US Legislation Research Articles

Formation and Development of the Armenian Lobbying Organizations in the USA: Historical Context

The United States has one of the most developed Armenian communities, which, since its formation, has strongly supported Armenia and Armenians by lobbying for Armenian interests within the US legislative and executive branches, both at local and federal levels. Lobbying is a vital part of the American political system, playing a decisive role in both domestic and foreign affairs. The significance of lobbying in US political processes, combined with the current political circumstances in Armenia, underscores the importance of studying ethnic lobbying. The article presents the historical context of the formation and development of the Armenian lobby in the US.

For growth or equity: a taxonomy of ‘Bidenomics’ place-based policies and implications for US regional inequality

ABSTRACT Emerging US place-based policies aim to maintain US competitiveness and address widening regional inequalities simultaneously. However, scholarly debates question whether such logics can be reconciled within place-based policy agendas. This article identifies 33 place-based policies in recent US legislation and categorises each across a novel four-part policy taxonomy. Using multimethod qualitative analysis the study classifies programmes by primary strategic intent (growth or equity) and by primary scale of focus (regional or national). It contributes to regional policy debates by describing emerging US place-based policy designs in detail, and by estimating implications of the US’s place-based policy resurgence for long-run regional inequalities.

The use of electronic evidence in the criminal process of foreign countries

It is emphasized that electronic evidence has become indispensable for criminal investigations and trials around the world. The importance of legal regulation of the criminal procedural form of digital technologies is emphasized. The improper nature of such regulation entails certain legal consequences, including the recognition of electronic evidence as improper or inadmissible. The experience of some foreign countries in the field of recognition and use of electronic evidence (the USA, Great Britain, the People’s Republic of China and the countries of the European Union) is analyzed. It has been proven that each state builds its own way and approach to incorporating such evidence into its legal systems depending on legal traditions, technological infrastructure and privacy considerations. From the analysis of procedural codes, it was noted that procedural science develops a theory of electronic evidence according to the industry principle. It is emphasized that they are based on common digital technologies, therefore this provides an opportunity to develop uniform cross­industry rules for the use of electronic evidence in any process. It was determined that in the Anglo-Saxon legal system there is no clear division of evidence into types. Evidence law is based on typical problem situations. The US legislation, which regulates the use of electronic evidence in the criminal process, is analyzed. It is noted that the condition for their acceptance is its authenticity and relevance to the case. It is noted that in the UK, all electronic evidence is subject to the same rules and laws that apply to documentary evidence. The legislation of the European Union, which regulates electronic evidence and allows to strengthen cooperation between member states in the field of using electronic evidence, is analyzed. It is emphasized that as states continue to adapt to the age of digital technologies, the development of a reliable legal framework and international cooperation will be essential to ensure the effective and fair use of electronic evidence in the pursuit of justice.

An uncertain participant: victim input and the black box of discretionary parole release

Objective: to analyze the impact of the victim’s input in the parole process according to the US legislation. Methods: dialectical approach to cognition of social phenomena, allowing to analyze them in historical development and functioning in the context of the totality of objective and subjective factors, which predetermined the following research methods: formal-logical and sociological. Results: Little is understood about the parole release process, as state parole boards predominately operate with incredible discretion and keep their deliberations and rationales hidden from public view. Even less is understood about the intersection of the inscrutable parole release decision-making process and victim rights. As the victim rights movement mobilized in the1970s, victims, instead of remaining passive witnesses, came to wield significant influence over the release decision process. Today, victim participation in parole proceedings is increasing as most parole boards proclaim how important victims’ voices are and, in turn, actively incorporate victim input into their release calculus. Yet, it is not entirely clear what role, if any, victims should have in the release process because it is not entirely clear what purposes parole release should serve more generally. Rather than resolving these pressing questions that are at the heart of the release decision, the current system gives individual parole board members a great degree of discretion when it comes to how they approach victim input and the role it should serve. This approach has resulted in a release process that treats victim input in a troubling and inconsistent manner, which is unfair to inmates, victims, and parole board members alike. Scientific novelty: To make sense of this situation, this paper identifies four analytical frameworks for understanding discretionary parole release, which reveal board members’ options for approaching victim input. Ultimately, the author proposes that parole boards should approach the release decision as an evaluation of both the inmate’s rehabilitation and the extent to which sentencing’s retributive and deterrent goals have been met. In this vein, victim input should only influence the release decision if it provides information, not emotion, that the inmate is not rehabilitated or that the judge's minimumsentence did not accurately reflect the impact of the crime and that retribution or deterrence has not been met. In recognition of the implications of such an approach, the article proposes procedural changes to the release decision and structural changes to parole boards. These recommended reforms are animated by principles of equity, transparency, and procedural justice. Applying this approach to victim input in the parole process and implementing the corresponding procedural changes can hopefully create a system that is fairer for inmates, minimizes risks of secondary harms to victims, and protects board members from improper external pressures. Practical significance: the main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific, pedagogical and law enforcement activities when considering the issues related to parole release process.

