Professor Miller Research Articles

Deconstruction and the Yale School: An Interview with J. Hillis Miller

J. Hillis Miller (1928–2021) was one of the most prominent figures in literary criticism and theory. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he taught at Johns Hopkins University, Yale University and the University of California at Irvine. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 2002. Miller was president of the Modern Language Association of America in 1986 and contributed significantly to professional academic institutions and organizations throughout his career. As an important representative of the Yale School, he had close relationships with Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom. Dr. Ning Yizhong did postdoctoral research under his supervision at UCI from 1997 to 1998. This is part of his interviews with Professor Miller during that time. In this interview, Miller talks about the Yale School in general, and Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man and Harold Bloom in particular. 1

How can the health sector support Canada's net-zero ambition?

How can the health sector support Canada's net-zero ambition? As the Honourable Steven Guilbeault has clarified, if Canada is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, we will need “all-hands-on-deck.” Fiona A. Miller, Professor & Director at the Centre for Sustainable Health Systems, University of Toronto in Canada, explores Canada's net-zero ambition, looking in particular at the role of the health sector in decarbonisation. However, achieving Canada's net-zero ambition of neutral greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is a complex and challenging goal that requires a whole-of-society approach. The initiative calls for all companies operating in Canada to voluntarily commit to developing and implementing a plan to achieve Canada's net-zero ambition, supported by clear technical standards and public reporting requirements. So far, the 2030 emissions reduction plan aims at “clean air and good jobs, a healthy environment and a strong economy.” The problem lies in the significant gap in the Federal Government's plans: the health sector's direct contribution to the net-zero transition. Healthcare is a highly resource-intensive and polluting industry, estimated at 5.2% of global emissions and increasing. Moreover, Canada's health sector is estimated to be the second most carbon-intensive in the world after that of the U.S. There is clearly work to do, Professor Miller evaluates.

Rejoinder

Judging from his reply Professor Miller seems to believe more in open education, as defined in my article, than in allowing freedom in education. He feels that certain skills and knowledge are necessary for everyone to learn and that, therefore, we have not only the right, but also the responsibility, to require that everyone learn them. I do believe that it is important, though perhaps not necessary, to learn certain skills and knowledge if one is to live happily in our culture. However, I would also suggest that an individual given the freedom to decide what he learns does not resist learning them eventually as much as Professor Miller seems to fear, especially when shown their importance in a noncoercive manner. To be sure there is a lot of resistance and inability at present, but a good deal of this is a result of requirement, pressure, and expectation.

(Book Review) The Necessary and Proper Clause and Its Legal Antecedents

This essay reviews The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause — a book by Gary Lawson, Geoffrey P. Miller, Robert G. Natelson, and Guy I. Seidman. In the book the authors contest the conventional wisdom that there is no firm historical basis for understanding the Necessary and Proper Clause. Professor Natelson contends that the clause picked up incidental powers principles of agency law, including a general requirement of reasonableness and more detailed fiduciary duties of impartiality, good faith, and due care. Professors Lawson and Seidman trace the Necessary and Proper Clause to traditions of English administrative law that imposed “reasonableness” requirements on official decision-makers. Finally, Professor Miller reads the clause in light of analogous language in eighteenth-century corporate charters that reflected a reasonably close means-ends requirement and an anti-discrimination principle. Rather than try to draw any definite conclusions about the meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause, the essay examines, more generally, how to make sense of the nitty-gritty details of the private or public law backgrounds of an important constitutional clause. First, starting from the premise that interpreters should ask what legal conventions a “reasonable” lawmaker might be expected to know, the essay explains why we might care about the private or public law backdrops to the clause even if we have no proof that any of those frameworks subjectively influenced a constitutionally sufficient majority of ratifiers. Second, the essay differentiates, for interpretative purposes, between adopting a term of art and merely borrowing an off-the-rack legal construct from a particular legal context. When drafters borrow a widely used legal construct (such as an incidental powers clause), it may not make sense to import all of its associated obligations into a new and different area of law, especially when the same type of construct is common to many diverse legal frameworks. Third, the essay suggests a way for thinking about the burden of persuasion when legal scholars uncover lost constitutional meanings, as the book does.

