Salient Cases Research Articles

Justice Bork, or, be careful which supreme court nominees you choose to fight

AbstractObjectiveThis study uses counterfactual analysis to assess whether a hypothetical Supreme Court with Robert Bork as a member would have decided cases differently than the actual Supreme Court.MethodsI utilize both a qualitative analysis, and a quantitative Bayesian counterfactual model to predict Supreme Court case outcomes from 1988 to 2012.ResultsThe results show that several salient cases would have been decided differently, most of the decisions decided over the time frame would have remained unchanged. I also find that a hypothetical Supreme Court with Robert Bork as an associate justice would not have radically shifted rightward. Rather, the results show a brief rightward shift from 1991 to 1994, and a much longer and stronger rightward shift occurring after 2001.ConclusionThe results suggest that scholars and pundits need to think more carefully about which Supreme Court nominees are should be contested in the advice and consent process – at least on political or ideological grounds.

FRI555 A Misdiagnosis Of TSH-secreting Adenoma With Thyrotoxicosis In A Patient With Graves’ Disease

Abstract Disclosure: J. Huynh: None. A. Makawi: None. G. Elshimy: None. Introduction: Modern healthcare relies on laboratory and imaging results for accurate diagnosis and medical decision-making. However, the collection and distillation of laboratory results is a multi-step process with the potential for error at each stage. This may result in diagnostic errors. A review of salient cases is one avenue to improving awareness of the risk for failure in the laboratory assessment process. We present one such case of a patient initially referred to neurosurgery for management of a thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) secreting microadenoma, which is a rare disease and accounts for less than 1% of all pituitary adenomas, with incongruent laboratory presentation including elevation in TSH and free T4. Endocrinology consultation prompted further investigations which led to the diagnosis of Graves’ disease with a concomitant nonfunctional pituitary microadenoma. Case Presentation: This is a case of a 61-year-old white male who presented with 30-lb weight loss, insomnia, palpitations, and diaphoresis. Initial thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) from outside facility was > 90 mcIU/mL with elevated free T4 of 23.4 pg/mL. MRI of the brain shows a 3x3 mm pituitary microadenoma raising concern for an atypical case of TSH-secreting adenoma. The patient referred to Neurosurgery for evaluation by primary care. Endocrinology was consulted for evaluation prior to any surgical intervention. A large goiter was noted on exam. Clinical presentation was highly concern for Graves’ disease. Repeated labs included undetectable TSH with FT4 of 4.4 pg/mL and free T3 12.9 pg/ml. TPO-ab was elevated at 17.1 IU/mL. TSIg index was low. Ultrasound of the thyroid gland revealed a normal thyroid without nodules. He was diagnosed with Graves’ disease and was initiated on methimazole and propranolol with symptomatic improvement. His pituitary panels continued to show suppressed TSH pre and post treatment with no other significant pituitary abnormalities hence the diagnosis of a concomitant nonfunctional pituitary microadenoma was made. Discussion: Ultimately, the initial TSH-secreting microadenoma has deemed a misdiagnosis and he was subsequently treated appropriately for Graves’ disease with normalization of thyroid functions. Standard of care for any laboratory abnormalities is to assess for reproducibility of the result. In our patient, subsequent in-house and outside assays were unable to demonstrate elevation of both TSH and FT4. Instead, the patient had suppressed TSH with elevated FT4, without evidence of nodules consistent with Graves’ disease. Treatment of Graves’ disease differs greatly from the treatment of TSH-secreting pituitary adenoma, which includes surgical resection, radiotherapy, and/or, a somatostatin analog based on the clinical picture. Correct diagnosis prevented our patients from unnecessary surgical complications and lifelong morbidity. Presentation: Friday, June 16, 2023

Particle swarm optimization for the optimal layout of wind turbines inside a wind farm

The wind turbine’s output power is heavily affected by the arrangement of the wind turbine location. Wind farm planning endeavors to firstly maximize the farm’s output energy. Secondly, it seeks to minimize the effects of the wake phenomenon. This paper attempts to find the best possible location of a wind turbine inside a square farm using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method whilst focusing on the three salient cases: the steadiness of wind direction and speed, the variability of the flow direction with a steady speed, and the variability of direction for three discrete wind speeds. The proposed algorithm generated results that will be contrasted to previous studies on the same topic with different metaheuristic methods such as a genetic algorithm. When compared to the optimum findings from prior research, the suggested approach has a reduced cost. It is developed by language C through MATLAB environment considering a square with the dimensions 2×2 kilometers.