Treating abandoned mine drainage can protect streams cost effectively and benefit vulnerable communities

Some communities endure environmental hazards from abandoned mines and job loss from the energy transition away from coal. Recent US legislation provides a historic appropriation for abandoned mine hazards like the acidic water that often drains from them. Who the investment will benefit and what it will accomplish is unclear. Here we provide answers for the case of abandoned mine drainage in Pennsylvania. We find that communities most exposed to mine drainage have incomes 30 percent below that of unaffected communities and are twice as vulnerable to the energy transition. Within affected communities, exposure is associated with a greater urban, non-white, renter population. Analytical modeling using data from past treatment efforts shows that they have been relatively cost effective, protecting streams for about $5700 per kilometer per year. Federal appropriations for Pennsylvania could address all impaired streams for 25 years but would leave insufficient funding for other abandoned mine hazards.

International experience in the application of agreements in criminal proceedings

Further study of the institution of “agreements in criminal proceedings” is appropriate taking into account three main factors: analysis of historical experience, generalization of the practice of applying current legislation and study of foreign experience: criminal procedural legislation and the practice of its application. The institution of criminal proceedings based on agreements is a successful “borrowing” of the legislative experience of other states and belongs to special judicial procedures. Perceived positively by society, as the possibility of an agreement between the suspect or the accused and the prosecutor or the victim provided by law has become a common alternative way of resolving criminal legal conflicts. In the legislation of the European Union, the procedures for making a court decision on the basis of a plea agreement are not completely identical to the practice in the legislation of the United States: the initiative of the parties in resolving the issues of prosecution is transformed by the impossibility of changing the accusation by agreement, and the “passive position” of the court in deciding the procedure for resolving the criminal case proceedings is its limited activity. The special procedure for passing a court decision on the basis of a plea agreement has a procedural legal nature, similar to continental conciliation procedures: they are based on the consent of the parties, but are not related to the conclusion of the agreement by the parties as a process of negotiations regarding its terms, formalization of the agreements reached in a certain way. The subject of agreements is agreement with the charges presented, or the punishment proposed by the prosecutor, or the simplification of the court procedure for consideration of criminal proceedings. Under the influence of the European procedural culture and practice, the agreement in the US legislation on the recognition of guilt acquires new characteristics: the court often shows wide boundaries for consideration (discretion) in imposing punishment; takes an active part in the discussion of the terms of the conclusion of the agreement by the parties; as a result of the prosecutor’s unlimited powers to make decisions regarding the conclusion of the agreement, the latter becomes similar not to a bilateral agreement between the accused and the prosecutor after adversarial negotiations, but to a unilateral determination by the prosecutor of the degree of guilt of the accused and the appropriate punishment for him.

Становление и развитие институтов прямой демократии в США: историко-правовой аспект

Direct democracy appeared in the United States back in the colonial period. However, when the country became sovereign in the late XVIII century, the founding fathers gave preference to representative democracy in order to prevent the mob rule. This research traces the history of various institutions of direct democracy in the United States. The late XIX – early XX centuries saw an era of progressivism in the United States: civil society struggled against negative social, political, and legal phenomena. Implementation of referendums, general direct elections, recalls of officials, etc., into the legal system seemed a perfect solution. In the early XX century, these institutions were enshrined in the legislation of some Western states and proved rather effective. The so-called second wave of direct democracy occurred after 1950s, and institutions of direct democracy became even more widespread. This process reached its peak in the late XX – early XXI centuries. As a result, they predominate in the current US legislation. The USA are currently going through a further rise in direct democracy, which is even more implemented into the legal system. The American experience of direct democracy is of considerable interest to Russia as it may help to improve the domestic state mechanisms of making socially important decisions.

