The Rule of Law, Freedom, and Prosperity.

After decades of neglect, the rule of law is much on the minds of legal scholars today. In the United States, the Supreme Court's controversial decision in Bush v. Gore has triggered renewed interest in understanding the concept of the rule of law and its value to society. Transition and developing economies have increasingly come to recognize the importance of the rule of law in establishing a framework for economic growth and individual liberty. This essay provides an overview of these debates over the concept and consequences of the rule of law. Although American scholars have criticized the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore as violative of the rule of law, this criticism rests on an erroneous understanding of the rule of law. The tradition of the rule of law, as expressed by Dicey, Oakeshott, Hayek, and others, is consistent with the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore. Moreover, this tradition of the rule of law is a cornerstone of a free and prosperous society, in America and abroad.

Wine Wars: The 21st Amendment and Discriminatory Bans to Direct Shipment of Wine

This essay is actually a series of posts from the Volokh Conspiracy weblog (www.volokh.com) that discusses the policy and constitutional issues surrounding a question that the Supreme Court will hear this term, whether discriminatory barriers to the interstate direct shipment of wine are constitutional. Because of the timeliness of the issue, the essay is presented in this unusual and informal format so as to be available to the public more rapidly than through the traditional law review format. This essay” reviews the historical evidence and ratification history of the 21st Amendment, and concludes that the answer is unambiguously no. The purpose of the 21st Amendment was to reverse the 18th Amendment’s disastrous experiment with federal Prohibition, and thereby to restore the balance between state and federal power that had existed prior to the 18th Amendment. It did this in two ways. First, § 1 of the Amendment repealed Prohibition, restoring to the States their exclusive police power authority to regulate the local sale and distribution of alcohol. Second, § 2 of the Amendment constitutionalized certain federal laws that allowed the States to enforce their police power on equal terms against alcohol shipped in interstate commerce as against alcohol manufactured or sold within the State. Section 2’s purpose was to nullify a line of Supreme Court decisions that compelled some States to “reverse discriminate” in favor of out-of-state vendors. As a result, the 21st Amendment removed the federal government from meddling in local affairs, but did not cede a novel and unnecessary power to the States to meddle in the federal government’s traditional control over interstate commerce. In other words, the 21st Amendment enabled dry States to remain dry if they so chose, but it did not empower wet states to engage in economic warfare against the products of other wet States

The FTC and State Action: Evolving Views on the Proper Role of Government

The state action doctrine was born in an era of exceptional confidence in government, with governmental entities widely regarded as unbiased and conscientious defenders of the public interest. Over time, however, more cautious and skeptical theories of government began to gain sway. In particular, the school of thought known as “public choice” – which holds that governmental entities, like private firms, will act in their economic self-interest – began to influence both legal theory and competition policy. Indeed, a close examination of recent state action case law suggests that public choice thinking has driven a slow, but consistent, evolution of the doctrine toward less deference to state regulators and more careful assessment of the actual incentives that drive their decision-making. This evolution in thinking, however, has not been accompanied by the development of a systematic, analytical framework to guide the application of the state action doctrine in particular cases. Developing such a framework should therefore remain a top priority of leading antitrust policymakers, including those at the Federal Trade Commission

