Review Of State Statutes Research Articles

How do States Inform Nurses of Their Policies for Mandatory Reporting of Child Maltreatment?

Every state includes nurses as mandated reporters of suspected child maltreatment, and each state has its own law and policy regarding what is reportable and reporting requirements. These differences mean that generic training on child abuse and reporting needs to be augmented by practical state-specific information. In nearly every study of nurses, participants report having inadequate child abuse training. This paper presents an analysis of the information states post on their websites to educate nurses to appropriately identify and report suspected child abuse or neglect. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following questions: (1) how do mandated reporting laws that apply to nurses vary by state, (2) what information do states provide on their child protection and Board of Nursing websites about child maltreatment and mandatory reporting, and (3) what training resources do states make available on their websites to educate nurse mandatory reporters to ably fulfill their obligation? Data on state-by-state practices regarding mandated reporting of child abuse were gathered from the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) database, review of state statutes, Child Welfare Information Gateway, Board of Nursing sites, and the Nursing Licensure Compact (NLC) website. This analysis found that states provide little guidance or education about their child maltreatment laws, and few have resources targeted for nurses. Given rising membership in the NLC it is critical for nurses to have education about state specific mandated reporting requirements. States should consider adding mandatory reporting training as a requirement for licensure and for continuing education.

Juvenile Waiver 2014: A Review of State Statutes

AbstractJuvenile waiver has received much attention from the public, practitioners, and scholars. Prior studies have documented the increased use and effects of waiver. In this study we examine the current state of the law regarding juvenile waiver. We replicate 1995 and 2003 studies that examined state waiver statutes and detail the changes in prosecutorial, judicial, and legislative waiver since 2003. While the juvenile crime rate has dropped dramatically, it is unclear why legislatures’ fascination with juvenile waiver has also decreased. In this study we determine that juvenile waiver remains popular with legislatures, although there are signs of change.

Federalism and Judicial Independence: Supreme Court Review of State Statutes, 1987-2000

To analyze Supreme Court invalidation of state statutes, I incorporate the innovations that Anna Harvey and Barry Friedman developed in their groundbreaking work on the Court’s judicial review of federal statutes. I use their techniques to correct for selection bias and to accurately compare ideological preferences across institutions. Unlike the findings by Harvey and Friedman concerning judicial review of federal statutes, I do not find evidence supporting the constraint model in invalidations of state legislation. The analysis indicates that the Supreme Court employs a different calculus when it reviews the constitutionality of legislation passed in the states as opposed to that enacted by Congress.

Characterising the landscape of state environmental review policies and procedures in the United States: a national assessment

Following the intent of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, many states have adopted policies and procedures directing state agencies and local government units to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of development projects prior to their undertaking. In contrast to a rich literature on federal requirements, current understanding of state environmental review is narrowly focused and outdated. This paper seeks to provide information on the landscape of state environmental review policy frameworks. The paper identifies 37 states with formal environmental review requirements through a document review of state statutes, administrative rules and agency-prepared materials, and confirms this finding through a survey of state administrators. A two-tier classification is used to distinguish states based on the approach taken to address environmental review needs and the scope and depth of relevant policies and procedures implemented. This paper also provides a discussion of policy and programme attributes that may contribute to effective practice, and of the potential for adopting relevant legislation in states where environmental review is currently lacking.

The Effect of Limiting Participation in Special District Elections to Property Owners: A Research Note

Scholars have found significant policy differences between special districts governed by elected officials and those overseen by appointees. However, their research ignores U.S. Supreme Court rulings that allow many special districts to restrict electoral participation to property owners. This study finds that the presence of officials elected by property owners upon a district's governing board is related to a reduced reliance upon property taxes for revenues and a greater reliance upon service charges. Using Census data sets and a review of state statutes, the study demonstrates that board elections can be an effective means for property owners to influence policy.

Ideological Extremism, Public Preferences, and Federal Judicial Review in the U.S. Supreme Court

With the recent anniversary of Marbury vs. Madison, our national fixation with judicial review celebrated its 200th birthday. The roots of that obsession are straightforward: the practice of judicial review - by which often unelected and largely politically unaccountable courts review and decide upon the constitutionality of duly-enacted state and federal statutes - appears on its face to be patently undemocratic, a state of affairs exacerbated by courts' seemingly frequent adventures into striking down laws which are longstanding, widely popular, or (occasionally) both. As with many obsessions, however, this one has often produced more heat than light, particularly when it takes on its more partisan forms. In this paper, I hope to begin to change that, by offering an overview of the practice of judicial review over the past five decades. I focus on the most prominent example of judicial review: constitutional review of federal laws by the U.S. Supreme Court. I do so for reasons of tractability, and in doing so, I don't wish to minimize the significance of judicial review in other contexts, including the uniquely problematic questions surrounding federal judicial review of state statutes. Rather, my hope is to point out how little in fact we know, empirically speaking, about the operation of judicial review at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court, and in doing so to examine some of the common understandings (and potential misunderstandings) about its occurrence. More important, my goal is to provide a more solid empirical footing for the ongoing (and increasingly heated) ideological debates about the role of judges and courts - particularly the U.S. Supreme Court - in shaping American society and law. It is also important to recognize at the outset what I am not endeavoring to accomplish here. I offer neither a theoretical critique nor a defense of judicial review per se; that is well-trod ground. Nor am I interested in waging an attack on the use of judicial review by any particular Court, past or present; the fact that my analysis encompasses a period from the earliest days of the Warren Court to the the Rehnquist Court's zenith in the late 1990s serves only to broaden the generality of my empirical conclusions. Perhaps most important, the paper is not an attempt to wrestle - at least, not directly - with the counter-majoritarian difficulty (cf. Friedman 2002). At the same time, the work here should illuminate debates in all these areas, particularly those over the existence of an intrinsic political bias to the use of judicial review that has been suggested by many scholars and pundits.

Small Group Health Insurance

States are ranked based on the potential of their small group health insurance reforms to enhance health insurance uptake. Reforms were quantified based on their market impact potential. Five dimensions of reforms were identified, Access Improvement, Premium Reduction, Premium Differential Reduction, Continuity of Coverage, and Enhancing Valued Plan Features. The reform indices representing these dimensions were developed based on document review of state statutes, combined with actuarial judgment to identify and assign scores to market-relevant regulations in line with their impact potential. The distribution of the states' reform scores and rankings show wide variation in the depth and focus of their reforms. Only seven of the top ten states on the Total Reform index had consistently higher scores on two or more reform dimensions. The conceptual linkages between specific regulations and the documented small group market problems lead to normative expectations of an association between the depth of state reforms and the prevalence of uninsurance.

Psychologists and civil commitment: Review of state statutes.

Psychologists and civil commitment: Review of state statutes.

Psychologists and civil commitment: Review of state statutes.

Psychologists and civil commitment: Review of state statutes.