Commercial spaceflight: Regulatory framework assessment and safety perspectives

Recent years are witnessing the rapid technological development in airspace domain, actually paving the way to the development of a commercial space market. Until the recent past, space operations have been essentially performed by research centers or military agencies, in usually segregated areas to ensure third parties’ safety, governed by launch base regulations and organized in an unscheduled manner. However, with the entry of private companies into the space domain, a new market niche is being created: that of commercial space transportation. For example, a promising area is the one related to operations performed by commercial suborbital flights, whether aimed at space tourism or simply transporting things and/or passengers from one point to another on the Earth's surface. The traffic volumes are supposed to increase in next years and segregating airspace does not represent a sustainable solution for the future.The present paper will first assess the state of the art of the regulatory framework currently applicable to operators in order to obtain authorization to perform space missions for commercial use, then propose a comparison between the United State of America and European regulatory frameworks. Main challenges related to regulatory aspects will be identified and perspectives on possible higher airspace operations integration in the medium-long term will be derived. Finally, safety considerations deriving from a seamless accommodation of higher airspace operations in current Air Traffic Management will be derived for the medium-long term. In conclusion, this work reveals that neither the United States nor Europe has formally approved a legal framework establishing certification procedures for sub-orbital space transport systems. Currently, the US legislation is the most applicable as it has comprehensive rules to allow operators to obtain flight authorization ensuring compliance with requirements through a compliance matrix periodically updated.

Of Mothers and Mutants

This essay brings counterhumanist and queer feminist approaches to bear on issues of maternity, intimacy, loss, cartography, and affect. I turn to Mario Acevedo Torero’s mural The Rage of La Raza (1974) to consider lost histories, lost subjects, and—extending Sylvia Wynter—a genre of loss. I contend that Torero memorializes Mexican Indigenous and Asian American mothers who, rendered absent by the violences of US legislation and court rulings, continue to haunt the legal and extralegal systems of classification that have “queered” their Chicanx and mixed-race Asian American children as mutants and outsiders. By conjuring these ghost mothers, this artist resists the erasure of unruly intimacies between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, and related genealogies of knowledge, that has enabled racial, settler, and imperial regimes of liberal humanist governance. Furthermore, in using the mural as a map, Torero expands the borderlands into Asian waters, allowing the viewer to feel and think beyond the strictures of dominant nationalisms. Ultimately, this essay demonstrates the valuable interventions that Chicanx aesthetic practices can make within multiple subfields of critical ethnic studies, settler colonial studies, and Chicanx feminist studies.

Employee ownership in the US: some issues on ESOPs – overcoming the barriers to further development

PurposeThis viewpoint will present some statistical information about employee ownership in the US and interpret and analyze this information in order to address the barriers question using material from qualitative interviews that the authors have conducted over the last ten years with practitioners in the field. There have been few actual empirical studies that sort out the different barriers to employee ownership. The authors have chosen to focus on employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) in the US because this is the principal example from which people could learn from, and the high prevalence of ESOPs plays an important role in the US. This overview will present interpretations of these interviews with conceptual arguments that cannot always be supported with either overwhelming empirical studies or arguments that conclusively eliminate one or other explanation. This is an initial attempt to bring some comprehensive treatment and data to this incipient discussion. This is based on an interpretive analysis of qualitative interviews without quantification or social survey methods used for measurement. The advantage of this approach is that it lays out a completely different level of analysis of the barriers to employee ownership in the US that is “closer to the ground” and more based in the views of front-line practitioners who are actually implementing it.Design/methodology/approachAnalysis and interpretation of qualitative interviews.FindingsThe list of barriers that has been identified is not exhaustive. The preliminary conclusions are that (not necessarily in this order) limitations of investment banking models, poor supportive infrastructure, complexity and cost and regulatory issues, the lack of support by political parties and social movements, the sale of companies due to financial considerations and legal complexities and lack of clarity and resistance by Federal agencies are major barriers in the US. Various sectors of Wall Street has been amenable to employee ownership with the proper government and private sector support. What is needed now is a series of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews of retiring business owners in closely held companies and of CEOs and CFOs in stock market companies in order to gauge the barriers that they believe are blocking their own action in the employee share ownership area. The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing is working on such a research agenda at this time. In addition, with the future size of the US employee ownership sector at stake, a more intensive one-year interview project would make sense in order to present these different explanations to key actors and practitioners and ask them to provide evidence to prove or disprove the relevance of the different barriers.Research limitations/implicationsEmpirical research which can resolve which barriers are more important than others is presented, when possible; however, studies that provide metrics to compare different barriers are not available and need to be carried out.Practical implicationsOther countries considering employee ownership policies can learn from the US experience. US policymakers and legislators can learn from an original, recent discussion of barriers.Social implicationsIf employee ownership sectors are to be developed, a careful discussion of barriers is most relevant.Originality/valueOriginal document by the authors based on original interviews.

