Mixed Messages: The Supreme Court’s Conflicting Decisions on Juries in Death Penalty Cases

The right to a jury determination of a capital defendant\u27s fate has expanded recently. The era of judges making factual determinations then determining whether to apply a death sentence or judges having the power to overrule a jury\u27s life sentence to impose death is over. The expanded right to access a jury and have it hold determinative power over a defendant\u27s life has not, however, been accompanied by commensurate attention to the instructions that guide those jurors through the applicable law toward their verdict. Nor have adequate procedures been designed to produce a truly representative jury panel. In brief, the right to a jury has been enhanced without concern for the government’s obligations necessary to animate that right. This contradiction has clear consequences. A capital defendant puts his life in the hands of a group we have strong reason to suspect will have difficulty understanding their instructions, difficulty defining and applying mitigating evidence, and uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the sentences available to them. Moreover, that group was assembled systematically to be unrepresentative of community mores. In the cases highlighted here, we demonstrate that the Rehnquist Court led the Court toward a laissez faire position on the jury system. The Court asserts, without justification, that there is no problem. They offer unfalsiable evidence that the jury functioned properly. This has long-ranging implications for the jury system and for capital punishment

Are Land-use Emissions Scalable with Increasing Corn Ethanol Mandates in the United States?

In response to the Renewable Fuel Standard, the U.S. transportation sector now consumes a substantial amount (13.3 billion gallons in 2010) of ethanol. A key motivation for these mandates is to expand the consumption of biofuels in road transportation to both reduce foreign oil dependency and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels in transportation. In this paper, we present the impacts of several biofuels expansion scenarios for the U.S. in which scaled increases in the U.S. corn ethanol mandates are modeled to explore the scalability of GHG impacts. The impacts show both expected and surprising results. As expected, the area of land used to grow biofuel crops increases with the size of the policy in the U.S., and some land-use changes occur abroad due to trade in agricultural commodities. Because the land-use changes happen largely in the U.S., there is an increase in U.S. land-use emissions when natural lands are converted to agricultural use in the policy scenarios. Further, the emissions impacts in the U.S. and the rest of the world in these scenarios, including land-use emissions, scale in direct proportion to the size of the U.S. corn ethanol mandates. On the other hand, the land-use emissions that occur in the rest of the world are disproportionately larger per hectare of change due to conversions of more carbon-rich forests to cultivate crops and feed livestock.We gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this work from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under DE-FG02-94ER61937, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under XA-83600001-1 and XA-835055101-2, and other government, industry, and foundation sponsors of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

The electoral effectiveness of constituency campaigning in the 2010 British General Election: The ‘triumph’ of Labour?

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Electoral Studies. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This article establishes a model of likely campaign effectiveness, before examining the intensity of constituency campaigning at the 2010 general election in Britain and its subsequent impact on electoral outcomes, using both aggregate and individual level data. It shows that constituency campaigning yielded benefits in varying degrees for all three main parties and that Labour’s constituency campaign efforts were effective despite the electoral context, and ultimately affected the overall outcome of the election. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the circumstances under which campaigns are likely to be more or less effective, and provide further evidence that a carefully managed campaign stands the most chance of delivering tangible electoral payoffs

The Arbiters of Decency: A Study of Legislators\u27 Eighth Amendment Role

Within Eighth Amendment doctrine, legislators are arbiters of contemporary values. The United States Supreme Court looks closely to state and federal death penalty legislation to determine whether a given punishment is out of keeping with “evolving standards of decency.” Those who draft, debate, and vote on death penalty laws thus participate in both ordinary and higher lawmaking. This Article investigates this dual role. We coded and aggregated information about every floor statement made in the legislative debates preceding the recent passage of bills abolishing the death penalty in Connecticut, Illinois, and Nebraska. We categorized all statements according to their position on the death penalty, their subject matter, and any references they made to the courts and Constitution. We also collected basic facts about the legislators, including about political party, race, education, and profession. We present our quantitative and qualitative findings here. Building upon these findings, we critically examine the Court’s use of legislation as an “objective indicator” of “evolving standards of decency.” We identify disconnects between legislative outcomes and community “standards of decency,” and we analyze legislators’ understanding of their constitutional significance and why their level of self-awareness may matter. Finally, we consider how legislative debates—rather than outcomes alone—might provide insights into contemporary values. In particular, the strong concern we observed over wrongful execution may support more robust Eighth Amendment protections for those claiming actual innocence

A systematic review and meta-analysis of affective responses to acute high intensity interval exercise compared with continuous moderate- and high-intensity exercise

There is evidence for the physical health benefits of high intensity interval exercise (HIIE), but its public health potential has been challenged. It is purported that compared with moderate-intensity continuous exercise (MICE) the high intensity nature of HIIE may lead to negative affective responses. This systematic review (PROSPERO CRD42017058203) addressed this proposition and synthesised research that compares affective responses to HIIE with MICE and vigorous intensity continuous exercise (VICE), during-, end-, and post-exercise. Searches were conducted on five databases, and findings from 33 studies were meta-analysed using random effects models or narratively synthesised. A meta-analysis of affect showed a significant effect in favour of MICE vs HIIE at the lowest point, during and post-exercise, but not at end, and the narrative synthesis supported this for other affective outcomes. Differences on affect between VICE vs HIIE were limited. Pooled data showed arousal levels were consistently higher during HIIE. For enjoyment there was a significant effect in favour of HIIE vs MICE, no difference for HIIE vs VICE at post-exercise, and mixed findings for during-exercise. Although the findings are clouded by methodological issues they indicate that compared to MICE, HIIE is experienced less positively but post-exercise is reported to be more enjoyable