Presence of Mind

This article presents the results of a study into the effects of meditation practice on the lives of professional educators, specifically educators who either began or continued such practice during course work led by Professor Miller at the University of Toronto. The study incorporates semistructured interviews with 12 participants to track their current engagement with meditative practice. Respondents attest to the power of meditation to aid in reducing stress, increasing awareness of oneself and others, and promoting healthier interpersonal communication. These educator-practitioners also assert their belief in the power of regular meditation to help mitigate and improve their relationships with students, colleagues, and family members as well as to facilitate teacher presence.

Increased Frequency for Delaware Choice of Law in Merger Agreements and the Implications for Scholarly Research

The legal community has long recognized that business corporations heavily favor Delaware as the state of incorporation. However, a recent study suggested that despite Delaware’s prominence as the place of incorporation, companies “flee” from Delaware with respect to both choice of law and forum, and instead prefer New York. In Professor Eisenberg and Miller’s study, while 181 acquirers were incorporated in Delaware, only 135 chose Delaware law, and while there were only five acquirers that were incorporated in New York, 63 merger contracts chose New York law. Building on Professor Eisenberg and Miller’s work, we study a data of 343 merger and acquisitions contracted on between January 1, 2011 and June 30, 2011. We find that companies only display a New York bias when companies have connections to New York. In other words, a company’s place of incorporation, place of business, and merger attorneys’ locale substantially influence the choice of law for merger deals. Our study shows that by eliminating acquirers that are domiciled — either incorporated or having a primary place of business — in New York, as well as eliminating merger attorneys that have presences in New York, the data reflects little New York bias.Specifically, when the acquirer has no place of business in New York, only 12.23 percent of the merger deals chose New York law. Going one-step further, out of the ninety merger deals that did not have any New York connection, only 8.89 percent chose New York law. By eliminating all New York connections, the study shows that companies are much less likely to choose New York law. Moreover, the data reflects that a Delaware incorporated acquirer is more likely to choose Delaware law to govern their merger deals than any other state law — 64.37 percent of Delaware incorporated acquirers chose Delaware law, whereas only 14.94 percent chose New York law. Indeed, our data shows that when we follow the methodology and use the assumptions of the Eisenberg and Miller study in constructing our data set, the frequency with which Delaware law was chosen to govern the merger deal had substantially increased when compared to the frequency with which Delaware law was chosen by the parties in the Eisenberg and Miller study. Our results further nullify the premise that Delaware corporations are engaged in a flight to choose New York law in their merger agreements.

Syndicated Leveraged Loans During and After the Crisis and the Role of the Shadow Banking System

In an article published in this journal in 1998, Nobel laureate Merton Miller argued that one of the best weapons available to national economies in their defense against the macroeconomic effects of banking crises is the availability of non‐bank financial institutions and products—or what we now refer to as the “shadow banking system.” Although Miller may have exaggerated the independence of bank‐ and market‐based sources of financing, the author argues that events during and after the recent crisis have shown Miller's claims about the importance of non‐bank investors in the provision of credit to be fundamentally correct.Critics of securitization and the shadow banking system tend to focus on the subprime mortgage story in which the sudden re‐pricing of credit risk and the resulting disappearance of investment demand for ABCP, private‐label mortgage‐related ABS, and ABS CDOs created unexpected and significant downward price pressure on those asset types. But the leveraged loan market tells a very different story. In contrast to the near complete disappearance of private mortgage securitizations, the extraordinary recovery of the U.S. syndicated leveraged loan market demonstrates that the relation between commercial and shadow banking has proved to be a highly productive and resilient one—and very much a two‐way street. When leveraged loans and CLOs experienced problems from 2007 through 2009 due primarily to the widespread liquidity and credit market disruptions that affected essentially all structured credit products, institutional investors in leveraged loans disappeared and the leveraged loan primary market imploded. But when institutional participants recognized the value of the underlying asset—corporate loans—and regained confidence in shadow‐banking products, leveraged lending by banks recovered quickly and dramatically.This outcome is viewed as vindicating Professor Miller's statement about the benefits of shadow markets and securitization— namely, the role of non‐bank investors in diversifying the risk of credit creation while at the same time improving the price discovery process in different markets. The recent history of the U.S. leveraged loan market demonstrates that shadow banking system participants play a critical role in meeting the total demand for such loans, and that the ebbs and flows from institutional leveraged loan markets are strongly connected with the health and integrity of the underlying leveraged bank loan market.