"INSOLVENCY LAW IN THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS"

"This article studied and analyzed the history of insolvency law of Uzbekistan, issues of protection of the entrepreneurs’ rights, restoring solvency of the debtor, and satisfaction of creditors’ claims with the use of insolvency procedures in accordance with the bankruptcy law of the Republic of Uzbekistan. In addition, when determining the signs of insolvency, it was analyzed that monetary obligations and debts on mandatory payments should be taken into account, and claims arising from labor relations should not be grounds for initiating bankruptcy proceedings. Particular attention was paid to the objectives of the credit policy when establishing insolvency regimes, based on two goals - fair distribution of risks and maximizing the value of the debtor’s assets. The models of insolvency regulation are analyzed using the example of the countries of Europe and the USA; their experience is compared with the practice of Uzbekistan. In particular, it has been established that rehabilitation norms appeared in US legislation and were subsequently used as a model in European countries, and the legislation of many countries is currently improving its legislation on the rehabilitation of the debtor. Analytical conclusions, ideas, and recommendations were also developed on the need to develop the concept of insolvency in Uzbekistan and the priorities that should be reflected in it."

Role of Board Composition Index in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Disclosure: Evidence From United States

Corporate directors play a crucial role in meeting the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting obligation. Thus, how to promote CSR practices through MNCs has attracted the attention of scholars. This study aims to investigate the impact of the board composition index on CSR disclosure in the context of the United States. In addition, the study examines whether board characteristics (board size, board diligence, board duality and board independence) impact CSR disclosure. Panel data for S&P 1500 index firms were collected from the data stream portal. The current study employed a sample of 286 US firms from 2010 to 2020. To achieve the research objectives, the current study develops an index score very first time for board composition. A panel regression model with fixed and random effects was employed to estimate the proposed hypotheses. In addition, the problem of endogeneity was resolved through the dynamic GMM model. The results of the study revealed that the board composition index has a significant impact on the disclosure of CSR information. Moreover, higher board diligence and independence in US corporates enhance CSR disclosure. However, board duality and the size of the board room negatively and significantly impact CSR. US policymakers and legislators make reforms in composition and structure to build stakeholders’ interest. In addition, no study combined such corporate board variables to address CSR in developed countries. The findings of the study are consistent with both institutional and stakeholder theory.

Campaign contributions, partisan politics, and environmental polarization in the US Congress

Abstract Prior literature has shown strong and increasing polarization on environmental voting in the US Congress, with Democrats tending to support pro-environmental (“green”) legislation and Republicans opposing it. Employing a regression discontinuity design, we provide a causal estimate of the effect of partisanship on the importance of campaign contributions from brown industries received by US legislators. Electing a Republican rather than a Democrat for the House (Senate) leads to an increase of 96% (70%) in the importance of contributions from anti-environmental (“brown”) groups. We also find that greater dependence on brown groups is associated with less pro-environmental voting for legislators from both parties and the greater the importance of brown contributions the more (less) likely that a legislator breaks the party line when its party favors (opposes) pro-environmental legislation. Finally, we provide an analytical narrative of the rise and pattern of environmental polarization consistent with our empirical findings. (JEL D72, Q58)

Donor activity is associated with US legislators' attention to political issues.

