Federal Civil Research Articles

Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) and Transparency in Government Payroll Administration in Nigerian Civil Service: A Unique Approach

This paper investigates the effect of Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS) on transparency in Government Payroll Administration in Nigerian civil service. A descriptive cross-sectional survey research design was used in form of questionnaire administered to illicit information from the respondents, which provides generalized opinions/statistics from the number of individual cases. The population of the study covers 100 Treasury Staff of the Office of Accountant General of The Federation Working at Federal Pay Office, Sokoto and Federal Pay Office Birnin Kebbi. Census was adopted, and as such sampling represents the population. Data was collected and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 21. The findings from test of hypothesis of this paper revealed a significant moderate positive relationship between IPPIS, Transparency and Accountability. Hence, the null hypothesis which states that there is no significant relationship between IPPIS and transparency in government payroll administration in Federal Civil Service in Nigeria is rejected and the alternate hypothesis is accepted. The paper recommends that Government should strengthened the internal control mechanism of IPPIS so as to continuously detect and block any loopholes that will give room for fraud as well as carrying out routine Audit and Inspection of the program so as to ensure strict compliance with laid down rules and regulations governing the operation of IPPIS, coupled with compliance with the provisions of Financial Regulations and the Civil Service Rules.

Self-Selection into Public Service When Corruption is Widespread: The Anomalous Russian Case

Drawing on experimental games and surveys conducted with students at two universities in Russia, we compare the behavioral, attitudinal, and demographic traits of students seeking public sector employment to the traits of their peers seeking jobs in the private sector. Contrary to similar studies conducted in other high-corruption contexts, such as India, we find evidence that students who prefer a public sector career display less willingness to cheat or bribe in experimental games as well as higher levels of altruism. However, disaggregating public sector career paths reveals distinctions between the federal civil service and other types of public sector employment, with federal government positions attracting students who exhibit some similarities with their peers aspiring to private sector careers. We discuss multiple interpretations consistent with our findings, each of which has implications for the creation of effective anti-corruption policies and for understanding of state capacity in contexts where corruption is widespread.

The End of the Beginning: The Disability Rights Movement in the 1970s

Abstract The disability rights movement has never been a single or homogeneous campaign. Instead, it has comprised several distinct disability-based movements that emerged at various times from the late-nineteenth through the late-twentieth century. The 1970s was a pivotal moment in the history of those movements, with several major developments occurring in most, resulting in crucial advances in disability rights advocacy. During the 1970s, activism became more organized, politicized, and militant. Advocacy groups emerged or expanded at both the grassroots and national levels. The culmination of this invigorated U.S. disability rights movement in the 1970s was a national protest in April 1977 at U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare offices in nine cities. Demonstrators wanted federal regulators to make Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act an enforceable law. Prohibiting discrimination in federally funded programs against “otherwise qualified handicapped” persons, 504 was the first federal civil rights law protecting Americans with disabilities. These demonstrations had a critical impact on a reluctant Carter Administration’s making 504 enforceable and marked a watershed in the disability rights movement.

The Political Reality of Diversity Jurisdiction

Diversity of citizenship jurisdiction has been a staple of federal civil dockets since 1789. In the mid- to late-twentieth century, academics and some high-profile federal judges led a significant effort to abolish diversity jurisdiction. They were confident that diversity had outlived its purpose, which, they said, was to provide a federal court for out-of-state litigants who feared bias in the local state courts. But diversity survived. Today, it represents a burgeoning percentage of the federal civil docket and is supported by an efficiency rationale that did not exist at the founding. Academics and judges seem relatively ambivalent toward, and even accepting of, this form of federal jurisdiction. We are in the midst of a resurgence of academic interest in diversity – not to abolish it, but to rationalize the various threads of its doctrine. These efforts should be informed by the lessons that should have been learned by those who sought to abolish diversity jurisdiction. First, diversity is not a free-standing phenomenon. It is part of a carefully constructed constitutional plan intended to promote the free flow of commerce and a national identity. Second, what is usually presented as the traditional justification for diversity is sclerotic and understates the value of diversity jurisdiction. Third, as a matter of political power, the bar embraces diversity jurisdiction and will fight to keep it. At one level, we retain diversity for raw political reason. But the bar’s embrace is important for another reason: it likely manifests rational choices made in the interests of litigation clients. At least, the embrace should spur meaningful study of the interests served by diversity jurisdiction (study that remains to be done). And that study must appreciate that, over two centuries, an elaborate legal culture has emerged concerning the relations of state and federal courts.

