Fact Finding Research Articles

The Narrative of Innocence, or, Lost Stories

The criminal courtroom is a place of competing narratives. Which narrative eventually becomes the basis of a conviction or an acquittal depends largely on how stories are told and how they are reconstructed by the fact finder. The construction and reconstruction of stories does not happen mechanically; lawyers and juries have a desire to create typical, exemplary narratives that resonate with their understanding of the world. This understanding can interfere with narratives that are not typical—the (potential) stories of innocence. Through the work of innocence projects, it has become clear that often the narrative that prevailed in court did not reflect what actually happened. Defendants were convicted for crimes they did not commit, and the stories of their innocence were lost. DNA evidence was used to exonerate many of the defendants, but this paper argues that even in the age of DNA evidence, the story model is still key to understanding the creation of legal reality because it allows the jury to develop narratives that have a much greater influence on the decision than facts or norms alone and that are basically unreviewable. Beyond individual cases, it is also the procedural, technical set-up—the blueprint—of a criminal justice system that choreographs storytelling. To exemplify this, I will contrast the adversarial system, which stresses the contest of narratives, with the inquisitorial model, where narratives are developed through an investigation by a judge.

Comparing holistic and atomistic evaluation of evidence

Fact finders in legal trials often need to evaluate a mass of weak, contradictory and ambiguous evidence. There are two general ways to accomplish this task: by holistically forming a coherent mental representation of the case, or by atomistically assessing the probative value of each item of evidence and integrating the values according to an algorithm. Parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) models of cognitive coherence posit that a coherent mental representation is created by discounting contradicting evidence, inflating supporting evidence and interpreting ambivalent evidence in a way coherent with the emerging decision. This leads to inflated support for whichever hypothesis the fact finder accepts as true. Using a Bayesian network to model the direct dependencies between the evidence, the intermediate hypotheses and the main hypothesis, parameterised with (conditional) subjective probabilities elicited from the subjects, I demonstrate experimentally how an atomistic evaluation of evidence leads to a convergence of the computed posterior degrees of belief in the guilt of the defendant of those who convict and those who acquit. The atomistic evaluation preserves the inherent uncertainty that largely disappears in a holistic evaluation. Since the fact finders’ posterior degree of belief in the guilt of the defendant is the relevant standard of proof in many legal systems, this result implies that using an atomistic evaluation of evidence, the threshold level of posterior belief in guilt required for a conviction may often not be reached. Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn

METAL-RICH PLANETARY NEBULAE IN THE OUTER REACHES OF M31

Spectroscopic data of two relatively [O III]-luminous-PNe have been obtained with the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. M174 and M2496 are each ~1 degree from the center of M31 along opposite sides of its minor axis. The ensemble of these two distant PNe plus 16 similarly luminous outer-disk PNe published earlier (Kwitter et al. 2012 & 2013) forms a homogeneous group in luminosity, metal content, progenitor mass, age, and kinematics. The main factual findings of our work are: (1) O/H (and other low-mass alpha elements and their ratios to O) is uniformly solar-like in all 18 PNe <12+log(O/H)> = 8.62 +/- 0.14); (2) the general sky distribution and kinematics of the ensemble much more closely resemble the rotation pattern of the classical disk of M31 than its halo or bulge; (3) the O/H gradient is surprisingly flat beyond R_g ~30 kpc, and may be flat throughout the entire range of R_g covered in the full study. The PNe are too metal-rich to be bona fide members of M31's disk or halo, and (4) the abundance patterns of the sample are distinct from those in the spiral galaxies M33, M81, and NGC 300. Using standard PN age diagnostic methods (which are readily challengeable) we suggest that all of the PNe formed -2 GY ago in a starburst of metal-rich ISM that followed an M31-M33 encounter about 3 GY ago. We review supporting evidence from stellar studies. Other more prosaic explanations, such as dwarf galaxy assimilation, are unlikely.

