Cancer of Unknown Primary Site:A Review of 28 Cases and the Efficacy of Cisplatin/Docetaxel Therapy at a Single Institute in Japan

We evaluated the efficacy and toxicity of cisplatin/docetaxel (CDDP/TXT) chemotherapy and identified prognostic factors in Japanese patients with cancer of unknown primary site (CUP). Twenty-eight consecutive patients seen at a single institute were reviewed retrospectively. Sixteen patients were treated with TXT 80mg/m2, followed by CDDP 75mg/m2. The overall response rate to CDDP/TXT treatment was 62.5%, with a median survival time (MST) of 22.7 months. Common adverse reactions were myelosuppression and hyponatremia. The MST of all 28 patients with CUP was 8.3 months, and the 1-year overall survival rate was 45.6%. Univariate analysis identified 5 prognostic factors:performance status, liver involvement, bone involvement, pleural involvement, and lymph node involvement. In conclusion, CDDP/TXT chemotherapy is effective with tolerable toxicity in patients with CUP. Japanese patients with CUP might be chemosensitive and may survive longer

Review of Data Sources for School to Work Transitions by Youth with Disabilities

DE15_PDF1.pdf: 1031 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020.0-DE15_TXT1.txt: 200 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Adaptive Estimation of Autoregressive Models with Time-Varying Variances

Stable autoregressive models of known finite order are considered with martingale differences errors scaled by an unknown nonparametric time-varying function generating heterogeneity. An important special case involves structural change in the error variance, but in most practical cases the pattern of variance change over time is unknown and may involve shifts at unknown discrete points in time, continuous evolution or combinations of the two. This paper develops kernel-based estimators of the residual variances and associated adaptive least squares (ALS) estimators of the autoregressive coefficients. These are shown to be asymptotically efficient, having the same limit distribution as the infeasible generalized least squares (GLS). Comparisons of the efficient procedure and the ordinary least squares (OLS) reveal that least squares can be extremely inefficient in some cases while nearly optimal in others. Simulations show that, when least squares work well, the adaptive estimators perform comparably well, whereas when least squares work poorly, major efficiency gains are achieved by the new estimators.Adaptive estimation, Autoregression, Heterogeneity, Weighted regression

Criminalizing Normal Adolescent Behavior in Communities of Color: The Role of Prosecutors in Juvenile Justice Reform

There is little dispute that racial disparities pervade the contemporary American juvenile justice system. The persistent overrepresentation of youth of color in the system suggests that scientifically supported notions of diminished culpability of youth are not applied consistently across races. Drawing from recent studies on implicit bias and the impact of race on perceptions of adolescent culpability, Professor Henning contends that contemporary narratives portraying black and Hispanic youth as dangerous and irredeemable lead prosecutors to disproportionately reject youth as a mitigating factor for their behavior. Although racial disparities begin at arrest and persist through every stage of the juvenile justice process, this Article focuses specifically on the unique opportunity and obligation that prosecutors have to address those disparities at the charging phase of the juvenile case. Professor Henning implores juvenile prosecutors to resist external pressures to respond punitively and symbolically to exaggerated perceptions of threat by youth of color and envisions a path toward structured decision making at the charging phase that is informed by research in adolescent development, challenges distorted notions of race and maturity, and holds prosecutors accountable for equitable decision making across race. While fully embracing legitimate prosecutorial concerns about victims’ rights and public safety, Professor Henning frames the charging decision as one requiring fairness, equity, and efficacy. Fairness requires that prosecutors evaluate juvenile culpability in light of the now well-documented features of adolescent offending. Equity demands an impartial application of the developmental research to all youth, regardless of race and socioeconomic status. Efficacy asks prosecutors to rely on scientifically validated best practices for ensuring positive youth development and achieving public safety. Thus, even when neighborhood effects and social structures produce opportunities for more serious and more frequent crime among youth of color, prosecutors have a duty to evaluate that behavior in light of the current developmental research and respond to that conduct with the same developmentally appropriate options that are so often available to white youth. As the gatekeepers of juvenile court jurisdiction, prosecutors should work with developmental experts, school officials, and other community representatives to develop and publish juvenile charging standards that reflect these goals. To increase transparency and encourage buy-in from the public, Professor Henning recommends that prosecutors track charging decisions according to race and geographic neighborhood and provide community representatives and other stakeholders with an opportunity to review those decisions for disparate impact. Finally, to ensure that communities of color are able to respond to adolescent offending without state intervention, Professor Henning contemplates a more expansive role for prosecutors who will engage and encourage school officials and community representatives to identify and develop adequate community-based, adolescent-appropriate alternatives to prosecution

