Licensing Laws Research Articles

Sharing the Monopoly on Violence? Shall-Issue Concealed Handgun License Laws and Responsibilization

Although research has examined if concealed handgun licensing laws may affect crime rates by enabling gun carry in public, the determinants of these policies have received less attention. Drawing on the thesis of the new criminologies of everyday life and the more recent conceptualization of sovereign subjects, this study posits that the expansion of shall-issue concealed handgun laws in the United States is a product of low-collective security in states. Understanding that shall-issue laws reflect state efforts to responsibilize firearm carrying, shall-issue laws are more likely to become state policy when a state has lower rates of police officers and lower per capita spending on police and corrections. Results from discrete-time, event history analyses indicate that shall-issue laws are, indeed, related to reduced capacities to provide collective security, independent of competing political and social correlates. This understanding of why states adopt such gun laws appears to be unique to shall-issue laws and has little explanatory power for newer unrestricted concealed handgun laws.

When Heterodoxy Became News: The Representation of the Diggers and the Ranters in Contemporary Newspapers

The years 1649-1650 witnessed the emergence of two prominent radical sects of the British Civil Wars – the Diggers and the Ranters. While the former were members of organised communities that pursued a communistic agenda, the latter were more of a loose group of individuals who produced prophetic tracts. Yet, the Diggers and the Ranters held similar heterodox views – although there were significant differences between them, and they both made a point of distancing themselves from each other; both arguably advocated and practised a form of mystical radicalism. This essay focuses on the way these two sects were represented in contemporary newsbooks, from the time of the regicide and the establishment of the Commonwealth to the passing of the “Act against severall Atheisticall, Blasphemous and Execrable Opinions” in August 1650, and the interrogation by a parliamentary committee of Ranter Abiezer Coppe for alleged blasphemy in October 1650. It draws upon a variety of weeklies, ranging from Parliamentary newspapers, and official Commonwealth periodicals after the passing of a stringent licensing law in September 1649, to underground and unlicensed royalist mercuries. It especially looks into the way the Diggers and the Ranters were labelled and what these labels tell us about those who supposedly voiced dissenting opinions as well as about perceptions of the heterodox landscape of the late 1640s and early 1650s. It also studies the basis on which newsbook writers generally condemned, rather than condoned, the alleged heretical views of the Diggers and the Ranters, and what this reveals about the religious positioning of these essential contributors to the print culture of the Civil War years.

Occupational Licensing and the Limits of Public Choice Theory

Public choice theory has long been the dominant lens through which economists and other scholars have viewed occupational licensing. According to the public choice account, practitioners favor licensing because they want to reduce competition and drive up their own wages. This essay argues that the public choice account has been overstated, and that it ironically has served to distract from some of the most important harms of licensing, as well as from potential solutions. We emphasize three specific drawbacks of this account. First, it is more dismissive of legitimate threats to public health and safety than the research warrants. Second, it places disproportionate emphasis on those professions for which the justification for licensing seems weakest, rather than on those for which the justification is stronger. Third, it puts an inordinate focus on whether an occupation is licensed, rather than how it is licensed. Judges and policymakers should bear these limitations in mind when evaluating legal challenges or proposed reforms to licensing laws.

How Much of Barrier to Entry is Occupational Licensing?

AbstractWe exploit state variation in licensing laws to study the effect of licensing on occupational choice using a boundary discontinuity design. We find that licensing reduces equilibrium labour supply by an average of 17–27 per cent.

The Right of ‘The People’ to ‘Bear Arms’: The Common Law, the Second Amendment, and the Carrying of Firearms Outside the Home

Is the Second Amendment right of the people to “bear arms” overridden by the Statute of Northampton of 1328? A cottage industry of history-office lawyers think so, and their allegations are repeated in litigation arguments seeking to uphold discretionary handgun-carry licensing laws around the country. The reality is that the English common law only prohibited the carrying of arms to the terror of the subjects, and the right to carry was expansively recognized in the early American Republic. Virginia, Massachusetts, and other states limited the right only when exercised in a manner as to cause a breach of the peace, in which case one was required to find sureties to keep the peace. The right to bear arms for self-defense was recognized in state bills of rights, and was regulated only in some states by restrictions on carrying concealed. The only outright prohibition applied to slaves and African Americans, and that ended with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction. Contrary to litigation-driven revisionist history, the right peaceably to bear arms is a pervading liberty in the American tradition.