Luxembourg, Strasbourg and the National Court: the Emergence of a Country Guidance System for Refugee and Human Rights Protection

... ... ... Starred and Country Guidance determinations ... ... ... Special arrangements are made for the reporting of country guidance cases. Before a case is promulgated and designated as a Country Guidance case it is considered by the relevant country convenor and the Reporting Committee and advice may be tendered to the determining judges. … If there is credible fresh evidence relevant to the issue that has not been considered in the Country Guidance case or, if a subsequent case includes further issues that have not been considered in the CG case, the judge will reach the appropriate conclusion on the evidence, taking into account the conclusion in the CG case so far as it remains relevant. Country Guidance cases will remain on the UTIAC web site unless and until replaced by fresh Country Guidance or reversed by a decision of a higher court. Where Country Guidance has become outdated by reason of developments in the country in question, it is anticipated that a judge of the First-tier Tribunal will have such credible fresh evidence as envisaged in paragraph 11 above. Where there is reasonable doubt as to whether Country Guidance is still applicable permission to appeal to the UTIAC may well be given in an appropriate case. The criteria for reporting cases include cases where the factual findings may be of some general interest. As a general rule, cases deciding factual issues are selected for reporting only if they meet the criteria for country guidance, but occasionally there may be cases where factual findings are likely to be of importance for other determinations where for one reason or another it has not been possible or appropriate to report the case as an authoritative Country Guidance one. These cases will be found on the recent decisions part of the Chamber web-site without the letters CG. Reported decisions that are not Country Guidance cases are of persuasive value only on the facts.

Testing a Site Visit Approach for the Next Accreditation System

Testing a Site Visit Approach for the Next Accreditation System

The WTO’s Influence on Other Dispute Settlement Mechanisms: A Lighthouse in the Storm of Fragmentation

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the use of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and case law by other dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) in international law. Our findings show that DSMs frequently refer to WTO rules and case law not only on matters of procedure but also on various substantive aspects of trade law and general international law. The 150 identified references vary in their quality and importance for the rationale of the DSM. They range from a footnote en passant to being at the core of the solution for a particular legal problem that the adjudicator or arbitrator faces. We cluster our findings into four major categories of circumstances under which other DSMs deem it appropriate to cite the WTO (factual determinations, procedural aspects, general principles of international law or the rules on treaty interpretation, and substantive rules).A more difficult task has been to draw tentative conclusions as to the reasons that motivate DSMs to look specifically into WTO rules and case law. In most instances, this is due to the fact that the terms or their context in a given applicable law of a regional trade mechanism resemble those of the WTO disciplines. However, the use of the WTO precedent for purposes of procedure and clarification of general principles of international law or the rules on treaty interpretation show a broader influence of the WTO on international dispute settlement.

Less than Meets the Eye: Antidiscrimination and the Development of Section 5 Enforcement and Eleventh Amendment Abrogation Law Since City of Boerne v. Flores

In a series of cases beginning with Boerne v. City of Flores (1997), Supreme Court has adopted a new interpretation of Eleventh Amendment. This has been interpreted for a century to bar citizen law suits against unconsenting states, unless Congress validly exercises its enforcement powers under Section 5 of Fourteenth Amendment to abrogate state's sovereign immunity. It is widely thought that Boerne Doctrine significantly raises bar for Congress to validly exercise its Section 5 powers because it requires proof of a pattern of state violation of constitutional rights and suitability of remedy to problem (congruence and proportionality), not just, as previously, a clear statement of intent to abrogate. In Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents (2000), Court struck down application of federal age discrimination law (the ADEA) to states as involving invalid exercise of Section 5 powers because Congress did not show enough evidence of a pattern of state constitutional violations that this law might remedy. The Court did same in Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett (2001) for federal disability employment discrimination law. In both cases Court made a fine grained analysis of evidence in legislative record, discarding much of it irrelevant or not probative. Some constitutional law scholars warned that the sky is falling for federal antidiscrimination law.I show by close reading of pertinent cases that Boerne Doctrine is, or has become, far less restrictive than is widely thought. Properly understood, Doctrine now involves what I call an Inverse Relation Rule. This means that Court requires more evidence of a pattern of constitutional violations where standard of review for rights at question is lower (rational basis for age and disability in Kimel and Garrett respectively), but requires less evidence of such violations as rights in question involve more heightened review. That is, higher degree of scrutiny appropriate for right protected by legislation, lower degree of rigor with which Court will interrogate evidence.Thus in Hibbs v. Fla. Bd of Regents (2003), Court found that Congress had validly exercised its Section Five powers in enacting Family Medical Leave Act, which concerns sex discrimination (intermediate review). In Tennessee v. Lane (2004) Court found similarly that public access Title of ADA applied to states, because that case implicated fundamental rights such as access to criminal justice (strict scrutiny).Throughout development of Boerne Doctrine, Court expanded scope of usable evidence. In Hibbs and Lane, Court allowed as evidence supporting valid use of Section 5 powers facts of sort Court had rejected as inadequate in Kimel and Garrett. The Court increasingly brought in in evidence outside record and made its own factual findings. In United States v. Georgia (2006), a prisoner disability access rights case under Title II of ADA that court interpreted as coextensive with Eighth Amendment rights not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment (strict scrutiny), Court required no evidence at all of a pattern of state constitutional violations for valid Congressional exercise of Section 5 powers. Thus, way rights implicated in Congressional action are framed is crucial to successful abrogation of state sovereign immunity. If they are framed as rights involving heightened scrutiny, intensity of Court's examination of evidence for a pattern of discrimination, amount of evidence required, and appropriateness of remedy offered will be much reduced, and probability of finding of a valid use to Section 5 to abrogate state sovereign immunity will be increased. If rights at issue can be framed as requiring only rational basis review, intensity of Court's examination of evidence will rise and, likelihood that Congress will have successfully abrogated state sovereign immunity will fall. I show this by a hypothetical reconsideration of Kimel under Boerne Doctrine as it has evolved, among other things, reading ADEA as involving a remedy for deprivation of due process property rights (strict scrutiny), and showing how that might change outcome. Both plaintiffs and defendants, as well as judges, can use this analysis in developing theory of a case.An issue not discussed in paper, but now (2013) pertinent concerns states of Voting Rights Act (VRA). Throughout all Boerne Doctrine cases, and there are many, Court cites VRA as a model example of proper exercise of Congress' Section 5 powers. With Voting Rights Act itself now coming before Court, it may be important for Boerne Doctrine, and analysis and conclusions presented in this paper, how Court decides challenges to VRA.

Is Injustice Relevant? Narrative and Blameworthiness in Protester Trials

This Article examines application of the doctrine of relevance to exclude evidence of the motivations underlying the actions of civilly disobedient criminal defendants. While not constitutionally protected, civil disobedience plays an important role in the political, social and legal history of the United States. Though acts of civil disobedience involve violations of law, actions of protest differ from actions of non-protest crime in a number of important respects. Civilly disobedient protesters undertake their action openly, motivated by the desire to call public attention to an injustice. Their motivation is distinct from that of non-protester criminal defendants who seek to promote individual goals. Despite the importance of protester motivation in distinguishing the civilly disobedient defendant, courts routinely exclude evidence of protester motivations as not relevant in criminal proceedings. Applied broadly in many contexts, the doctrine of relevance is applied narrowly in the context of motivations of protesters. The constrained application utilized in protester trials overlooks evolving understandings of evidentiary relevance. The most important of these evolving concepts are narrative relevance and blameworthiness. Evidence of underlying motivation provides an essential piece of a cohesive narrative explaining a protester’s actions and intentions. The evidence also permits a fact finder to conduct the evaluation of blameworthiness required for a determination of criminal culpability. Ultimately, the article concludes that courts should recognize the admissibility of protester motivation within criminal trials of civilly disobedient protesters.

COHERENCE, EVIDENCE, AND LEGAL PROOF

The aim of this essay is to develop a coherence theory for the justification of evidentiary judgments in law. The main claim of the coherence theory proposed in this article is that a belief about the events being litigated is justified if and only if it is a belief that an epistemically responsible fact finder might hold by virtue of its coherence in like circumstances. The article argues that this coherentist approach to evidence and legal proof has the resources to meet some of the main objections that may be addressed against attempts to analyze the justification of evidentiary judgments in law in coherentist terms. It concludes by exploring some implications of the proposed version of legal coherentism for a jurisprudence of evidence.