The State of the Death Penalty

The death penalty is in decline in America and most death penalty states do not regularly impose death sentences. In 2016 and 2017, states reached modern lows in imposed death sentences, with just thirty-one defendants sentenced to death in 2016 and thirty-nine in 2017, as compared with over three hundred per year in the 1990s. In 2016, only thirteen states imposed death sentences, and in 2017, fourteen did so, although thirty-one states retain the death penalty. What explains this remarkable and quite unexpected trend? In this Article, we present new analysis of state-level legislative changes that might have been expected to impact death sentences. First, life without parole (LWOP) statutes, now enacted in nearly every state, might have been expected to reduce death sentences because they give jurors a non-capital option at trial. Second, legislatures have moved, albeit at varying paces, to comply with the Supreme Court’s holding in Ring v. Arizona, which requires that the final decision in capital sentencing be made not by a judge, but by a jury. Third, states at different times have created state-wide public defender offices to represent capital defendants at trial. In addition, the decline in homicides and homicide rates could be expected to contribute to the decline in state-level death sentencing. We find that contrary to the expectations of many observers, changes in the law such as adoption of LWOP and jury sentencing, did not consistently or significantly impact death sentencing. The decline in homicides and homicide rates is correlated with changes in death sentencing at the state level. However, this Article finds that state provision of capital trial representation is far more strongly and robustly correlated with reduced death sentencing than these other factors. The findings bolster the argument that adequacy of counsel has greater implications for the administration of the death penalty than other legal factors. These findings also have implications beyond the death penalty and they underscore the importance of a structural understanding of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in our system of criminal justice

Issuance of the Keystone XL Permit: Presidential Prerogative or Presidential “Chutzpah”

This article uses President Trump\u27s issuance of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit to illustrate the dangers of an imperial presidency, one in which the exercise of discretionary authority, based on neither the text of Article II of the Constitution nor a statute, will in all likelihood be unchecked by Congress, the courts, or popular opinion. To understand the dimensions of this concern, Part I of this article briefly describes the process and requirements for a presidential permit. Part II identifies key facts surrounding issuance of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit, the chronology of its issuance, and commonly given reasons supporting or opposing the permit. Part II includes a discussion of non-legal arguments favoring permit issuance, such as its projected economic and national security benefits and the promotion of beneficial relations with a border country, as well as those against its issuance, such as its projected environmental harm and the dangerous precedent it may set as a way to avoid environmental accountability for presidential activities that may have a significant adverse effect on the environment. Part III looks more closely at the constitutional arguments justifying the permit\u27s issuance, finding potential support in the President\u27s prerogative powers as well as in his constitutionally assigned role as Commanderin-Chief of the Army and Navy, his duty to oversee foreign relations, and to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Part IV identifies the extent to which Article II cabins the President\u27s authority to issue the Keystone XL Pipeline permit and how its issuance may violate the separation of powers doctrine. The arguments that the courts, Congress, and the public will check any abuse of power by the President and that this use of presidential power is supported by precedent are set out in Part III and then critiqued in Part IV. The last part of the article, Part V, broadens the perspective on the issuance of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit. More specifically, the Part discusses how its issuance reflects an accretion of presidential power and questions the wisdom of potentially unbalancing the balance of powers between the two branches of government in the current political environment. Much of the Part\u27s discussion centers on then--Professor Elena Kagan\u27s strong support for a dominant president, what she calls a “presidential administration,” and those who disagree with that idea. The article concludes the President may have stepped beyond the limits of his Article II enumerated and discretionary constitutional powers by issuing the Keystone XL Pipeline permit. In treading on Congress\u27 constitutional authority, President Trump\u27s action risks the creation of an uncheck-able imperial presidency, beyond even what Justice Kagan envisioned. This type of presidency may do serious permanent damage to the constitutional structure of our government, outlasting, in the specific situation, President Trump\u27s days in office

Panel Assignment in the Federal Courts of Appeals

It is common knowledge that the federal courts of appeals typically hear cases in panels of three judges and that the composition of the panel can have significant consequences for case outcomes and for legal doctrine more generally. Yet neither legal scholars nor social scientists have focused on the question of how judges are selected for their panels. Instead, a substantial body of scholarship simply assumes that panel assignment is random. This Article provides what, up until this point, has been a missing account of panel assignment. Drawing on a multiyear qualitative study of five circuit courts, including in-depth interviews with thirty-five judges and senior administrators, I show that strictly random selection is a myth, and an improbable one at that—in many instances, it would have been impossible as a practical matter for the courts studied here to create their panels by random draw. Although the courts generally tried to “mix up” the judges, the chief judges and clerks responsible for setting the calendar also took into account various other factors, from collegiality to efficiency-based considerations. Notably, those factors differed from one court to the next; no two courts approached the challenge of panel assignment in precisely the same way. These findings pose an important challenge to the widespread assumption of panel randomness and reveal key normative questions that have been largely ignored in the literature. Although randomness is regarded as the default selection method across much of judicial administration, there is little exposition of why it is valuable. What, exactly, is desirable about having judges brought together randomly in the first place? What, if anything, is problematic about nonrandom methods of selection? This Article sets out to clarify both the costs and benefits of randomness, arguing that there can be valid reasons to depart from it. As such, it provides a framework for assessing different panel assignment practices and the myriad other court practices that rely, to some extent, on randomness