Ending War

In “The Ethics of America's Afghan War,” Richard W. Miller argues that reflecting on whether and how to end the war in Afghanistan exposes serious deficiencies in just war theory. I agree, though for different reasons than those canvassed by Professor Miller. Miller argues that by focusing on the traditional categories of just cause, proportionality, and necessity (or last resort), just war theory obscures the importance of broader geostrategic considerations that he believes are the most plausible—though ultimately for Miller insufficient—rationale for continuing with the strategy of large-scale counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. I doubt that geostrategic considerations can play the role in moral assessment that Miller believes they do. But the phenomena he is pointing to do illuminate important defects in traditional just war theory.

Enabling Monsters: A Reply to Professor Miller

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Editor's Note

Editor's Note David Brakke This special issue, guest edited by Kim Haines-Eitzen and Georgia Frank, collects six essays on the theme "Bodies and Boundaries in Late Antiquity" in honor of Patricia Cox Miller. It is appropriate that JECS publish these essays, not only because Professor Miller's work has been so influential in the field, but also because she has made an important contribution to the success of the journal. Professor Miller has served as an Associate Editor since the founding of JECS; in this role she has provided me and my predecessors with invaluable advice and counsel on numerous issues, large and small. She has contributed many of her best essays to our pages. This issue expresses the gratitude of the journal's editorial team and of the North American Patristics Society for her scholarship and service. [End Page v] Copyright © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press

The New Indian Housing Act and Some of its Environmental Implications

In October 1996, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act (NAHASDA) became law. The Act created a fundamental change in how American Indian Tribes and the federal government operated and funded housing assistance programs on Indian reservations. Such assistance was and still is drastically needed. Indian people live in third-world conditions on most reservations and safe, adequate, and sanitary housing is in very short supply. This Article dissects and analyzes the Act and also sets out the history of federal housing assistance to Indian reservations, which only began in 1961. Professor Miller worked with the Negotiated Rulemaking team under the Federal Advisory Committee Act that drafted NAHASDA's regulations and the Article discusses that process and the regulations that resulted. The authors also address the environmental implications of the Act and from expanding the housing supply on reservations.

CHRISTOPHER R. MILLER. The Invention of Evening. Perception and Time in Romantic Poetry.

The Cambridge Studies in Romanticism series, in which this clever and readerly book appears, has long been associated with the historicist instincts of its general editors, Marilyn Butler and James Chandler; so it is with a gentle shock of mild surprise that you read, on page 10, Professor Miller's statement of his ‘implicit polemic’: ‘a claim that questions of form, genre, literary tradition, and aesthetic ambition continue to be worth asking; an assertion of the continuing vitality of (for want of a better term) close reading; a demonstration of the premise that poems, as Wallace Stevens once said, are made out of other poems; a reminder that not all interpretive questions can be helpfully answered with reference to historical events or contexts’, and so on. A lot of recent books have been rediscovering ‘questions of form’ and ‘aesthetic ambition’; and not before time, I would agree; but it is still striking to see such sentiments between Cambridge covers. To say that poetry comes out of other poems, in particular, feels a real kick against the pricks. I thought it was Northrop Frye who offered that dubious piece of wisdom (on p. 97 of Anatomy of Criticism), but Professor Miller knows what he's talking about and I’m sure Stevens said it too: the sentiment is certainly in tune with those memorable Stevens mots, in which poetry charms away the very world (‘We live in the description of a place and not in the place itself’, and the like). But then he said other, and somewhat contradictory, things as well. My favourite, from Adagia, is: ‘The real is only the base. But it is the base’; and, actually, I think that sort of aphorism, which acknowledges a something outside poetry as well as everything that's within it, captures rather better what's most enjoyable and insightful about this very good book.