Drawing Lines: Addressing Cognitive Bias in Art Appropriation Cases

For centuries, artists ranging from Renaissance painter Raphael to surrealist Salvador Dali have embraced the concept of originality through imitation, drawing heavily from the works of their predecessors to create new and original works of art. Despite the role that appropriation has historically played in artistic culture, art that borrows substantially from other works is more likely to be punished than praised under our current copyright system. Following the decisions against appropriation artists in Cariou v.Prince and Rogers v. Koons, the future of art appropriation is increasingly unclear. Although the Supreme Court has warned that judges should not employ aesthetic reasoning in assessing works protected by copyright, recent copyright cases suggest that judges are doing exactly that. After showing how the open-ended nature of the copyright and fair use inquiries can make judges particularly vulnerable to various cognitive biases, this Article relies on Rogers v. Koons and Cariou v.Prince to illustrate how fact finders can be improperly influenced by known cognitive biases such as anchoring, hindsight, and confirmation bias and could be tempted to substitute their own value judgments when assessing an appropriator'sw ork.

The Emerging Battlefield: Should the Use of a Nonmonotonic, Non-Threshold Dose-Response Curve for Alleged Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Survive aDaubert/FryeChallenge?

IN Hormones and Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals: Low-Dose Effects and Nonmonotonic Dose Responses, (1) authors contend that toxicological significance of alleged endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) cannot be assessed using traditional monotonic threshold dose-response curve. In contrast, they suggest that EDCs can cause adverse human biological effects at low, regulatory-approved dose levels. Although this article only focuses on biological effects per se and not on whether effect is adverse or not, they contend that it is improper to extrapolate that harmful effects cannot occur at environmentally relevant, regulatory-approved low-dose levels just because no effects are seen at much higher regulatory-accepted no observable adverse effect level (NOAEL). Plaintiffs' attorneys and their retained experts will point to Vandenberg paper in support of position that EDC at issue proximately caused their plaintiff's cancer, reproductive or developmental problem, even when plaintiff only was exposed to alleged EDC at regulatory-approved safe level. Through a weight-of-the-evidence methodology, plaintiffs' experts may attempt to use some sort of nonmonotonic, non-threshold dose-response curve to opine that health condition at issue generally and specifically was caused by exposure to very low doses of alleged EDC at regulatory approved levels. Accordingly, defendants must mount a convincing Daubert/Frye argument to defeat this theory. This article demonstrates how-to construct a successful Daubert/Frye challenge against an expert's attempted use of a nonmonotonic, non-threshold dose-response curve to support an adverse causation opinion about an alleged EDC. I. Dose-Response Curves There are three dose-response curves that come into play in any personal injury environmental toxic tort case. First, traditional monotonic, nonlinear threshold dose-response curve provides that dose has to reach a recognized threshold level before chemical likely will have any adverse human health consequences. Once chemical exerts an adverse effect, adverse effect will continue to worsen as dose increases. The generally recognized phrase the dose makes poison is associated with a monotonic, nonlinear dose-response curve. Second, monotonic, linear non-threshold dose-response curve states that a chemical can have an adverse human health effect at any dose level. Thus, there is no safe dose level and no threshold dose level. As such, exposure to even molecule of chemical at issue puts an individual at risk for development of an adverse health condition. This concept is referred to as one hit theory because allegedly just dose of chemical at any level can start disease process. Third, nonmonotonic, non-threshold dose-response curve, suggested by Vandenberg article as being particularly applicable to EDCs, provides that a chemical can have effects at regulatory approved low dose levels; have no effects at moderately higher dose levels and have effects at highest dose levels. A nonmonotonic, non-threshold dose-response curve is described as either Ushaped or inverted U-shaped. Allowing a plaintiff's expert to opine that chemical on trial should be analyzed through use of a nonmonotonic, non-threshold dose-response curve would present significant problems for a defendant. Specifically, defendant's assertion of common regulatory compliance defense that plaintiffs dose level never exceeded applicable regulatory-acceptable safe dose level would be seriously questioned and could be disregarded completely by fact finder. Moreover, plaintiff would be able to raise a significant question in jurors' minds as to whether defendant was negligent for only testing alleged EDC at regulatory-accepted high levels instead of also including in its test protocol environmentally relevant low dose levels. …

The moment of serendipity in technology companies: study by participant observation

The paper aims to present key factors for management to promote generation of serendipity in technology companies, from the practical point of view of repeatable and more predictable ways of thinking for preparation of innovation. First, we analysed six cases of ‘the moment’ of serendipity that had been collected over two years of participatory observation in a Japanese technology company. Evaluating each case from the point of view of collaborative activities, it is revealed that key collaborative activities are different according to the type of serendipity (pseudo or true). For pseudo-serendipity, ‘loose communication’ or ‘informal exchanges among engineers having similar background knowledge’ is important. Meanwhile, for true serendipity, it is desirable to show the element technology that is the result of pseudo-serendipity to a ‘gatekeeper’ operating in subsystems or system hierarchy, and to promote collaborative activities around him/her at its centre. Key factors for management that encourage and promote sustainable generation of serendipity based on these factual findings are presented, as well as considering a strategy for effective and successful collaborative activities for gatekeepers.