Fragmented Transparency: The Visibility of Agency Science in European Union Risk Regulation

AbstractResponding to mistrust in the European agencies’ risk assessments in politically salient cases, the European Union (EU) legislator, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Medicines Agency alike have accelerated their efforts to foster EU regulatory science transparency. These simultaneous endeavours have, however, taken place in a fragmented legislative and administrative context, with each agency operating under a different legal framework. By focusing on authorisation procedures, from registration of studies to authorisation of novel foods, pesticides and human medicines, this article examines the resulting regimes governing the disclosure of scientific data by EU agencies to identify common trends and sectoral specificities. Against the background of an overall shift towards enhanced transparency, we shed light on, first, the circulation of institutional arrangements and practices among agencies and, second, the new dimensions of transparency emerging from these developments. We also highlight the remaining sectoral differences and argue that they could have potentially large impacts on the amount and type of information disclosed and on the level of transparency perceived by stakeholders and citizens. We argue that more coherence across the sectoral transparency regimes is needed, in particular in light of the agencies’ contested legitimacy and of their increasing cooperation on cross-cutting issues like antimicrobial resistance and medicine and pesticide residues in food.

Online publicity and outcomes of individual politically salient criminal cases in an authoritarian regime: evidence from Russia

ABSTRACT In the present study, we analyze the relationship between domestic and international online publicity and individual outcomes of suspects in three recent politically salient cases in Russia. The analysis is based on the data from Telegram – one of the most politically relevant online platforms in contemporary Russia, – Google News and data about individual criminal cases. We find that international online publicity is associated with decreased likelihood of imprisonment for individual suspects, while the relationship between the latter and domestic publicity is less straightforward. Our findings contribute to the scholarship on the connection between (online) publicity and political repression relevant for Russia and, potentially, other autocracies.

Grassroots struggles challenging housing financialization in Spain

Spain was one of the most severely hit countries by the 2008 global financial crisis. More than ten years after, the belated economic recovery has hardly changed the roots of that crisis, especially the financialization of the real estate sector. Remarkably, from 2009 to the present, several grassroots struggles have questioned those roots and demanded solutions to the affordability housing crisis. In this study, we examine two salient cases: the campaign against the Bankia bank and opposition to the international investment fund Blackstone. Both firms forced thousands of home evictions upon financially broken homeowners and tenants, respectively, the latter doing so via sharp rent increases. Here we investigate the claims, protest repertoires and achievements of these housing struggles. Our analysis shows that every type of grassroots’ response was shaped by a distinct process of capital accumulation through the financialization of housing. The first was driven mainly by austerity policies and the second by state-led actions to reignite housing speculation.

Contested comitology? The overlooked importance of the EU Commission

ABSTRACT Composed of member states representatives, the comitology committees are watchdogs that limit the Commission’s discretion in implementing EU law. Yet, these watchdogs appear very tame, eventually adopting all measures proposed by the Commission. This apparent consensus clashes with the institutional skirmishes that characterize the negotiations over the design of the comitology system and the delegation provisions in daily EU legislation. In this article, we offer a quantitive study of the interaction between the Commission and the comitology committees. Using latent class analysis, we identify two worlds of comitology. Dealing with technically complex, non-salient cases, the first world is characterized by high specialization and hardly any dissenting comitology votes. By contrast, the second world includes politically salient cases, mobilizing high levels of expertise in the Commission and about 35% dissenting comitology votes. In the second part, we zoom in on this second world, studying under which conditions dissenting votes appear.