The Chinese Society of Anesthesiology: 2006 Annual Meeting

The Chinese Society of Anesthesiology (CSA) 2006 Annual Meeting was held on September 9–11, 2006, at the Zhenzhou International Exhibition Center, Henan Province, China. The annual meeting was cosponsored by the Henan branch of the CSA and was attended by more than 2600 anesthesiologists representing six countries. Invited guests included internationally renowned speakers from the United States (USA), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore, Japan, and China. There were 2261 abstracts and 287 invited oral presentations, including refresher courses, panels, and clinical case discussions. A variety of anesthesia fields were covered, including clinical anesthesia, pain medicine, critical care medicine, and anesthesia education. Professor Shuren Li, from Beijing Friendship Hospital, president of the CSA opened the meeting. This first session was moderated by Professor Ailun Luo, from Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and Junke Wang, from the First Hospital, China Medical University, Shenyang. President Shuren Li provided a summary of the annual activities of the CSA. Internationally, the CSA became an official member of the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesia. The CSA has completed a survey of the demographics of Chinese anesthesiologists. The CSA has tried to provide more training and educational opportunities across the country, and is also set to strengthen the training of anesthesiologists in the western areas of China. Thereafter, Professor Steven Shafer from Stanford University, USA, provided an update on propofol and target-controlled infusion (TCI) highlighting relevant pharmacokinetic concepts and new developments in the field. Professor Adrian W. Gelb, University California San Francisco, USA, presented a lecture on “Perioperative Stroke in General Surgical Patients.” Professor Gelb discussed the risk factors and management of perioperative stroke and outlined the role that China could play in helping to better understand this problem. Professor Mervyn Maze, Imperial College, UK, reported on “Mechanism and Perioperative Application of
2 Agonists” highlighting both laboratory and clinical studies. Professor Ronald D. Miller, University California San Francisco, USA, gave a report on “The Future of Anesthesia (the Next 20 Years) and the Role of Technology.” Professor Miller described new drugs and the wonderful opportunities in the future for anesthesiologists to be involved in perioperative care and illustrated the important role of new technology. All of the invited lectures presented in English were simultaneously translated into Mandarin and the PowerPoints were in both languages to facilitate communication. The meeting was held in five meeting halls beginning the afternoon of September 9 and all sessions ran in parallel. Dr. Xiangyang Guo, from Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and Dr. Liyun Zhao, from Beijing Anzhen Hospital, discussed issues of “Anesthesia for Patients with Diabetes Mellitus or Pulmonary Artery Hypertension.” Dr. Guo reviewed the literature showing that the control of perioperative blood glucose level was very important in determining outcome. His lecture advised Chinese anesthesiologists to pay more attention to the management of blood glucose of surgical patients with diabetes mellitus. Dr. Zhao provided an update on “Research About Pulmonary From the *Department of Anesthesiology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China; †Department of Anesthesiology, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China; ‡Department of Anesthesiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China; and §Department of Anesthesiology, University California San Francisco, School of Medicine, San Fransisco, California. Accepted for publication July 3, 2007. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Yun Yue, Department of Anesthesiology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, 100020, Beijing, China. Address e-mail to yueyun@hotmail.com. Copyright © 2007 International Anesthesia Research Society DOI: 10.1213/01.ane.0000281077.53805.50

On the mechanism of brain injuries. By Alexander Miles, MD, FRCS. Edin. Syme Surgical Fellow (From the Laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh) Brain 1892: 15; 153 189; Experimental cerebral concussion. By D. Denny Brown and W. Ritchie Russell (From the Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford) Brain 1941: 64; 93 164

That a bang on the head may prove fatal has been known since Biblical times. Despite the celebrated description by Alexis Littre in 1705 of a condemned criminal who anticipated his executioner by head-banging until dead but without breaking his skull, the nature of fracture-less head injury is not so clear. Although many doubt that this can happen, no less an authority than Mr Jonathan Hutchinson has argued that violence of the shake may itself lead to death. Do uncontrolled brain vibrations follow rapid alteration in shape of the skull (as proposed by Professor Miller of Edinburgh)? Perhaps not, since the brain has some freedom of manoeuvre in the cranium: it is a hollow structure, requiring I atmosphere pressure to cause compression by 1/25 000th of its volume; and the meninges or tentorium must tear in the face of such distortions. Is it due to diffuse petechial haemorrhage and cerebral contusions? Could the explanation lie in focal brain lesions caused by squeezing the intracranial vessels or congesting their venous drainage? Is it all due to reflex changes in brain perfusion dependent on cardiac output and peripheral nerve stimulation? Or is it merely a ‘ fons et origo mali ’? To answer these questions, Dr Miles has experimented on anaesthetized rabbits, struck variously on the head with a force insufficient to cause death, and observed the effects. He notices profound irregularities and slowing of the heart beat, and a reduced respiratory rate. The altered reactivity of blood vessels and poor oxygenation, identical to ‘anaemia of the brain’ observed following ligation of the main extracerebral vessels, depend on efferent discharges in the restiform bodies. Studying anaesthetized experimental animals and pigs with swine fever being slaughtered, Dr Miles concludes that this reflex vasospasm leads to tetanus followed by paralysis and cardio-respiratory collapse. Next, …