The High Cost of Lowering the Bar

State bar licensing authorities and law schools have been debating whether the passing score on the bar exam is set at the right level or should be lowered. Much of the debate centers on generalizations without evidence about the effect that changes to the bar exam may have. We present data suggesting that lowering the bar examination passing score will likely increase the amount of malpractice, misconduct, and discipline among lawyers. Using a large dataset drawn from publicly available California State Bar records, our analysis shows that bar exam score is significantly related to likelihood of State Bar discipline throughout a lawyer’s career. We investigate these claims by collecting data on disciplinary actions and disbar-ments among California-licensed attorneys. We find support for the assertion that attorneys with lower bar examination performance are more likely to be disciplined and disbarred than those with higher performance. Although our measures of bar performance have only modest predictive power of subsequent discipline, we project that lowering the passing score would result in the admission of attorneys with a substantially higher probabil-ity of bar discipline over the course of their careers. But we admit that our anal-ysis is limited due to the imperfect data available to the public. And we do not infer a causal relationship between low bar scores and high discipline rates. For a precise calculation, we call on state licensing authorities to use their in-ternal records on bar scores and discipline outcomes to determine the likely impact of changes to the passing score.

A practical guide to the copyright and competition law aspects of transnational licencing

This short paper reviews Carlo Scollo Lavizzari and Rene Viljoen's edited book Cross-Border Copyright Licensing—Law and Practice.

Book Review: Licensing Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: A Practical Handbook

The proliferation of electronic resources (e-resources) arguably brings several benefits to libraries, including instant, from-anywhere access for patrons and automated workflows for technical services that are potentially more efficient. However, it also brings new challenges. One of these challenges is licensing the many e-resources offered through the contemporary library. Halaychik and Reagan address this challenge in Licensing Electronic Resources in Academic Libraries: A Practical Handbook. This resource primarily covers three license-related topics in five chapters. Chapters 1 and 3 discuss the basics of licensing and licensing law. Chapters 2 and 4 address the licensing process through the full life cycle of licenses. The final chapter discusses negotiating licenses.

Overview of Compliance with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) in Addressing Issues Concerning Patent which Relates with Competition Law: Malaysia Position

TRIPS Agreement acknowledged that some licensing restrictions contained in a patent license contract may contravene the principles of competition law. Hence, adoption of appropriate measures to address issues concerning patent license which relates with competition law has been expressly provided by the TRIPS Agreement in its various provisions. Malaysia as a signatory of the TRIPS Agreement is expected to comply with the recommendations in addressing issues concerning patent license and competition law. Therefore, it is the purpose of this article to identify extends of compliance by Malaysia with respect to the suggestions provided by the TRIPS Agreement. The result shows that Malaysia adopts the recommendations provided by the TRIPS Agreement in its legislation, particularly the Patents Act 1983.

Beyond Physicians: The Effect of Licensing and Liability Laws on the Supply of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants

The increased use of nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) represents an important option for increasing access to healthcare. I explore the effect of two types of laws on the supply of NPs and PAs: occupational licensing laws that limit the practices of NPs and PAs and caps on noneconomic damages. Relaxing licensing laws to allow NPs to practice with less physician oversight increases the supply of NPs in areas with few practicing physicians by 60 percent—though the size of this increase decreases as the supply of physicians grows. I find similar, but weaker, evidence for granting PAs more autonomy. Noneconomic damages caps increase the supply of both NPs and PAs by about 60 percent at the lowest levels of physician supply. Examining the effects of these laws on the prevalence of health professional shortage areas, I find that licensing laws have meaningful effects on access to care.

‘An Underworld in Education’: The Demise of Missouri’s Medical Diploma Mills

A 1923 exposé of medical diploma mills by the St. Louis Star highlighted vulnerabilities in American medical education and licensing. Disparities in quality characterised early twentieth-century American medical schools. In some states, poorly drawn educational chartering laws allowed schools to issue diplomas on the basis of minimal or no legitimate educational experience. Meanwhile, licensing laws conferred an economic value to the medical licence as a credential. This environment provided an opportunity for two outlier schools and several eclectic medical boards to operate in unethical and criminal fashion. Reporter Harry Brundidge’s articles led to the dismantling of one state medical board (Connecticut), reorganisation in another (Missouri) and a fight for existence in a third (Arkansas). The episode also presented an opportunity for structural and philosophical reform of state medical boards. These boards remained insular, professionally dominated bodies focused predominantly on their licensing function with limited interest in an expanded disciplinary role.

The Continuing Burden of Occupational Licensing in the United States

AbstractThis study follows up an earlier study in which we examined the scope and burden of 102 occupational licensing laws in the United States for low‐ and moderate‐income occupations. Using data collected in 2017, findings indicate that the licences studied require of aspiring workers, on average, US$262 in fees, one exam, and about 12 months of education and training, plus minimum grade and age levels. Data also indicate striking disparities in requirements within and between occupations and within and between states. A comparison with licensing requirements in 2012 indicates that requirements have generally increased, with the greatest increase being in fees. Among states, Alaska and Hawaii saw the greatest increases in licensing requirements.

