Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
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Do the Ends Justify the Means? Policing and Rights Tradeoffs in New York City
Get PDFPolicing has become an integral component of urban life. New models of proactive policing create a double-edged sword for communities with strong police presence. While the new policing creates conditions that may deter and prevent crime, close surveillance and frequent intrusive police-citizen contacts have strained police-community relations. The burdens of the new policing often fall on communities with high proportions of African American and Latino residents, yet the returns to crime control are small and the risks of intrusive, impersonal, aggressive non-productive interactions are high. As part of the proffered tradeoff, citizens are often asked to view and accept these invasive tactics as a necessary means to the ends of reduced crime and improved public safety. This paper examines the degree to which urban residents’ show a willingness to engage in a “rights tradeoffs” and sacrifice their civil liberties to maintain public safety. Using a telephone phone survey of 960 New York City residents, we find little openness to rights tradeoffs tied to perceived neighborhood danger. However, respondents who see the police as legitimate and effective in producing safety are more likely to support such tradeoffs. The results suggest that trust in the police can give them wide berth to infringe on civil liberties in the interest of crime control, regardless of local crime conditions, the abrasiveness of police contact, and the extent and type of the intrusions on privacy and liberty
Brain Development, Social Context and Justice Policy
Get PDFThis article examines the role played by biological and psychological factors associated with adolescent criminal activity in the context of justice policy reform and its critics. Scott, Duell, and Steinberg assert that risk-taking behavior in adolescence is not solely associated with biological and psychological immaturity, but rather exists as a dynamic interaction between those factors and the individual social context. This interactive model of juvenile offending supports the trend of treating juveniles differently than adults in the criminal justice system and clarifies how correctional programs are crucial in either undermining or promoting healthy development in adolescents
Competition Law Around the World from 1889 to 2010: The Competition Law Index
Get PDFCompetition laws have become a mainstay of regulation in market economies today. At the same time, past efforts to study the drivers or effects of these laws have been hampered by the lack of systematic measures of these laws across a wide range of years or countries. In this paper, we draw on new data on the evolution of competition laws to create a novel Competition Law Index (the “CLI”) that measures the stringency of competition regulation from 1889 to 2010. We then employ the CLI to examine trends in the intensity of competition regulation over time and across key countries. We also use our data to create several alternative indexes of competition law that may be appropriate for specific research applications. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate how the CLI can facilitate new empirical research on comparative and international competition law
Unintended Agency Problems: How International Bureaucracies are Built and Empowered
Get PDFThe ground underneath the entire liberal international order is rapidly shifting. Institutions as diverse as the European Union, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, and World Trade Organization are under major threat. These institutions reflect decades of political investments in a world order where institutionalized cooperation was considered an essential cornerstone for peace and prosperity. Going beyond the politics of the day, this Article argues that the seeds of today’s discontent with the international order were in fact sown back when these institutions were first created. We show how states initially design international institutions with features that later haunt them in unexpected ways. In the worst cases, states become so dissatisfied with the institutions they build that they threaten to abandon or dissolve them, shaking the foundations of the international order. Our central argument is that two cooperation problems intersect in unanticipated ways. The first problem – the horizontal conflict – involves the distribution of benefits among states. When states first create an international organization, they seek to capture a big share of the benefits and protect their interests vis-à-vis other states. They do this by demanding voting rules that allow them to block unfavorable decisions, requiring leadership positions for their own nationals, and lobbying to include their priority issues on the organization’s agenda. We argue that this initial effort to resolve distributional conflicts is short-sighted, ultimately leaving states dissatisfied with the international organizations they build. The second problem – the vertical conflict among states collectively, on the one hand, and international organization bureaucracies and tribunals, on the other – is worsened by the compromises reached to resolve the horizontal conflict. For example, when states agree that key decisions must be reached by consensus, it becomes difficult to roll back the actions of a wayward secretariat or tribunal down the line. Or, when states place their own nationals in key positions, a multi-national body with an international agenda emerges. Such an international organization can become detached from the national concerns of its creators. Moreover, when states put their key issues on the organization’s agenda, a broad mandate results. In turn, a broad mandate empowers the organization’s staff to set its own priorities, making state control difficult. Contrary to prior isolated studies on horizontal and vertical conflicts, we are the first to identify how the two conflicts intersect in important and unexpected ways. To find possible solutions, we draw on analogous intersections in corporate law literature, which have been examined more thoroughly
Community-Investor Negotiation Guide 1: Preparing in Advance for Potential Investors
Get PDFDeciding whether or not to allow an investor to use community lands and natural resources is one of the most important decisions a community can make. If an investment project is carried out in a respectful and inclusive way, it may help community members to achieve their development goals, which may include creating jobs and local economic opportunities. But investments come with risks. Investment projects may make the land that community members need for farming and other livelihood activities unavailable for some time. They may pollute local rivers, lakes, air, and soils, or block access to sacred areas or water sources. Investment projects may even violate community members’ human rights, or result in communities completely losing their lands.