CLIL Students’ Affectivity in the Transition between Education Levels: The Effect of Streaming at the Beginning of Secondary Education

ABSTRACT This study looks into the affective factors influencing students’ experiences in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) at the beginning of bilingual secondary education (at the age of 11–12), when being streamed into two strands with a different degree of exposure to CLIL, depending on their linguistic competence. Results were drawn from 10 structured interviews with students spotted as salient cases in 157 validated questionnaires. Students’ responses to the interviews were analyzed following Grounded Theory. The categories emerging from the analysis are related to students’ values, attitudes and beliefs towards bilingual education, their motivation, perceptions on learning and degree of satisfaction with their strand. Our findings indicate that instrumental motivation plays an important role in these students’ views, which vary depending on the strand: i.e., students in the high-exposure strand seem to see themselves more at ease and in control of their choices, whereas low-exposure strand students experience more ambivalence over the transition.

Exploring dissent in the Supreme Court of Argentina

When dissents are allowed, judges must decide whether or when to write them. While the main insights of rational dissent theory have been documented and corroborated in several empirical studies, there has been much less evidence testing on how different types of dissent may affect the likelihood of dissent. Particularly, dissents in more salient cases, or more forceful dissents, may have stronger legal effects than dissents appearing in less relevant cases or very narrowly construed dissents. Our article aims to fill that gap in the literature by seeking to isolate varying levels of appeal intensity and types of dissents in the Supreme Court of Argentina. Unlike previous literature, we find that more important cases have a lower likelihood of carrying a dissenting opinion. Yet, when we breakdown dissents by type (that is, reasoned dissents versus boilerplate dissents), we find that majority decisions carrying dissents tend to be longer, but only in cases of reasoned dissents. Furthermore, we show that reasoned dissents are more likely to occur in important cases. Overall, our study highlights that not all dissents should be treated alike as different types of dissent carry different levels of collegial and effort related costs. These costs affect the likelihood of dissent in different and complex ways.

Misreading the directors’ fiduciary duty of good faith

ABSTRACTThe fiduciary duty of good faith, now set forth in section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, expressly positions shareholders at the centre of the company’s interests, and assigns the priority entitlement to shareholders relative to all other stakeholders. The provision constitutes an attempted codification of the common law duty to act in good faith in the corporate interest, which remains immensely important in interpreting and applying the modern good faith requirement. However, this article submits that a reductive shareholder-determined articulation of the pre-2006 corporate interest seems practically misconceived, if not indeed in some sense conceptually impossible as a managerial behaviour obligation, and represents a departure from the common law doctrinal origins that is problematic for contemporary English company law and policy. Instead, the article provides a more functional and nuanced understanding of the salient cases, which focus typically on the company as a body corporate, and the particular free floating commercial objects of that entity.

Detecting the "gist" of breast cancer in mammograms three years before localized signs of cancer are visible.

After a 500 ms presentation, experts can distinguish abnormal mammograms at above chance levels even when only the breast contralateral to the lesion is shown. Here, we show that this signal of abnormality is detectable 3 years before localized signs of cancer become visible. In 4 prospective studies, 59 expert observers from 3 groups viewed 116-200 bilateral mammograms for 500 ms each. Half of the images were prior exams acquired 3 years prior to onset of visible, actionable cancer and half were normal. Exp. 1D included cases having visible abnormalities. Observers rated likelihood of abnormality on a 0-100 scale and categorized breast density. Performance was measured using receiver operating characteristic analysis. In all three groups, observers could detect abnormal images at above chance levels 3 years prior to visible signs of breast cancer (p < 0.001). The results were not due to specific salient cases nor to breast density. Performance was correlated with expertise quantified by the number of mammographic cases read within a year. In Exp. 1D, with cases having visible actionable pathology included, the full group of readers failed to reliably detect abnormal priors; with the exception of a subgroup of the six most experienced observers. Imaging specialists can detect signals of abnormality in mammograms acquired years before lesions become visible. Detection may depend on expertise acquired by reading large numbers of cases. Global gist signal can serve as imaging risk factor with the potential to identify patients with elevated risk for developing cancer, resulting in improved early cancer diagnosis rates and improved prognosis for females with breast cancer.