The Design Patent Bar: An Occupational Licensing Failure

Although any attorney can represent clients with complex property, tax, or administrative issues, only a certain class of attorneys can assist with obtaining and challenging patents before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). Only those who are members of the PTO’s patent bar can prosecute patents, and eligibility for the patent bar is only available to people with substantial scientific or engineering credentials. However much sense the eligibility rules make for utility patents—those based on novel scientific or technical inventions—they are completely irrational when applied to design patents—those based on ornamental or aesthetic industrial designs. Yet the PTO applies its eligibility rules to both kinds of patents. While chemical engineers can prosecute both utility patents and design patents (and in any field), industrial designers cannot even prosecute design patents. This Article applies contemporary research in the law and economics of occupational licensing to demonstrate how the PTO’s application of eligibility rules to design patents harms the patent system by increasing the costs of obtaining and challenging design patents. Moreover, we argue that the PTO’s rules produce a substantial disparate impact on women’s access to a lucrative part of the legal profession. By limiting design patent prosecution jobs to those with science and engineering credentials, the majority of whom are men, the PTO’s rules disadvantage women attorneys. We conclude by offering two proposals for addressing the harms caused by the current system.

Surveying Alcohol Outlet Density in Four Neighborhoods of Beirut Lebanon: Implications for Future Research and National Policy.

Underage drinking among youth in Lebanon is increasing. Regulating availability is one of the best buy policies recommended by the World Health Organization. To quantitatively document the current status of alcohol availability to youth in Lebanon, we used GPS technology to survey alcohol outlet density in four highly populated neighborhoods in Beirut, Lebanon, and to estimate their proximity to educational institutions. The density of alcohol outlets ranged from 18.30 to 80.95 per km2 (average of 39.6 alcohol outlets/km2). The highest number of total alcohol outlets was in the “Hamra & Jamiaa” area, which includes one of the largest private universities in the country. Thirteen out of 109 (12%) alcohol outlets (on and off-premise) were located less 100 m away from educational institutions, in violation of the current licensing law. None of the off-premise and the majority (94%) of on-premise alcohol outlets displayed the “no sale for <18” sign. Findings were indicative of an environment conducive to increased access and availability of alcohol among youth in Lebanon probably attributed to the prevailing weak alcohol policies and their enforcement. Systematic collection and reporting of alcohol outlet densities is critical to understand the alcogenic environment and guide local harm reduction policies.

On the Scope Limit and the Time Limit of the Temporary Administrative License Granted by Local Government Rules

Administrative License Law of the People’s Republic of China authorizes local provincial government rules to grant a temporary administrative license with the purpose of satisfying necessary needs of administrative management when governing laws, administrative laws and regulations and local regulations haven’t been formulated. Since the institution has been put into force, a lot of problems have arisen. For example, the scope of the granting of a temporary administrative license is indeterminate and the phenomenon of overdue implementation prevails. This article has adopted the Scope Theory in light of the scope of the granting of a temporary administrative license and defined the boundary of Scope from the perspective of safeguarding civil rights and interests to the full. When a temporary administrative license has expired, it’s still in force as long as related local regulations are under discussion to guarantee the continuity of administrative management, but a deadline shall be set to avoid overdue implementation. A temporary administrative license, which is due, shall become invalid automatically after expiring as long as related local regulations haven’t been submitted to relevant department for approval. When it has been submitted to the Local People’s Congress and its Standing Committee for discussion of further exercise and related local regulations haven’t been formulated, it shall become invalid automatically after the legal time limit, which is equal to the time announced in the discussion result or the deadline set, expires. When the stop time hasn’t been announced before the due date of the legal time limit, related administrative agencies are liable for the administrative counterpart’s loss incurred during the period of overdue implementation.

Talking with teens about traffic safety: Initial feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a parent-targeted intervention for primary care settings

IntroductionThe aims of the current pilot study were to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the Talking with Teens about Traffic Safety Program. The program consists of a clinic-based health coaching session with parents of adolescents at their annual well-child visit to promote parent-teen communication about teen driver safety including: a Parent Handbook that is designed to serve as a primer on teen driver safety and facilitate parent-teen communication on a variety of teen driver topics; an interactive practice driving toolset; and an endorsement of the materials by the primary care provider. MethodFifty-four parent-teen dyads (n = 108 total) were recruited from a primary care practice. Dyads were randomized (1:1) into a treatment group or a usual care group. Implementation fidelity was assessed using checklists completed by health coaches and parent interviews. After 6 months, parents reported how often they talked with their teen about 12 safe driving topics (e.g., state graduated driver licensing laws). ResultsParents in the treatment group reported more frequent discussions than parents in the control group on 7 out of the 12 topics. Fidelity data indicate that 100% of sessions were implemented as designed and were acceptable to parents. ConclusionsThe program was feasible to administer and there was evidence for preliminary efficacy. Generally, effects were larger for more infrequently discussed topics, which is to be expected due to the potential for ceiling effects on more commonly discussed topics (e.g., distracted driving). A larger multi-site study is warranted. Practical applicationsThe results from this pilot study provide support for implementation fidelity and establish a proof-of-concept for the Talking with Teens about Traffic Safety Program. The results provide guidance for developing partnerships with pediatricians and parents to develop parent-teen communication interventions on injury prevention topics.