On the burden of proof in civil procedure

The appliance of burden of proof rules is conceived of assumption that evidences are taken and that court didn't reach the required degree of conviction of a particular fact, what implies limitation of application of these rules on proceedings in which the judgment is rendered after the plenary proceedings. The Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) has no suitable answers for the problems arising from new conception of the principle of party control of facts and means of proof in Serbian litigation legislature, by which the court has no more power to take the evidence ex offo. There is no answer to the question how should court conduct when evidence is not taken because of a lack of parties' indication of the means of proof. In this case courts practice somehow wider conception of burden of proof rules, which however has no explicit legal ground. They are applying them even though evidences are not taken. In any case it would be useful to reformulate basic rule of burden of proof in manner which would correspondent to the new conception of the principle of party presentation. The rule of burden of proof applies when the high degree of conviction of facts is demanded from the court, in order to render the judgment. Consequently this rule loses its' sense when mere probability of factual findings is demanded. The broader conception of parties' representation principle however does not liberate court from his responsibility to clarify facts that should be base for adjudication. Circumstance that CCP does mention the principle of material truth anymore should not be seen as argument for liberation of mentioned responsibility. It is still expected from the court to be active. Only when joint effort of the court and parties is left without of goal, in sense that court doesn't reach the high degree conviction, there would be ground for burden of proof rule's application. In this situation court also must justify why he couldn't reach required degree of conviction, i.e. he must give clear reasons for the cause of application of burden of proof rules. Thus the role of the court is not relieved, nor does the application of burden of proof provisions mean the liberation from the duty to evaluate the evidences and reasoning the impossibility of reaching the required degree of conviction. In the case when evidences are not taken at all the application of burden of proof rule could be only justified with the idea that else unacceptable results would arise - substantive legal protection and favoritism of the party who didn't make any effort to proof its factual allegations.

Prosecutor V Ante Gotovina &amp; Mladen Markac, Appeals Chamber Judgement: Human Rights Lawyers: Look Away Now!

The recent judgement by the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY in Prosecutor v Ante Gotovina & Mladen Markacis flawed at almost every level. It contradicts the previous practice of the Tribunal and it falls below the standard of review as required by Article 25 of the Tribunal’s Statute. In terms of consequences for the parties involved what the judgement reversed the processes of reconciliation among the parties to the Balkan conflicts that were taking place prior to the judgement. The vitriolic rhetoric that is following the judgement between the most relevant parties, Croatia and Serbia is reminiscent of the situation in early 1990s that led to the bloody conflict. In most general terms the Appeals Chamber by this judgement instilled a high degree of inconsistency in its activism and scrutiny of Trial Chamber’s legal and factual determinations. It rather laconically rejected the totality of evidence in the present case and, in essence turned a blind eye in relation to the appellants’ proved responsibility by the Trial Chamber whilst the Appeals Chamber exhibited an admirable level of judicial activism in coming to an opposite conclusion in Prosecutor v. Mile Mrksic and Veselin Sljivancanin for example where it found additional legal reasons for increasing the sentence handed out by the Trial Chamber. The Appeals Chamber has therefore demonstrated a conspicuously different standard in its treatment of the Trial Chamber’s legal and factual determination.