Analyzing Psychotherapeutic Failures: A Research on the Variables Involved in the Treatment With an Individual Setting of 29 Cases.

The effectiveness of psychotherapeutic treatments has been widely demonstrated and confirmed by many studies in recent decades. The research focused on the factors of change influencing the positive outcomes of a psychotherapy, putting those that are crucial in cases of failure into the background. The dimensions of this phenomenon are relevant as well as the side effects of the psychotherapeutic interventions that reach the same percentages of the pharmacotherapeutic treatments. The study of the variables involved in failure cases therefore seems important to prevent or moderate the negative effects of treatments with a negative outcome. Impasse and deadlock situations, which may result in an early interruption of psychotherapy, are often complex and involve situational, relational, and personal factors at different levels and with different weight. A research was conducted, with a mixed approach, aimed at exploring the situational factors involved in dropout cases. In addition, the evaluation of the psychotherapist’s emotional responses related to patients who terminated psychotherapy prematurely was investigated. The study was attended by a sample of 29 psychologists, experienced psychotherapists from different frameworks. Recent or salient cases of a hesitated psychotherapy with an early interruption were examined. For the first objective, a structured interview (Impasse Interview) was used, while the second one was reached by the administration of the TRQ (Therapist Response Questionnaire). The transcripts of the interviews were analyzed through a textual analysis software and five salient thematic clusters were identified. These were then assimilated to different areas of meaning: severity of the diagnosis, procedural aspects and lack of understanding of the stall in progress. Two other important themes emerged: the critical aspects concerning relational dynamics and a focus on maternal theme. Overall these five thematic areas seem to play an important and specific role compared to dropout cases. Finally, statistical analysis on emotional responses have highlighted some values above the average in these four countertransference factors: Helpless/Inadequate, Parental/Protective, Positive/Satisfied, and Overwhelmed/Disorganized. It is hypothesized that particular emotional responses of the psychotherapist may be prognostic with respect to the outcome of psychotherapy.

Case Salience and the Influence of External Constraints on the Supreme Court

AbstractRecent scholarship suggests that Supreme Court decision making is significantly constrained by Congress and the public, often arguing that case salience is a key factor in the operation of these constraints. However, scholars have developed different theoretical expectations regarding the effects of case salience on justices and have found empirical support for mutually contradictory theories. Furthermore, these studies rely on an endogenous measure of case salience. I replicate two leading studies using a theoretically appropriate measure of case salience in order to shed new light on this important topic, finding evidence of constraint from the public in salient cases.

Research Note:Twitter and the Supreme Court: An Examination of Congressional Tweets about the Supreme Court

We provide a descriptive overview of how members of Congress employed Twitter to discuss the Supreme Court from 2011 to 2014. The data suggest that members sporadically respond to Supreme Court decisions on Twitter. When they do so, it is typically in response to highly salient cases with clear partisan dimensions. The article highlights the nature of congressional tweets about the Court, especially in responses to the Court’s decision in National Federation of Businesses v. Sebelius (2012). It provides insight into the nature and limit of modern-day inter-branch relations and the separation of powers.

Reassessing the Supreme Court: How Decisions and Negativity Bias Affect Legitimacy

While the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is generally considered essential to its influence, scholars continue to debate whether the Court’s decisions affect individuals’ assessments of it. The last week of the 2013 term provides an unusual opportunity to evaluate these issues because the Court made a conservative decision concerning the Voting Rights Act (VRA) only one day before it made a liberal one about same-sex marriage. We use original panel data of individuals’ views throughout this period, including a wave collected on the day between the two decisions, to investigate the links among decisions and legitimacy. We find that diffuse support for the Court is sensitive to decisions in these two salient cases conditional on individuals’ ideological distance to the Court and their policy support. Moreover, the negative effects of an unfavorable decision are stronger than the positive effects of a favorable one.