Campaign contributions are a staple of congressional life. Yet, the search for tangible effects of congressional donations often focuses on the association between contributions and votes on congressional bills. We present an alternative approach by considering the relationship between money and legislators' speech. Floor speeches are an important component of congressional behavior, and reflect a legislator's policy priorities and positions in a way that voting cannot. Our research provides the first comprehensive analysis of the association between a legislator's campaign donors and the policy issues they prioritize with congressional speech. Ultimately, we find a robust relationship between donors and speech, indicating a more pervasive role of money in politics than previously assumed. We use a machine learning framework on a new dataset that brings together legislator metadata for all representatives in the US House between 1995 and 2018, including committee assignments, legislative speech, donation records, and information about Political Action Committees. We compare information about donations against other potential explanatory variables, such as party affiliation, home state, and committee assignments, and find that donors consistently have the strongest association with legislators' issue-attention. We further contribute a procedure for identifying speech and donation events that occur in close proximity to one another and share meaningful connections, identifying the proverbial needles in the haystack of speech and donation activity in Congress which may be cases of interest for investigative journalism. Taken together, our framework, data, and findings can help increase the transparency of the role of money in politics.

Abstract P116: Differences In Shared Decision Making Among Patients With Hypertension

Background: Shared decision-making (SDM) is sanctioned by US legislation and promoted by hypertension guidelines. However, evidence is scarce for ethnically diverse groups. We aimed to examine the relationships between SDM, blood pressure, self-identified race/ethnicity, and baseline characteristics among patients with hypertension. Methods and results: Secondary data analysis of a pragmatic clinical trial with individuals with uncontrolled hypertension using linear regression and generalized estimating equations. Participants (n=1426) were predominantly middle-aged (mean 60 years ± 11.6), female (59.4%, 847), non-Latino Black people (59%, 844), and high school graduates or below (65%, 931). SDM was averaged at 7.2 (±2.6) out of 9, SBP at 152.2 (±12.0), and DBP at 85.3 (±12.1) mmHg. We found a greater reduction in SBP over time with higher SDM mean score (B -0.44, p 0.032). Positive association was found between SDM and patient activation (B 0.01, p=0.001), considering taking blood pressure medication as very important (B 0.56, p=0.022), and patients’ self-reported race/ethnicity. Non-Latino Black people had 0.74 points higher mean SDM score (p<0.001) than Non-Latino White people. On the contrary, the association was negative for knowing that high blood pressure is the same as hypertension (B -0.35, p 0.046), and education. Those with more than high school education had lower mean SDM (B -0.44, p 0.045). Conclusions: Future research should further explore SDM differences among racial/ethnic groups to better align care with needs of patients with hypertension. Our results offer actionable information to enhance clinical practice and policy development.

The US at the Margins of Business and Human Rights

Abstract The US often portrays human rights to be Western values America cherishes. But what happens when American corporations abuse human rights transnationally? While a decade ago, the US could be considered to be one of the most advanced jurisdictions in terms of business and human rights litigation, now it is no longer the case. The US Judicial, Legislative and Executive branches all appear to be behind a number of other countries in terms of ensuring that domestic corporations respect human rights and the environment transnationally. In the past decade, US courts have substantially limited the possibility of suing corporations for transnational torts; US lawmakers have failed to adopt a mandatory due diligence law of general application requiring US multinationals to oversee and prevent human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains; and the US Government, under three separate administrations (the Obama, Trump and Biden) have consistently opposed a UN treaty initiative for the Elaboration of an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. Is this negative trend reversible?

Materializing the metaphor: Theorizing the food desert as a sociospatial–legal instrument in the production of space

In June of 2022, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a new framework to address and transform the food system, including a commitment to increase funding to the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) to the tune of $155 million to address “food deserts.” This investment is perplexing given the decade of scholarship and activism critiquing the food desert concept and its tendency to invite supply-side, corporate food retail development, of which the HFFI is emblematic. Bringing legal geographies to critical food studies, this article argues that the food desert concept, as invoked, spatialized, and abstracted by the USDA, is better understood as a socio-spatial-legal instrument imbricated in the production of space. First, this article attends to the USDA's use of the food desert as a guiding metaphor in the production of abstract space, highlighting the dominant characterizations of abstract space—fragmentation, homogenization, and hierarchy. Second, this article traces how this abstraction is materialized through US legislation and policy aimed at “fixing food deserts,” most readily through the HFFI. In the context of extensive scholarship that has criticized the prioritization of capital development and food retail, this analysis engages radical food geography praxis to outline a new terrain for struggle, namely where the discursive comingles with and co-constitutes the legal and spatial. From this analytical vantage point, this article demonstrates how the food desert concept, through US law and policy, is made material and spatial in ways that reproduce inequitable food landscapes and foreclose more radical approaches to food equity. Beyond the context of the food desert concept, this analysis offers an account of how discourse is rendered material, and the consequences therein.