Professor Miller replies

Professor Miller replies

Martha Graham, Professor Miller and the Work for Hire Doctrine: Undoing the Judicial Bind Created by the Legislature

The current work for hire doctrine, as embodied by 17 U.S.C. Sections 101 and 201 and interpreted by the judiciary, provides a default rule of copyright ownership in favor of employers where a work is created by an employee in the scope of employment. In the absence of a written agreement, a finding that an engagement is a work for hire under the statute automatically results in all ownership being vested in the employer. This result often contradicts business norms and the understanding of one or both of the parties. In this Article, I advocate abolishing the all-or-nothing concept of ownership in favor of a more particularized analysis that emphasizes the expectations of the parties. This would involve first reversing the current, pro-employer statutory presumption and then analyzing whether, and to what extent, the employer may have a license to the work

Learning from a Keynote speaker: Lessons from Merton Miller's PACAP addresses

For 10 of its first 11 years, Professor Merton Miller served as the Keynote speaker for the PACAP conference. This article reviews and synthesizes Professor Miller's remarks. His Keynote Addresses were wide-ranging and covered such topics as index arbitrage, stock market bubbles, portfolio insurance, regulation of financial markets, derivatives, capital controls and others. The connecting theme of Professor Miller's Addresses was his unyielding belief that capital markets, especially when unfettered by regulation, can and do play a critical role in facilitating economic growth and opportunity. He coupled that theme with a call for PACAP and its members to contribute to that growth and, thereby, to the well-being of the people of the Pacific Basin countries.

Hobbes and the Imitation of God

This note discusses the implications of an incorrect quotation that appeared in Ted H. Miller's article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God', from Inquiry42.2 (1999). Although surely inadvertent, this error is significant because the author uses it to support the thesis that Hobbes envisions philosophers imitating God by creating order out of chaos. The correct quotation from Leviathandoes not support such a thesis, and the paragraph in Leviathanfrom which it is taken actually runs counter to it. The correct quotation, taken in its context, and a passage from De Corporecited by Professor Miller reveal that Hobbes encourages philosophers to imitate God by following the order of creation in contemplation. In other words, philosophers imitate God by imitating the creation.

IS AMERICAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FATALLY FLAWED?

Journal of Applied Corporate FinanceVolume 6, Issue 4 p. 32-39 IS AMERICAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FATALLY FLAWED? Merton H. Miller, Merton H. Miller Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Professor Miller won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990. *Search for more papers by this author Merton H. Miller, Merton H. Miller Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. Professor Miller won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990. *Search for more papers by this author First published: Winter 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6622.1994.tb00246.xCitations: 15 My thanks for helpful comments from my colleagues Steven Kaplan and Anil Kashyap and from Donald Chew. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume6, Issue4Winter 1994Pages 32-39 RelatedInformation

Information retrieval and comprehension in humans and computers

In one sense, I feel that it is unfair to comment on Professor Miller's paper, since so much has changed since it was published in 1968. Technology has shrunk in size and increased in power by orders of magnitude. Theories of learning and information processing have transcended one or more paradigm shifts. So, reconciling what I know now with what Professor Miller wrote two and one half decades ago appears to give me an unfair advantage. What makes it a reasonable task, however, is that, in light of these technological and theoretical changes, so many of Professor Miller's ideas about spatial cueing and imaging for facilitating information retrieval remain cogent and plausible. So, I will assume the challenge by first stating some fundamental assumptions of my research and beliefs about learning and the future of technology and later enumerate some research conclusions related to retrieval of information and then comprehension of information, all the while trying to relate the research to Professor Miller's remarks.