The Constraints of Fear and Neutrality in Title IX Administrators’ Responses to Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education—universities are responsible for both addressing and preventing sexual violence on their campuses. Despite the recent growth of Title IX offices, administrators, and policies aimed at preventing sexual violence on university campuses, many students describe reporting their sexual assaults to university administrators as one of the most traumatizing aspects of their experience. This study seeks to explain the disconnect between university efforts to respond to sexual violence and numerous reports of institutional betrayal by survivors. I report from interview data on university administrators’ experiences of creating and implementing Title IX policies. I argue that the fear of media and public scrutiny and the role of Title IX administrator as a “neutral” party constrain administrator’s decision-making abilities. As a result, well-intentioned administrators tasked with protecting gender equality, may subtly reproduce a system that further marginalizes women and their experiences of sexual violence. This study sheds new light on how universities are responding to sexual violence.

The Zooming of Federal Civil Litigation

Federal civil practice has adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic by using new technologies, including, prominently, remote technology. How will reliance on remote technology during this pandemic transform lawyers, courts, and the law going forward? What changes to civil litigation practice should be embraced, what changes should be discarded, and what changes should await further technological advances? We explore these questions. Surveying some key pandemic-fueled developments of remote technology in federal civil litigation, we conclude that the pandemic’s push toward the zooming of legal practice is likely to leave enduring marks. We identify the most promising uses for remote technology, strike cautionary notes for more pervasive implementation, and offer some suggestions for moving forward.

Exploring the Underlying Impediments to Talent Retention in the Public Service: Experience from Nigeria

This paper explored the underlying impediments to talent retention in the Federal Civil service in Nigeria. The federal service faces challenges of retaining talents, thereby resulting in the inability to preserve and transfer knowledge, increased turnover cost and lack of talent succession in the service. Varying commissions of inquiry and fact-finding teams set up to attract and retain talents in the Federal Civil service as a measure of improving performance towards effective and efficient service delivery in nation-building. Existing literature provided the basis for the conceptual and theoretical clarifications of the problem statement. The study adopted a mixed-method approach. A sample of respondents of 149 purposively selected for the research. Factor analysis, ANOVA and content and thematic analysis deployed for both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data with the aid of SPSSv25(for quantitative data) and Nvivo 10(for the qualitative results). The study recommends that there should be an attempt to focus on talent retention in public service, as it is critical to the implementation of government policies. Further, the need for talent management policies and guidelines that will provide a framework for managing talent in the Federal Service is more pertinent now than ever for the sustainability of democratic rule. The study also makes a theoretical contribution through the validation of the cost-benefit theory.

“The Latter-Day General Grant”: Forceful Federal Power and Civil Rights

AbstractProgress toward racial equality requires the engagement of the American state, centered in the presidency and the executive branch, and in fact is not possible without the state's direct and forceful intervention. The key to this transformation is what we call “Forceful Federalism,” a multidimensional understanding of the American state. Forceful Federalism has four essential dimensions: standard-setting, coercion, associationalism, and fiscal authority. These four processes rise and fall over time, each charting its own history and unfolding according to its own logic. These processes usually work against each other. But occasionally they align with each other so that the state can pursue and achieve even difficult and challenging policy aims in a focused way. We sketch the outlines of Forceful Federalism and demonstrate its explanatory power with a case study of Forceful Federalism in action: James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962. The Meredith case exemplifies the convergence of the four dimensions of Forceful Federalism and marks the first time the modern American state was thus mobilized on behalf of civil rights. The case offers suggestive evidence that Forceful Federalism was a necessary condition for the emergence of the Civil Rights State.

