics of the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision have pointed to the ruling as a force that has unleashed undue corporate influence on elections and governance. But, in What’s Good for Business: Business and American Politics since World War II, editors Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian Zelizer show how business has mobilized to shape public policy and government institutions, as well as electoral outcomes, for decades.

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With critical, far-reaching decisions still to be made by the Supreme Court, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law is offering scholars to reporters seeking informed commentary.

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Gregory P. Magarian, JD, professor of law, and Timothy D. McBride, PhD, professor of public health, both at Washington University in St. Louis, are available for expert commentary on the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision.

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A new report offers a "how-to" guide for California to meet its ambitious local renewable energy goals of 12K megawatts by 2020. It looks at obstacles, from grid planning to building permits, and recommends ways to overcome them.

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A Vanderbilt expert on health policy and economics says that many people who get subsidized private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act in 2014 could face confusing changes in eligibility and cost sharing, and some will be required to pay the government back after the first year of participation. John Graves, Ph.D., assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and member of the Institute for Medicine and Public Health and the Center for Health Services Research, performed simulations that show the current tools in the law to assess income will need to be improved to reduce errors.

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The University of Virginia is a political science powerhouse, home to the Miller Center, a national center for the study of the American presidency, and Larry Sabato's Center for Politics, whose Crystal Ball predictions are consistently among the most accurate of any prognosticators, correctly predicting 98 percent of Senate, House of Representatives and gubernatorial winners in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

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David Just and Brian Wansink, food marketing experts and professors at Cornell University’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, discuss why a proposed ban on sugary drinks in New York City will fail.

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Of approximately 9,000 executions that took place from 1900 to 2011, 270 of them involved some problem, according to a study by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat, who created a database of all the “departures from the protocol of killing someone sentenced to death” in the past 111 years.

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Charles K. Whitehead, professor at the Cornell University School of Law and a former Wall Street attorney, comments on the lawsuit leveled against Facebook, Morgan Stanley and other banks that underwrote Facebook’s initial public offering.

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Social scientists and marketers expressed dismay when the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to eliminate the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, a source of data on income, housing, education, labor force and other demographics. However, a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher maintains that this and other surveys, polls, interviews, and focus groups produce unreliable results.

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The “devil is in the details” of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) pending in the U.S. Congress, says University at Buffalo Associate Professor Mark Bartholomew, an expert in intellectual property and cyber law.

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Prof. Danielle Citron, an international authority on privacy and cyber-harassment, issued a statement on the sentencing of Dharun Ravi in the Rutgers spycam case.

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For decades political scientists have failed to establish a direct connection between money and legislative outcomes. Now a 50-state study documents the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which money buys influence – from setting a party’s agenda, to keeping bills off the floor, to adding earmarks and crafting key language in legislation.

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A new article titled, “An HIT Solution for Clinical Care and Disaster Planning: How One Health Center in Joplin, MO, Survived a Tornado and Avoided a Health Information Disaster,” by the Geiger Gibson /RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, was released today in the Online Journal of Public Health Informatics (OJPJI). It examines the experience of a community health center in the aftermath of the major tornado that swept through the American Midwest in the spring of 2011, and provides insight into key information technology planning issues, especially those related to patient records and health center data, essential to disaster survival and recovery.

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Ron Mize, assistant professor of Latino Studies at Cornell University, and co-author of “Consuming Mexican Labor and Latino Immigrants in the United States,” comments on this week’s events in Monterrey, Mexico that claimed 49 lives in the country’s ongoing drug war.

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Nearly 5 billion was absorbed by the non-riding public due to lack of helmet laws, and Michigan is now the 31st state to abandon helmet laws. Loyola trauma surgeon offers grim statistics on increase in fatalities, crashes when helmet laws are not in force.

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The No Child Left Behind Act has bolstered language test scores but done little to improve math and reading scores for students in rural Alabama schools, according to a new study by Auburn University and RTI International.

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Consumers pay as much as 31 percent more for insurance because companies have to comply with regulations from many states instead of a single regulator, according to research by a University of Iowa insurance and finance expert.

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As a federal appeals court considers the legality of Texas’ family planning “affiliation regulation,” a new report provides a preliminary assessment of the impact of the Texas rule on preventive care access by low-income women.

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Entrepreneurs' announced venture to extract water and precious metals from asteroids has generated excitement, but it comes amid a vague legal landscape that could complicate plans for space mining, an international space law expert said this week.

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Rescheduling markup important to keep effort from lapsing later this summer.

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Research by a University of Iowa law professor and corruption law expert suggests that reaching an out of court settlement for Mexican bribery allegations might not be best for Walmart.