1,720,959 research outputs found
Interrogating Police Officers
No full textThis Article empirically evaluates the procedural protections given to police officers facing disciplinary interrogations about alleged misconduct. It demonstrates that state laws and collective bargaining agreements have insulated many police officers from the most successful interrogation techniques. The first part of this Article builds on previous studies by analyzing a dataset of police union contracts and state laws that govern the working conditions in a substantial cross section of large and midsized American police departments. Many of these police departments provide officers with hours or even days of advanced notice before a disciplinary interrogation. An even larger percentage of these police departments require internal investigators to provide officers with copies of incriminating evidence before any interrogation. These protections exist in departments of all sizes, regardless of geographical location. The second part of this Article relies on a national survey of American law enforcement leaders to evaluate whether these regulations frustrate officer accountability efforts. The overwhelming majority of the survey respondents claimed that these interrogation regulations substantially burden legitimate investigations into officer behavior. Virtually all survey respondents agreed that these protections do little to reduce the likelihood of false confessions. Combined, this data paints a troubling picture of the internal procedures used to investigate and respond to officer misconduct. This data suggests that states and municipalities have given police officers procedural protections designed to thwart internal investigations, thereby limiting officer accountability. This Article concludes by offering normative recommendations on how communities can reform interrogations of police officers so as to balance the community interest in accountability with officers\u27 interests in due process
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Interrogating Police Officers
No full textThis Article empirically evaluates the procedural protections given to police officers facing disciplinary interrogations about alleged misconduct. It demonstrates that state laws and collective bargaining agreements have insulated many police officers from the most successful interrogation techniques. The first part of this Article builds on previous studies by analyzing a dataset of police union contracts and state laws that govern the working conditions in a substantial cross section of large and midsized American police departments. Many of these police departments provide officers with hours or even days of advanced notice before a disciplinary interrogation. An even larger percentage of these police departments require internal investigators to provide officers with copies of incriminating evidence before any interrogation. These protections exist in departments of all sizes, regardless of geographical location. The second part of this Article relies on a national survey of American law enforcement leaders to evaluate whether these regulations frustrate officer accountability efforts. The overwhelming majority of the survey respondents claimed that these interrogation regulations substantially burden legitimate investigations into officer behavior. Virtually all survey respondents agreed that these protections do little to reduce the likelihood of false confessions. Combined, this data paints a troubling picture of the internal procedures used to investigate and respond to officer misconduct. This data suggests that states and municipalities have given police officers procedural protections designed to thwart internal investigations, thereby limiting officer accountability. This Article concludes by offering normative recommendations on how communities can reform interrogations of police officers so as to balance the community interest in accountability with officers\u27 interests in due process
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Squaring a Circle: Advice and Consent, Faithful Execution, and the Vacancies Reform Act
No full textSuccessive presidents have interpreted the FederalVacancies Reform Act of 1998 to authorize the appointment ofprincipal officers on a temporary basis. Despite serving in amere “acting” capacity and without the Senate’s approval, theseacting principal officers nevertheless wield the full powers ofthe office. The best argument in favor of this constitutionallydubious practice is that an acting principal officer is not reallya “principal officer” under the U.S. Constitution because sheonly serves for a limited period. Although not facially specious,this claim elides the most important legal fact: an actingprincipal officer may exercise the full powers of the office, justlike a Senate-confirmed cabinet officer. This approach broadlyvindicates Article II’s Take Care Clause, which requires thatthe President have the assistance needed to ensure that “thelaws be faithfully executed.” Unfortunately, this approacheffectively reads the Appointments Clause out of theConstitution. For a person to hold a principal office, the
Appointments Clause expressly requires that the President firstseek and obtain the “advice and consent” of the Senate. Withoutthe Senate’s approval, a person cannot constitutionally hold aprincipal office (i.e., head a cabinet-level department oragency).This Article proposes a better approach that would vindicateboth the Take Care and Appointments Clauses: federal courtsshould limit the scope of authority acting principal officers mayexercise to the performance of essential and necessary tasks—inother words, an acting principal officer must be a caretaker inboth form and substance. Federal courts should not allowacting principal officers to undertake new discretionaryprogrammatic initiatives. Moreover, if an acting principalofficer attempts to wield the full powers of the office, federalcourts should nullify, as ultra vires, discretionarypolicymaking initiatives that are not clearly essential andnecessary to the performance of core executive functions. Thisapproach would render acting principal officers more plausibly“inferior” under the Appointments Clause, would make themsubordinate to a supervisor other than the President (Article IIIcourts), and would create a powerful incentive for the Presidentto nominate and obtain the Senate’s approval of a principalofficer who could constitutionally exercise the full powers of theoffice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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Squaring a Circle: Advice and Consent, Faithful Execution, and the Vacancies Reform Act
No full textSuccessive presidents have interpreted the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 to authorize the appointment of principal officers on a temporary basis. Despite serving in a mere acting capacity and without the Senate\u27s approval, these acting principal officers nevertheless wield the full powers of the office. The best argument in favor of this constitutionally dubious practice is that an acting principal officer is not really a principal officer under the U.S. Constitution because she only serves for a limited period. Although not facially specious, this claim elides the most important legal fact: an acting principal officer may exercise the full powers of the office, just like a Senate-confirmed cabinet officer. This approach broadly vindicates Article I\u27s Take Care Clause, which requires that the President have the assistance needed to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed. Unfortunately, this approach effectively reads the Appointments Clause out of the Constitution. For a person to hold a principal office, the Appointments Clause expressly requires that the President first seek and obtain the advice and consent of the Senate. Without the Senate\u27s approval, a person cannot constitutionally hold a principal office (i.e., head a cabinet-level department or agency).
This Article proposes a better approach that would vindicate both the Take Care and Appointments Clauses: federal courts should limit the scope of authority acting principal officers may exercise to the performance of essential and necessary tasks-in other words, an acting principal officer must be a caretaker in both form and substance. Federal courts should not allow acting principal officers to undertake new discretionary programmatic initiatives. Moreover, if an acting principal officer attempts to wield the full powers of the office, federal courts should nullify, as ultra vires, discretionary policymaking initiatives that are not clearly essential and necessary to the performance of core executive functions. This approach would render acting principal officers more plausibly inferior under the Appointments Clause, would make them subordinate to a supervisor other than the President (Article III courts), and would create a powerful incentive for the President to nominate and obtain the Senate\u27s approval of a principal officer who could constitutionally exercise the full powers of the office
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Against Congressional Case Snatching
No full textCongress has developed a deeply problematic habit of aggrandizing itself by snatching cases from the Article III courts. One form of contemporary case snatching involves directly legislating the outcome of pending litigation by statute. These laws do not involve generic amendments to existing statutes but rather dictate specific rulings by the Article III courts in particular cases. Another form of congressional case snatching involves rendering ongoing judicial proceedings essentially advisory by unilaterally permitting a disgruntled litigant to transfer a pending case from an Article III court to an executive agency for resolution. Both practices involve Congress reallocating the business of the Article III courts, and both should be deemed to violate the separation of powers doctrine. Unfortunately, however, the Supreme Court\u27s institutional response to this troubling new trend of congressional reassignment of core judicial business has been (at best) halting, tepid, and weak. In a trio of recent decisions, the Justices have given Congress a green light to direct merits results in pending litigation before the Article III courts (Patchak v. Zinke and Bank Markazi v. Peterson) and also blessed giving disgruntled litigants the unfettered right to remove pending judicial business from an Article III court to an Article II agency (Oil States Energy Services v. Greene\u27s Energy Group).
These three decisions reflect a regrettable return to functionalist analysis in separation of powers disputes involving threats to the structural integrity and independence of the Article III courts. Simply put, vesting the judicial power in the federal courts means that judges, not members of Congress, must decide how to interpret and apply the law. This is, after all, the central holding of Marbury v. Madison. Under well-settled separation of powers principles, Congress should not be permitted to aggrandize itself by usurping the decisional authority of the Article III courts. Nor should Congress be empowered to render ongoing federal court proceedings entirely advisory by vesting a litigant who fears an adverse decision with the unilateral power to force a remand of a pending lawsuit to a potentially more sympathetic federal administrative agency. Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist Papers, presciently observed that the judiciary constitutes the least dangerous branch of the federal government. If this is so, it also means that the judiciary is the weakest of the three branches. Separation of powers doctrine and practice must take account of this important structural reality. Vindicating the Madisonian system of checks and balances requires that congressional case snatching, in all of its forms and manifestations, must be categorically resisted and rejected
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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