Comparing Holistic and Atomistic Evaluation of Evidence

Fact finders in legal trials often need to evaluate a mass of weak, contradictory and ambiguous evidence. There are two general ways to accomplish this task: by holistically forming a coherent mental representation of the case, or by atomistically assessing the probative value of each item of evidence and integrating the values according to an algorithm. Parallel constraint satisfaction (PCS) models of cognitive coherence posit that a coherent mental representation is created by discounting contradicting evidence, inflating supporting evidence and interpreting ambivalent evidence in a way coherent with the emerging decision. This leads to inflated support for whichever hypothesis the fact finder accepts as true. Using a Bayesian network to model the direct dependencies between the evidence, the intermediate hypotheses and the main hypothesis, parameterised with (conditional) subjective probabilities elicited from the subjects, I demonstrate experimentally how an atomistic evaluation of evidence leads to a convergence of the computed posterior degrees of belief in the guilt of the defendant of those who convict and those who acquit. The atomistic evaluation preserves the inherent uncertainty that largely disappears in a holistic evaluation. Since the fact finders’ posterior degree of belief in the guilt of the defendant is the relevant standard of proof in many legal systems, this result implies that using an atomistic evaluation of evidence, the threshold level of posterior belief in guilt required for a conviction may often not be reached.

What's Past Is Prologue: The Fate of Joint & Several Liability after Burlington Northern

This Essay examines the development of Burlington’s apportionment holding in the three years since its decision on May 4, 2009. Reviewing reporter- and database-reported opinions in the past 33 months, this Essay examines how the lower courts have been implementing Burlington’s apportionment holding and what the effects of that holding have been. In general, the application of Burlington’s apportionment holding has reflected a centrist position in the academic and professional debate: joint and several liability is certainly not “dead,” but it may be easier to defend against.This Essay concludes that the application of joint and several liability will be increasingly explained by (1) the willingness of the fact finder to engage in a perhaps intense and complex apportionment analysis; and (2) the comfort of the fact finder with highly technical details and statistical analysis. These developments have important practical and strategic implications for litigants regarding defense against joint and several liability.

Democracy in the Israeli education system: the case of the English matriculation exam

This research investigates the extent to which indices of social justice and democratic rights are expressed in Israel in the crucial national English matriculation exam, as perceived by Palestinian Arab high school pupils studying for these exams and their English teachers. The research employed Critical Theory as a paradigm, case study as a research tradition, and semi-structured interviews and questionnaires as methods. Shohamy’s Democratic Assessment Model provided the basis for the questionnaire items and the interview questions. Freire’s Critical Pedagogy framework was consulted to interpret the findings of the research. The factual findings revealed a proper application of democratic principles in the environment of the national English as a Foreign Language (EFL) testing, yet only with regard to technical matters, while the environment appears to be undemocratic with regard to other essential and critical issues. The conceptual conclusions suggest that when democracy is bent by the governing authority and shaped to serve its interests, it is not only minorities’ education that is affected, but also the education of the majority, and that democracy itself needs to be aided by civil society to ensure a more egalitarian educational reality for all.

Income, Inequality, and Social Welfare: A Study of the U.S. States

Amartya Sen (Journal of Public Economics, 1974; Review of Economic Studies, 1976) proposed a social welfare index defined as mean income multiplied by (1-Gini coefficient) and provided an axiomatic basis for the index. The index can also be interpreted as inequality-adjusted income or, as Bishop, Chakraborti, and Thistle (Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 1990) note, equally-distributedequivalent income measure for Gini. Anthony Atkinson (Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 1999, p. 181) treated the index as a measure of real income. The index has been used in several studies of income and welfare. For example, Berrebi and Silber (Economics Letters, 1987) did a decomposition of the change in the index for the United States over the periods 1960–1970 and 1970–1980. Bishop et al. (1990) provided distribution-free tests for the index and did an application to the U.S. from 1980 census data. Ram (Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1992) computed the index for two cross-country samples and showed that the index correlated highly with income, but weakly with the Gini coefficient. Since Bishop et al. focused on significance tests for the index and worked with 1980 census data for the U.S., it is useful to construct the index from more recent state-level information and, like Ram (1992), consider how the welfare index correlates with mean income and the Gini coefficient. The index may be written as W0Y(1−G), where W is Sen’s welfare index, Y denotes mean income, and G stands for the Gini coefficient of each state. Data on mean household income and the household Gini coefficient for each state are taken from Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder and are based on American Community Surveys (ACS) for the five-year period of 2006–2010. Since information is derived from five rounds of ACS, it is likely to be more stable and reliable than the usual annual numbers from ACS or even the census. The welfare index is calculated for each state by using the foregoing expression. Int Adv Econ Res (2013) 19:65–67 DOI 10.1007/s11294-012-9378-8

Improving an outreach service by analyzing the relationship of health information disparities to socioeconomic indicators using geographic information systems