Unraveling the Thought Probes of US Legislators on Trade Negotiations: Sentiment Analysis of the 108th and 112th US Congressional Speeches*

A plethora of literature has investigated the voting behavior of US legislators on trade bills to reveal a possible causal mechanism. Relying on dichotomous roll‐call voting data, however, has certain limitations on revealing the comprehensive thought probes of lawmakers on a complex diplomatic issue such as making an FTA deal. In this paper, we provide new insight to fill such a gap by analyzing congressional speech data during FTA ratification procedures. Using an automated web scraper, we collected the entire speech data (N = 5,372) of Senators and House Representatives in the 108th and 112th US Congress regarding AUSFTA and KORUS FTA, respectively. The speech sentiment analysis results show background and context (i.e., attitude‐behavior inconsistency) in the process of trade negotiations and agreements. Additionally, the results help identify important factors (i.e., ideology, constituency stimuli) that influence whether members of Congress stand for and against the FTA implementations.

The insurance role in workplace health promotion: a comparative analysis of the United States and the Philippines.

There is a void in the health promotion literature concerning the role of health insurance. This study offers a comparative analysis of employee health insurance in the United States and the Philippines. As the first study of its kind, it examines insurance as an instrument of health promotion policy for improving population health and reducing healthcare costs. The following questions guide this study: (i) How has insurance coverage of employee healthcare in these two countries evolved and changed over time, and why? (ii) What factors incentivize payers (employers and insurers) to incorporate health promotion into their health plans, even if health promotion does not fall within the traditional ambit of insurance? and (iii) How does health promotion through the insurance vehicle operate cost-efficiently and within the Global Health Promotion framework of the World Health Organization (WHO)? US and Philippine public-use datasets were gathered and disaggregated to address these questions. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the US and universal healthcare legislation leading to the Universal Healthcare Act (UHC) in the Philippines initiated major paradigmatic shifts in insurance coverage. Health literacy, behavioral change and social equity are objectives pursued in both countries by mandating and/or nudging payers to offer health screenings, wellness and fitness programs and primary preventive and diagnostic services. By providing a means to finance access to promotive health and encourage individual responsibility for risk prevention ('healthism'), insurance influences social attitudes about health. However, our findings indicate that outcomes and relative success vary depending on a country's insurance environment, its regulation and the economic, political and socio-cultural forces that affect or shape it (e.g. private markets vs. multi-payer system). Contextual realities also drive incentives and rewards to payers and users of promotive health benefits against the backdrop of financial risk or exposure.

DNDO IN THE US STATE MECHANISM TO COMBAT NUCLEAR TERRORISM

Based on the analysis of the relevant US legislation, the article discusses the complex issues of forming a system for combating acts of nuclear terrorism, including coordination of interaction between state bodies and organizations in detecting signs of possible threats. Modern challenges and threats (terrorism, regional conflicts, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction) in the context of the aggravation of the international situation, the improvement of technologies actualize the problem of counteracting acts of nuclear terrorism and the topic of the article. The purpose of this work is to explore the complex issue of the distribution of functions of US government agencies through the analysis of the mission of the Internal Office for the Detection of Nuclear Weapons (DNDO), aimed at combining the efforts of state and local governments within the framework of a system for detecting radioactive materials that are out of regulatory control. The author has revealed the adaptability of the structure of the state bodies of the United States to changes in actual threats of a nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological nature. As a result of the analysis of the functions of the DNDO, the readiness and ability of the state to combine the efforts of the elements of the state's mechanism for detecting nuclear or radiological terrorist attacks and responding to them are substantiated. A government-coordinated response can minimize the humanitarian and economic impacts, prevent public confidence in the US government machinery at the federal, state, and local levels, and the government's ability to respond to the crisis.