Given these challenges, CCSI partnered with Namati, a legal empowerment organization, to produce two guides aimed at supporting communities and their advisors in their interactions with land-based investors.
This Guide (Guide 1) sets out practical guidance to help communities and their advisors to prepare before potential investors arrive, and after an investor has approached a community. It covers topics and activities such as visioning a community’s desired future, understanding how valuable the land is for the community, and ensuring the inclusion of all voices within community decision-making, as well as pointers on meaningful consultation, information access, and knowing the community’s rights.
A related publication, Guide 2, provides practical guidance on the issues to consider when a community has decided to negotiate a contract with an investor. Using example clauses, and guidance boxes for community discussion and seeking legal advice, it describes all of the various sections and clauses that should be in a contract, advises what protective language to try to include in the contract to make it enforceable, and warns against types of problematic contractual language that should be avoided.
The guides are designed to apply to agriculture and forestry projects, although may have some applicability to agreements reached in other contexts, such as around mining or renewable energy projects
The Administrative Threat to Civil Liberties
Get PDFAdministrative power is the greatest threat to civil liberties in our era. Traditionally, the most systematic threats to civil liberties came in attacks on particular groups, and this remains a problem. But increasingly, there are also broader threats, which affect the civil liberties of all Americans, and administrative power is the primary example of this broad sort of danger. No single development in our legal system deprives more Americans of more constitutional rights. It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that it is our greatest threat to civil liberties
The Ideological Roots of America\u27s Market Power Problem
Get PDFMounting research shows that America has a market power problem. In sectors ranging from airlines and poultry to eyeglasses and semiconductors, just a handful of companies dominate. The decline in competition is so consistent across markets that excessive concentration and undue market power now look to be not an isolated issue but rather a systemic feature of America’s political economy. This is troubling because monopolies and oligopolies produce a host of harms. They depress wages and salaries, raise consumer costs, block entrepreneurship, stunt investment, retard innovation, and render supply chains and complex systems highly fragile. Dominant firms’ economic power allows them, in turn, to concentrate political power, which they then use to win favorable policies and further entrench their dominance.
As a few technology platform companies mediate a rapidly growing share of our commerce and communications, the problem will only worsen. Since these gatekeeper firms have captured control over key distribution networks, they can squeeze the businesses reliant on their channels. Furthermore, these firms leverage their platform power into new lines of business, extending their dominance across sectors. Their muscle, in turn, spurs additional consolidation, as both competitors and producers bulk up in order to avoid getting squashed. Concentration begets concentration
New York Environmental Legislation in 2017
Get PDFIn 2017, New York State enacted multiple laws that tackle aspects of two major environmental issues facing the state: protecting water quality and advancing the state’s clean energy goals. In addition, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed laws concerning oil tankers on the Hudson, elephant welfare, food waste, and lead paint. He also approved a moratorium barring New York City’s plastic bag fee from taking effect. This annual survey reports on these developments and other environmental laws enacted in 2017
Setting the Table for an International Environmental Agreement: A Beginner\u27s Guide to Negotiating Mandates
Get PDFYou may be an experienced negotiator of international environmental agreements. Or you may be new to the field and excited to negotiate your very first one. In both cases, you know your precedents, helped craft your government’s positions, and are anxious to get started. But wait … before you negotiate the agreement, you will need to navigate the mandate.
A mandate launches the negotiation of an international environmental instrument and sets forth its terms of reference, both procedural (such as where and when it will take place) and substantive (such as what the instrument should address). It is generally issued by the UN General Assembly (e.g., in the case of a new global instrument), a treaty body (e.g., in the case of an amendment to an existing agreement), or another institution (e.g., in the case of an instrument covering a particular region).
There is far more commentary on international agreements than on the negotiating mandates that precede them. However, such mandates can be highly significant. They are often the place where key issues are pre-negotiated and, even when they do not go so far, what a mandate says – or does not say – can affect the ultimate design and content of an agreement, as well as its attractiveness to potential Parties.
This guide looks at the issues commonly addressed by negotiating mandates1 for international environmental agreements, options for addressing them, and examples of mandate provisions that have been particularly significant in relation to agreements’ outcomes
What Happened to Byrd-Hagel? Its Curious Absence From Evaluations of The Paris Agreement
Get PDFIn the midst of the negotiations leading to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the U.S. Senate adopted the “Byrd-Hagel Resolution,” co-sponsored by Senators Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Passed by a vote of 95-0, it reflected the Senate’s view that the international climate change agreement then being negotiated by the Clinton Administration was not on the right track. Specifically, it signaled dissatisfaction with an agreement that would contain legally binding greenhouse gas emissions commitments for developed countries without such commitments in the same time period for developing countries.
By its terms, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution applied not only to the Kyoto Protocol but also to any subsequent climate agreement. It influenced the approaches of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations to the Kyoto Protocol and international climate policy. Curiously, however, it did not appear to play a role in the evaluation, including by the Trump Administration and the Senate, of whether the United States should continue to participate in the Paris Agreement