INTRODUCTIONThe use of geographic information systems (GIS) withUS Census data provides libraries with the power tocombine, analyze, and present information in newways. GIS is a valuable tool capable of ‘‘capturing,storing, analyzing, and displaying geographicallyreferenced information’’ [1]. GIS software combinesmaps with layers of associated data to provide avisual picture that allows greater understanding andanalysis than static figures and tables. Although thesoftware was expensive in the past, GIS has becomeincreasingly more affordable for libraries since it hasbecome available in web-based applications, includ-ing open source options [2].Libraries began incorporating US Census data withGIS when the 1990 census materials were given tothe US federal depository libraries as Topological-ly Integrated Geographic Encoding and Reference(TIGER) files [3]. TIGER files are a set of geographicbase files that contain features of the United Statesdown to the street level and census boundaries forcensus statistical areas. TIGER files are designed foruse with GIS software and include geographic codesthat can be linked with demographic and socioeco-nomic data from American Fact Finder (AFF) and theAmerican Community Survey (ACS) [4, 5]. All TIGER,AFF, and ACS files and data are free to the public.Combined with US Census data, GIS is particularlyuseful for libraries in the area of service planning. Forexample, the Public Library Geographic Databasehas compiled US Census demographics on all 16,000public libraries in order to assist decision makers inlibrary planning [6]. Other examples of the use of GISand US Census data include analyzing service mapsfor proposed branches [7], mapping service areas [8],analyzing demographics of populations surroundingthe library [9, 10], analyzing market segmentation[11], and establishing a public library consumer healthcollection [12].In 2011, the Preston Medical Library, in Knoxville,Tennessee, conducted research using GIS and USCensus data. Our goal was to analyze demographicand socioeconomic patterns in order to improvehealth literacy information outreach through our freetelephone-based Consumer and Patient Health Infor-mation Service (CAPHIS). The library’s free tele-phone-based CAPHIS has been in place for overtwo decades, and call data are maintained in an SQLdatabase. The library staff responds to calls to theCAPHIS by mailing packets of health information atthe appropriate literacy level to the caller. The Pres-ton Medical Library provides a useful alternative forthose individuals who do not have Internet access ormay need additional assistance because of limitedhealth literacy and socioeconomic disparities.Several studies have examined the relationship ofsocioeconomic factors and limited health literacy toincreased health costs, chronic disease, and morbidity[13–16]. Health information through libraries is valu-able and can affect consumer health care decisions.Consumers who use libraries for health informationreport positive health actions such as lifestyle changesand compliance with physician instructions [17, 18].However, consumers with low health literacy andcompounding socioeconomic factors are often notaware of the services provided by libraries. Outreachis conducted by libraries to address these disparitiesand provide information services to those surround-ing communities most in need.RESEARCH BACKGROUNDIn 2003, an SQL database was created that containsinformation regarding consumer calls to CAPHIS.Data on calls from 1998 to the present include thecaller’s name, address, and health information re-quest. Although the names and addresses are kept inseparate tables for privacy, the zip codes of theaddresses can be used to establish geographic localitythat can be plotted on a state map and calculated toestablish a rate and area of calls by zip code. Therequested health topics, which are in keyword forminitially, are subsequently indexed by library staffusing the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM’s)Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in order to becross-referenced with existing information regardingprevalence of diseases in the state that is madeavailable by the Tennessee Department of Health [19].

A Rush to (Summary) Judgment in Franchisor Liability Cases?

Legal and factual issues regarding franchisor liability pose challenges for the legal community. This is an article about courts striving to fashion the law of franchisor liability for franchisee torts, an area of the law with serious and unsettled issues. It discusses how courts seek guidance from respondeat superior and apparent agency doctrines in determining the principles of franchisor vicarious liability. Much of the discussion is based on case law and Restatement (Third) of Agency. Estoppel and direct liability principles are also considered. This article examines a number of cases that illustrate questionable factual determinations in granting summary judgments favorable to franchisors, thereby denying trials to injured parties. It also reviews some cases illustrating better approaches to factual determinations. Since summary judgments should be granted only in the absence of material facts at issue, erroneous fact-finding seriously undermines the judicial process.The formulation of the law of franchisor liability is especially important because of its potential to encourage franchisors to promote better health and safety practices to benefit franchisee patrons and the general public.