Why Dismiss a Good Case? Dual-Purpose Judicial Institutions in Constitutional Courts Under Autocracy: Evidence from Russia

The Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) has over time developed a practice of adopting so-called “positive dismissals” (Pozitivnoe Opredelenie) which complements (but also undermines) the existent formal procedure of only delivering decisions on merits with Rulings (Postanovlenie). The paper explores the uses of this peculiar practice. I show that Positive Dismissals are used by the Court to overcome the rigidity of the formal procedure where this is necessary for reasons of intraorganizational or political expediency. To do that I construct and analyze quantitatively a unique comprehensive dataset of all decisions handed down by the RCC roughly in the first two decades of its existence (1995-2015, N=22334). I show that “positive dismissals” are used whenever the case is deemed too important to be simply dismissed (for example, if it is submitted by a powerful petitioner), or when the Court cannot dismiss a case but wants to keep low profile to avoid political risks (for example, with the politically salient cases during election years).

Anticorruption by Fiat: Structural Injunctions and Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India

Structural injunctions – where the court issues a series of interim orders over a period of time in an effort to stimulate institutional reform – are about as old in India as public interest litigation (PIL) itself. They are now virtually the default remedy in PILs at the Supreme Court. This article focuses on how structural injunctions were deployed in two politically salient cases during the United Progressive Alliance government between 2004 and 2014 – the “2G Spectrum” case and the “Coalgate” case. A close examination of these cases reveals a broader picture not just about the state of PIL and the use of structural injunctions, but also about the perception and popular legitimacy of the Supreme Court in India’s constitutional democracy.

A Jury of Her Peers: The Impact of the First Female Jurors on Criminal Convictions

This article uses an original data set of more than 3,000 cases from 1918 to 1926 in the Central Criminal Courts of London to study the effect of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. Implemented in 1921, this Act made women eligible to serve on English juries. Results based on a pre-post research design imply that the inclusion of women had little effect on overall conviction rates but significantly impacted conviction rates on particularly female salient cases: sex offences, violent offences with female versus male victims and female defendants charged with ‘other’ (largely abortion related) offences.

Disagreeable Rhetoric and the Prospect of Public Opposition: Opinion Moderation on the U.S. Supreme Court

Elite rhetoric is an important aspect of democracy, and understanding why elites alter their rhetorical tone is vital to understanding the nature of public–elite interaction. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which insulated elites respond to public opinion by changing the amount of disagreeable rhetoric they emphasize. We examine Supreme Court opinions and theorize that the majority limits the use of disagreeable rhetoric—language with harsh, unpleasant, or negative connotations—in salient cases with the intention of dulling public opposition to rulings. We test our expectations on two levels, the first using a broad measure of public mood on a large sample of cases and the second using a small sample with issue-specific public opinion measures. We find that as public opinion diverges from the Court, the majority tones down its disagreeable rhetoric, but only in salient cases.

Making Rights Come Alive

New environmental rights were introduced in Argentina with the 1994 amendments to the 1853 national constitution. This constitutional recognition of environmental rights is a fundamental step in the advancement of environmental justice and citizenship, but it is not enough. When and how do environmental rights become effective? Under what circumstances are environmental rights effectively applied and enforced? We claim that participation is the key mechanism through which constitutionally enacted environmental rights become effective. More specifically, we argue that the embodiment of constitutional environmental rights in concrete policies and practices are propelled by the combination of contentious and institutionalized modes of participation. Based on evidence from two contrasting and salient cases—river sanitation in the Metropolitan Buenos Aires Region and open-pit mining in Andean Argentina—this article discusses how the combination of different modes of participation has been an effective channel for the enforcement and effectiveness of environmental rights.