Discerning a Dignitary Offense: The Concept of Equal “Public Rights” during Reconstruction

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language of the Fourteenth Amendment, a dignity-based legal theory of affirmative equal rights had by 1867 taken center stage in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. Activists formulated the concept of “public rights” as a claim to participation without discrimination in the entire sphere of “common life.” Elections for delegates to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, held under the broad suffrage mandated by the Military Reconstruction Acts, yielded a convention in which half of the members were men of African descent. Seeking the “impartial treatment of all men” in “[c]hurches, hotels, cars, steamboats, theaters, stores, even schools,” the convention crafted a Bill of Rights that affirmatively guaranteed to all of the state's citizens “the same civil, political, and public rights,” independent of race or color. These innovations in the defense of human rights under law drew from a deep well of anti-caste thinking developed in domestic and transnational discussions conducted in both French and English, with participants from both sides of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cosmopolitan progressives such as Edouard Tinchant and Jean-Charles Houzeau worked with Louisiana-born activists including Louis Charles Roudanez, Simeon Belden, and Paul Trévigne to develop and advance the idea of public rights. Legislators crafted and passed state statutes that provided for civil penalties for violation of these rights, along with a private cause of action that could yield both actual and exemplary damages. Throughout the 1870s, however, advocates met a fierce white-supremacist counterattack, one that fused obstructionist litigation, vote suppression, and vigilante violence. A claim to equal treatment under the 1868 constitution was won in the state courts by Josephine Decuir, but was overturned in 1877 at the United States Supreme Court. With the ascent of the Democratic Party, white supremacists–including the lawyer/vigilante Robert Hardin Marr-took their seats on the state Supreme Court. By 1879, the public rights guarantees had been expunged from the state's constitution. Nonetheless, for a crucial decade, the cross-racial politics of Louisiana had overcome many of the deficits of legitimacy that often undercut moments of transitional lawmaking. Delegates to the 1867–68 Constitutional Convention took the opportunity to spell out specific positive rights that they saw as essential to full civil freedom. And at the center, they placed their insistence that the state had an obligation to assure that men and women of color would not be subjected to forced indignity in the public sphere.

More federal legislators lead to more resources for their constituencies: Evidence from exogenous differences in seat allocations

Electoral district magnitude varies across German electoral constituencies and over legislative periods due to Germany's electoral system. The number of seats in parliament per constituency is effectively random. This setting permits us to investigate institutionally driven variations in the magnitude of individual constituencies on the allocation of federal resources to these constituencies. We analyze the causal effect of having more than one federal legislator per constituency on federal government resources by exploiting information from 1,379 constituencies from 1998 to 2017. More federal legislators per constituency lead to statistically significantly more employment of federal civil servants. The size of the effect is large and corresponds to about 3.5% of average employment once a constituency is represented by additional legislators from party lists. Robustness tests support our results. Further evidence points to heterogeneity of the effect: Constituencies represented by additional legislators who are experienced and who are members of larger, competing parties obtain more federal resources.

Work-related disorders among employees of a federal public university in southern Brazil.

Work-related disorders have considerable impact on the health of workers at a high cost for national budgets. Yet these conditions are globally underreported, less than 8% in Brazil. Shortcomings in health policies and records hinder attempts at establishing the health profile of civil servants in Brazil, who represent 8% of the local workforce. To establish the profile of federal civil servants with work-related disorders and relate it to diagnoses recorded in Civil Servant Work Accident Reports (CS/WAR) issued at a federal public university in southern Brazil. We analyzed 166 CS/WAR; 79.52% corresponded to women, average age 46.46 (SD=10.06), ≥21 years in the job (34.9%), workers at the university hospital (64.46%) and medium- or technical level health care workers (45.78%). Mean duration of sick leave spells was 11.89 (SD=21.33) days. About 41.57% of CS/WAR did not provide an ICD-10 code; 82.5% of the rest corresponded to work accidents, mainly lower extremity injury (31.5%) and 17.50% to occupational diseases, most commonly low back injury and infectious diseases (17.7% each). The results reinforce the need to improve the record system in public service facilities to enable strategies targeting the main health problems exhibited by this population of workers.