Decreased healthcare resource utilization associated with enhancement of a state graduated driver licensing law

ObjectiveIn 2007, Ohio implemented additional graduated driver licensing (GDL) provisions to restrict numbers of passengers and nighttime driving. This study evaluated the effects of Ohio's revised GDL law on hospital resource utilization among drivers and occupants involved in crashes with teen drivers ages 16–20 years. MethodsAnalysis of MVCs involving drivers ages 16–20 years in Ohio prior to GDL enhancement (2004–2006) and immediately following GDL enhancement (2008–2010) using linked crash and hospital data was performed. Descriptive statistics and population-based rates of emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations, and inpatient hospital charges and length of stay were compared. ResultsFollowing enactment of the 2007 GDL provisions, decreases were observed in the number of teen occupants and all-age occupants involved in crashes with drivers ages 16–17 years and 18–20 years. In the post-GDL enhancement period, ED visits declined by 22.2–39.9%, and inpatient hospitalizations declined by 54.4–62.5%. Total hospital charges for teen occupants in crashes with drivers ages 16–20 years decreased by $16.3–32.3 million, and for all-age occupants by $29.5–52.6 million. Decreases in total hospital charges occurred despite increases in mean hospital charges post-GDL enhancement. Total days of hospitalization in the post-GDL enhancement period declined by 60.4–67.7% among teen occupants and 55.5–63.2% among all-age occupants. ConclusionsThis study is the first to use linked data to evaluate the effects of GDL on healthcare resource utilization by teen drivers and their occupants. The post-GDL enhancement period was associated with reductions in MVC-related ED visits, inpatient hospitalizations, total hospital charges, and total days of hospitalization. Increases in mean inpatient hospital charges were noted and may indicate a reduction in minor injury crashes. Despite attempts to mitigate the confounding effects of the economy on teen driving, it is likely that economic influences are at least partially responsible for the observed decrease in healthcare resource utilization.

State Licensing Boards, Antitrust, and Innovation

Every state has occupational licensing laws or regulations, which require individuals seeking to offer a certain service to the public first to obtain approval from the state. Occupational licensing requirements historically derive from a desire to protect unwitting consumers from bad actors. In recent years, however, the number of licensed professions in the United States has skyrocketed and licensing requirements have become increasingly onerous. When incumbents wield licensing requirements not as a defensive shield to protect consumers but as an offensive sword to exclude new entrants, serious concerns regarding the competitive implications of the licensing schemes arise. Self-interested incumbents have incentives that may differ from consumers, and these self-interested incumbents can—and sometimes do—impose requirements that do not enhance quality, but rather restrict output, increase prices, and hamper innovation. This Paper explores the competitive implications of state occupational licensing regimes. Part I analyzes the historical development and justification for occupational licensing. Part II reviews the empirical evidence regarding the effects of occupational licensing on factors such as quality, price, innovation, and availability. Part III summarizes how antitrust law, and particularly the state action doctrine, treats state board-enacted occupational licensing. Part IV explores the interplay of occupational licensing and antitrust laws in the United States, delving into a particularly striking case at the intersection of occupational licensing and innovation: Teladoc, Inc. v. Texas Medical Board. Part V provides some suggestions for agency engagement in monitoring the effective use of occupational licensing.

Industrial legislation in Australia in 2017

This article examines key industrial legislation passed by federal Parliament in 2017. The main development in federal industrial legislation for this year, which passed with bipartisan support, saw a weakened Coalition Government (forced from its traditional industrial relations (IR) stance) act to improve protections for vulnerable workers. This initiative introduced extended liability provisions regulating franchisors and holding companies. However, these provisions are a narrow response to an economy-wide problem because they do not establish measures to better regulate supply chains, labour hire and gig economy arrangements for the protection of vulnerable workers. Back in more familiar territory, the Coalition Government managed to implement part of its agenda to further regulate unions by establishing legislation that criminalises bargaining payments by employers to unions. A constitutional crisis over the citizenship status of federal Parliamentarians prevented the Coalition Government from passing legislation designed to curtail trade union activities. The article also considers significant State legislative developments including the introduction of mandatory labour hire licensing laws in South Australia and Queensland, industrial manslaughter laws in Queensland and regulation of ridesharing arrangements in Victoria. The article concludes by contrasting federal criminal penalties against union activity with civil penalties for businesses that exploit vulnerable workers, before suggesting future directions in industrial legislation.

Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care SystemRemaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers

Ensuring America's Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care SystemRemaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers