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Siting noxious facilities: Efficiency and majority rule decisions
No full textThis paper analyzes the inefficiency of majority-rule voting in making siting decisions for noxious facilities, such as waste treatment facilities, landfills, or nuclear waste repositories. In particular, we demonstrate in a general context that a majority-rule voting process leads localities to make decisions that impose aggregate costs that are larger than aggregate benefits. We develop a robust model to establish the prevalence of such inefficiencies and demonstrate the mechanisms that exacerbate or mitigate them. The model illustrates how the spatial distribution of the population and the severity of disamenity costs can generate outcomes that make the entire locality worse off. Based on these properties, we provide a feasible remedy. Analysis of U.S. census data illustrates the magnitude of potential inefficiencies that arise with simple majority-rule decisions. Such losses can be mitigated using our model, which easily captures the aggregate disamenity cost and can consequently recommend the required voting supermajority to ensure efficiency
2023 Faculty Accomplishments Reception
Get PDFProgram for the 2023 Faculty Accomplishments Reception In Honor of University of Richmond Faculty Contributions to Scholarship, Research and Creative Work, January 2022 - December 2022.
March 1, 2023, 3:30 - 5:00 p.m. Boatwright Memorial Library.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/far-programs/1007/thumbnail.jp
SAY WHAT?! When ChatGPT Gets it Wrong: Examining Generative AI, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and the Essence of Creativity
Get PDFSince its November 2022 release, OpenAI’s large language model (“LLM”), ChatGPT, has become a household name, outscoring medical students on clinical exams, passing the bar, and polarizing academia. The wildly popular generative AI tool reached 100 million users in just sixtyone days, surpassing tech giants including Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok in reaching that milestone. ChatGPT’s robust performance in real-world applications has demonstrated its disruptive capabilities, triggering both societal excitement and concern. The advantages of this species of AI are seemingly endless: content creators can generate ideas, businesses can automate document creation, programmers can generate code, and much more
Enhancing Rural Representation Through Electoral System Diversity
Get PDFRural Virginians face disparities in outcomes regarding healthcare, access to important infrastructure, and other services. Some disparities may be related to rurality. The sparseness of population in rural areas may limit the sites where people may access services, triggering the need to travel significant distances to obtain goods and services in such areas. Limited access may lead to disparities even when the quality of goods and services in rural areas is high. The disparities affect all rural Virginians, but disproportionately affect rural Virginians of color. The causes of the disparities are complex and myriad, and may be based on race, class, or a combination of both.
The lack of political representation of those who most acutely experience the disparities may help explain the disparities. The interests of racial and political minorities in rural Virginia may not be fully represented in Virginia’s legislative bodies, including the General Assembly. Those rural Virginians have the right to vote, however, their interests may be ignored by their representatives. Legislation that may help minimize disparities may not be forthcoming because the interests of those suffering the disparities may not acutely concern their representatives. New programs to help ease the rural disparities may never be proposed. Proposed programs may receive insufficient support from rural legislators and legislators from non-rural areas of Virginia. The lack of representation of the interests of some rural Virginians may stem from the electoral system used to select representatives, rather than from personal failings of rural representatives
Building a Recovery Ecosystem for the Catawba Region
Get PDFThe opioid and addiction crisis has become a defining characteristic of
21st century America, profoundly affecting the Commonwealth of Virginia in
terms of lives lost, families devastated, communities compromised, and
economic and opportunity costs at multiple levels. This scenario originated
with a rapid increase in opioid prescriptions issued to patients by health care
providers for various pain diagnoses during the 1990s and into the early
2000s. Despite early warnings that the new opioid formulations were far
more addictive than indicated by faulty research trials and marketing claims,
treating pain as the “fifth vital sign” became a widespread practice as a
rationale for prescribing opioids for a broader array of health conditions. As
federal and state policies sought to curtail the increasingly deadly flow of
prescription opioids, some people suffering from opioid addiction turned to
heroin as a substitute, resulting in additional waves of overdose deaths in the
early 2010s and persisting into the current decade. Even as state government
agencies and local grassroots organizations have implemented prevention
and harm reduction approaches and policies over the past twenty years, the
proliferation of illicit and powerful synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and
carfentanil, has resulted in increased opioid and other substance use
disorder (SUD) acuity, as well as persistently high overdose rates.
In response to this ongoing challenge, state legislative and administrative
leadership are increasingly making and supporting proposals to transform
our healthcare systems and communities into recovery-oriented ecosystems.
These ecosystems can support everyone from individuals in acute crisis from
SUD, to those thriving in long-term recovery. For example, a key bi-partisan
effort from the 2023 Virginia General Assembly Session is a pilot project to
transform Catawba Hospital into a treatment center for both acute mental
illness and SUDs. The transformation would utilize excess capacity at
Catawba Hospital to provide SUD residential treatment and detoxification
beds, along with onsite, step-down services to provide a much-needed bridge
as individuals return to their home communities. As a first step, the General
Assembly is providing $500,000 in funding for the Virginia Department of
Behavioral Health and Developmental Services to explore public-private
partnerships that can bring SUD services to Catawba. In the years to come,
the project will need additional support for capital needs, workforce
development, and shoring up the recovery ecosystem.
This article explores the policy and sociological frameworks that have
brought Virginia’s political and health and human service leadership to this point of
innovation and change. Current shifts in policy and program approaches align with
a healthcare movement to treat SUD as a chronic disease, following a long history
of SUD being treated as a criminal offense and a moral issue. The time is right for
immediate and ongoing commitment to innovative approaches to address the
unprecedented crises of mental health and SUD among our fellow Virginians
(Re)Building the Master\u27s House: Dismantling America\u27s Colonial Politics of Extraction and Exclusion
Get PDFOn February 10, 2021, and in the days thereafter, liberal American commentators showered Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett with superlatives and praise due to her masterful takedown of former President Donald Trump during his impeachment trial for incitement of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot. Referring to a picture of Plaskett wearing a knee-length blue dress with draped sleeves, the political strategist (and daughter of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi) Christine Pelosi took to Twitter to note that “[n]ot all superheroes wear capes. This one does!”
Plaskett is one of many Black Americans who has done the hard work of cleaning up the chaos left behind by former President Trump. This group includes Amanda Gorman, who rubbed balm into the nation’s weary soul at President Biden’s inauguration; the Senate Chaplain, Barry Black, who attempted to bring a sense of purpose and dignity to the tense impeachment proceedings with solemn prayer; Capitol Hill Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, who was appointed to her post two days after the Capitol Riot as part of a phenomenon known as the “glass cliff” whereby women and people of color (and certainly women of color) are named to positions of leadership in moments of crisis; and Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who heroically helped Senators evacuate the Capitol as it came under siege, while also diverting the mob away from the lawmakers. Still others, who remain nameless and largely faceless, were charged with quite literally cleaning up the Capitol after insurrectionists ransacked it and destroyed a tribute to the late Congressman John Lewis in the process.
While Brooklyn-born Plaskett gave her best to the United States during her presentation of evidence during the trial, she did so from a relatively disempowered position. The congresswoman is a nonvoting delegate: the U.S. Virgin Islands are an American territory, not a state. Though her work be queenly, neither she nor her fellow Virgin Islanders enjoy full legal personhood in the United States; they are excluded from full political participation because they remain American subjects. Plaskett is thus competent to give her labor and expertise to prosecute Donald Trump—but had no right to vote for or against him, or even in support of the impeachment proceeding over which she would preside.
This Essay attempts to explain why Plaskett and her fellow nonvoting delegates from American Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as well as the resident commission from Puerto Rico are allowed to work for the United States—why, indeed, their work may be celebrated for its patriotism—even as they are excluded by law from full political proprietorship. It challenges the notion that the United States is undergoing a racial justice awakening as it continues to perpetuate its subjugation of, and extraction from, its colonial territories—all of which are populated predominantly by Indigenous people and people of African descent. Instead, this Essay claims that the United States\u27 refusals to grant statehood or the franchise to its colonial territories and Washington, D.C. reveal its commitment to white supremacy..
Roe and the Original Meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment
Get PDFThe current debate over Roe v. Wade as a substantive due process right has prompted scholars to investigate alternative sources for a constitutional right to abortion. One approach argues that the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on “slavery” and “involuntary servitude” prohibits the government from denying women the right to terminate a pregnancy. Scholars making this argument con-cede that the right to abortion was not the expected application of the Thirteenth Amendment but insist that a forced continued pregnancy falls within the original meaning of the Amendment’s terms
The Business of Securities Class Action Lawyering
Get PDFPlaintiffs’ lawyers in the United States play a key role in combating corporate fraud. Shareholders who lose money as a result of fraud can file securities class actions to recover their losses, but most shareholders do not have enough money at stake to justify overseeing the cases filed on their behalf. As a result, plaintiffs’ lawyers control these cases, deciding which cases to file and how to litigate them. Recognizing the agency costs inherent in this model, the legal system relies on lead plaintiffs and judges to monitor these lawyers and protect the best interests of absent class members. Yet there is remarkably little data on the business of securities class action lawyers, leaving lead plaintiffs and judges to oversee this area without the tools to understand how it works.
This Article looks inside the black box of securities class action lawyering to explore the business behind these cases. Our study includes hand-collected data on all securities fraud class actions against public corporations filed between 2005 and 2018, a total of nearly 2500 cases. We find that the business of securities class action lawyering is far more complex than prior scholarship has recognized. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are not two tiers of plaintiffs’ law firms; instead, there are multiple tiers of firms, each with its own client base, litigation patterns, and revenue model. Our study gives lead plaintiffs and judges the data and tools they need to understand these tiers and to compare the performance of the law firms within them. We also examine how these law firms are compensated, finding that judges’ fee awards fail to account for the difficulty of cases or the risk of non-recovery in any systematic way. These fees are crucial to ensuring that law firms pursue the right cases on behalf of shareholders, so we suggest ways that judges can use data to improve fee awards. As we will see, the path to reforming securities class actions starts with understanding the business behind them