An examination of the bidirectional relationship between federal civil rights guidance and research

As the primary agency responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws in the educational context, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issues policy guidance to help ensure that school districts and universities understand their legal obligations. These policy guidance documents have direct connections to topics studied by educational researchers (e.g., disproportionality in special education, race conscious admissions policies in higher education, transgender student inclusion, etc.). However, we do not have an empirical understanding of how this guidance is used by the research community. Nor do we have a strong grasp on the extent to which this guidance is explicitly informed by research. It is important to acquire an empirical understanding of the bidirectional relationship between research and educational policy in the context of civil rights enforcement in order to determine areas of strength and those in need of improvement. Specifically, this study poses the following research questions: 1) How often and in what ways do scholars explicitly use OCR policy guidance to inform their research? What are the characteristics of this research? 2) Conversely, how often and in what ways does OCR explicitly use research to inform policy guidance? What are the characteristics of research cited in OCR guidance?

The American experience: towards a 21st century definition of dyslexia

ABSTRACT We review the evolution of the conceptualisation of dyslexia and along with it the current, 21st century definition of dyslexia. Our starting point is the seminal report by Pringle Morgan in 1896, followed by early 20th century reports by Hinshelwood, and continuing with concepts of brain injury and minimal brain dysfunctions then to the emergence of ‘learning disability’ in the mid-20th century. Within this historical framework we note the emergence and scientific validation of an ‘unexpected’ model culminating in the first definition of dyslexia in U.S. federal law in late 2018 and in recent U.S. federal civil rights law. We next address the issue of whether dyslexia is ‘real’ by showing how advances in non-invasive functional brain imaging have led to a replicated, robust neural signature for dyslexia. We close by illustrating how science has informed policy, emphasising the focus on evidence-based practices beginning with the report of the National Reading Panel and including the creation of the What Works Clearinghouse. Early screening for dyslexia represents another important policy accomplishment with dyslexia laws now passed in over 30 states. Evidence-based effective interventions for dyslexia, including free, public charter schools specialised for dyslexic children exemplify the most recent policy initiative.

Practice of the Appeal Board of the Federal Criminal Service of Russia (scientific review of the most significant cases considered in the first quarter of 2020)

In this review of the decisions of the Appeals Board of the Federal Criminal Service of Russia, the authors consider cases for the first quarter of 2020, containing legal positions important for maintaining uniformity of the law enforcement practice of antitrust authorities. Thus, the first of the cases considered shows the importance of observing the procedure for considering cases of violation of antitrust legislation, in particular, the procedure for forming a commission, the violation of which will lead to the annulment of acts of the territorial antitrust authority. In the second case, the Appeal Board of the Federal Civil Service of Russia addresses the question of the validity of concluding a state contract with a single supplier. The third solution considered addresses the always pressing problem of proving unfair competition.

The Concept of Economic Activity in Contemporary Law of Russia

The paper is devoted to the study of the category “economic activity” used in modern Russian law. Theauthor notes that, despite the absence of a legal definition of this category, it is used in the current legislation of the Russian Federation (civil, criminal, administrative and other branches of legislation, including legislation regulating procedural issues). The legislative gap under consideration creates problems in law enforcement, which the judiciary draws attention to: the lack of definition of the concept under review makes it difficult to establish jurisdiction, since any activity of the participants of relations regulated under civil law has an economic basis. However, a number of documents contain a description of economic activity. In the doctrine, the category “economic activity” is mainly investigated by academic economists, lawyers pay little attention to the consideration of this concept. The few legal doctrinal statements and attempts made by the judiciary to define it are insufficient to fully understand economic activity in the context of law. The paper analyzes doctrinal and judicial approaches to the content and characteristics of economic activity, attempts to define the concept under consideration. The author considers that the concept "economic activity" refers to the commission of legal actions by the actors at various levels of management aimed at production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods through the use of their or attracted skills and assets to meet their (or third parties) material and spiritual needs. At the same time, the characteristic of professionalism used in the doctrine should be used to differentiate economic activity carried out in active and passive forms.

Правовое обоснование допустимости соглашения о применимом праве в международном коммерческом арбитраже

Problem statement. Specific nature of international commercial arbitration raises an issue whether in this case lex fori is capable to be the ground of choice of law agreement permissibility. Topicality of the issue is determined by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation explanation of 09 July 2019 to courts referring issues of choice of law permissibility to lex fori. Goals and tasks of the research. Goal – research of legal ground of choice of law permissibility in international commercial arbitration. Tasks: to study the ICAC approaches to choice of law acknowledgement; to advance a hypothesis on the influence of explanation by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in respect of article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code to the ICAC practice and to draw a conclusion on the international commercial arbitration «procedural documents» provisions as the ground for it to acknowledge choice of law agreement. Methods. Methods of formal logic play a key role: analysis of the ICAC practice permitted to distinguish three approaches to choice of law agreement permissibility grounding; induction of ratio decidendi of the ICAC separate decisions – to draw a conclusion on the article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code influence to the ICAC practice in general and on this basis to advance a hypothesis on possible influence of explanations by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in this respect; comparison of the international commercial arbitration rules – to draw a conclusion that these provisions are the ground of choice of law acknowledgement by the tribunal. Results, brief conclusion. Firstly, three approaches of the ICAC to the choice of law agreement permissibility grounding have been revealed and in each them the ICAC relies on the article 1210 of the Russian Federation Civil Code. As far as the article 1210 has an impact on choice of law permissibility grounding within the ICAC, explanations by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in respect of this article are capable to have a possible impact on the ICAC practice. Secondly, within the international commercial arbitration the choice of law agreement permissibility grounding should be based on provisions of its «procedural documents», e. g. national law on international commercial arbitration, rules of institutional arbitration or ad hoc arbitral tribunal, – these rules (but not conflict of laws addressed to courts of the state of the arbitration seat) could be considered as its peculiar lex fori.

Targeted school violence: Timely research needed for prevention

As an elementary school student in New York City in the late 1950s, I remember participating in Federal Civil Defense Association atomic bomb air‐raid drills. These were the days of air‐raid sirens, Bert the Turtle, and duck and cover.

The Problematics of Service Delivery in the Nigerian Federal Civil Service

The Problematics of Service Delivery in the Nigerian Federal Civil Service

The use of digital technologies in the implementation of prosecutorial oversight of the implementation of laws in the admission, registration and resolution of reports of crime (legal and organizational aspects)

The article discusses some issues of the use digital technology in the implementation of prosecutorial supervision over the implementation of laws in the reception, registration and resolution of reports of crimes in the bodies of preliminary investigation. Active use of digital technologies in this area of supervisory activities is extremely relevant and practical justified as a necessary condition for prompt receipt, objective assessment of information on the legality and validity of actions and decisions of subjects receiving, registering and resolving crime reports, and the event of their wrongfulness taking appropriate situations, organizational and practical measures of the prosecutors response.
 According to the author, it is necessary to expand the range of information processed using the appropriate software product. It is proposed to organize the acquisition of data on the results of the investigation of a crime, criminal case about which, as a result of the identification by prosecutors of criminal violations of federal laws, human and civil rights and freedoms, as well as on the results of the work on the search for the missing.
 In connection whit the regulatory gaps in the use of digital technologies in law enforcement, in is proposed to issue a federal law On Single Record of Crimes, including defining the responsibility of the heads of preliminary investigation bodies to immediately inform prosecutors about the allegations and reports about crimes received.

The Concept of <i>Commorientes</i> in French and Russian Inheritance Law

The article is devoted to the consideration of the concept of commorientes in French and Russian inheritance law. The commorientes are individuals, entitled to inherit, reciprocally, to each other and considered to have died at the same moment, from the inheritance’s point of view. The commorientes do not inherit reciprocally. The work focuses on how French and Russian law determine the notion of commorientes. Inheritance rules, regarding the commorientes in France and Russian Federation from the beginning of the 19th century are analysed; subsequently, their current versions in force in the French Civil Code and the Russian Federation Civil Code are compared. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the time of the inheritance opening. In the Russian legislation this issue has not been unambiguously resolved for a long time. The article presents the evolution of the Russian and French rules on inheritance after the commorientes. In French law, presumptions of survival have been in effect for many years, allowing to determine the sequence of deaths of people who died as a result of the same event. The article contains the rules of the current legislation in France and in the Russian Federation, as well as suggestions for their improvement.