Theory and Practice of Competition Advocacy at the FTC

This article was prepared as part of a recent symposium celebrating the Ninetieth Anniversary of the founding of the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, fall 2004 marks the Thirtieth Anniversary of a pivotal moment in the establishment of the modern advocacy program at the FTC, Chairman Lewis Engman’s speech on the economic burden that inefficient transportation regulation policies were imposing on the American economy. Although the FTC has been involved in advocacy activities since its founding, Engman’s speech symbolized a new aggressiveness on the part of the FTC in using its expertise to work with other governmental actors at all levels of the political system and in all branches of government to design policies that further competition and consumer choice. Notwithstanding the beneficial impact that advocacy activities have had on the economy, the fortunes of the advocacy program have waxed and waned over time. In part, these mixed fortunes may reflect a lack of fundamental grounding of advocacy within the core mission of the FTC. The advocacy program, moreover, often has been politically controversial, exposing the Commission to criticism from special interests, Congress, and other governmental actors. This article explores the theory and practice of competition advocacy, with the goal of explaining why the advocacy program should be recognized as a core element of the Commission’s mission. Advocacy can be used in conjunction with many of the FTC’s other tools, and in many situations the judicious use of advocacy can provide a low-cost and effective alternative to other enforcement options. The advocacy program is a unique and cost-effective tool for carrying out this mission. Because consumers are disadvantaged in the political arena vis-a-vis industry, they are likely to be unable to stop anticompetitive regulation on their own. Antitrust immunities, moreover, sometimes put anticompetitive regulation beyond the reach of traditional enforcement. By providing a means for the FTC to represent consumers’ interests directly in the policy-production mechanism, the advocacy program can overcome these two hurdles and provide protection for consumers at relatively low cost

Revealing stable processing products from ribosome-associated small RNAs by deep-sequencing data analysis

The exploration of the non-protein-coding RNA (ncRNA) transcriptome is currently focused on profiling of microRNA expression and detection of novel ncRNA transcription units. However, recent studies suggest that RNA processing can be a multi-layer process leading to the generation of ncRNAs of diverse functions from a single primary transcript. Up to date no methodology has been presented to distinguish stable functional RNA species from rapidly degraded side products of nucleases. Thus the correct assessment of widespread RNA processing events is one of the major obstacles in transcriptome research. Here, we present a novel automated computational pipeline, named APART, providing a complete workflow for the reliable detection of RNA processing products from next-generation-sequencing data. The major features include efficient handling of non-unique reads, detection of novel stable ncRNA transcripts and processing products and annotation of known transcripts based on multiple sources of information. To disclose the potential of APART, we have analyzed a cDNA library derived from small ribosome-associated RNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. By employing the APART pipeline, we were able to detect and confirm by independent experimental methods multiple novel stable RNA molecules differentially processed from well known ncRNAs, like rRNAs, tRNAs or snoRNAs, in a stress-dependent manne

Obesity and Advertising Policy

It is clear that Americans are getting fatter, both adults and children. This development has led some to call for a ban on food advertising directed at children. There are numerous practical and constitutional difficulties with such a policy. This article poses a more fundamental question - even if feasible, would restricting food advertising do anything to reduce obesity or even slow its trends? The article also considers whether the social costs of banning advertising could outweigh the social benefits of such an action. This article provides a review of the literature on the fundamental causes of the American obesity problem as well as the purported contribution of children\u27s advertising to the problem. The final conclusion is inescapable - the available evidence does not support the theory that children\u27s exposure to food advertising has significantly contributed to increased children\u27s obesity. Although children\u27s obesity rates have skyrocketed during the past two decades, the available evidence indicates that children\u27s exposure to food advertising has remained constant or has even declined during that same period. This article first describes the existing theories and empirical evidence regarding the causal factors in the American obesity problem. Second, the article examines in detail the claim that the rise in children\u27s obesity has been caused in whole or in part by food advertising directed at children. Available evidence and observations regarding the exposure of children to food advertising fail to support the hypothesis that increased food advertising directed at children has significantly contributed to the rise in childhood obesity. As a result, there is also little reason to believe that greater restrictions on advertising directed at children will do much at all to staunch the increase in children\u27s obesity. Third, the article reviews the existing literature on the positive effects that advertising can have on increasing consumer knowledge and choice. Thus, even though there is little evidence that advertising is the cause of the obesity problem, it is likely that advertising can play a positive role in being part of the solution to obesity by providing more information to consumers and by providing incentives to create and market healthier food alternatives

Shortening Changeover Time - An Industrial Study

This paper presents the results of the use of the Single Minute Exchange of Die method to shorten changeover time on machines in a polish production company. This project has been developed for a manufacturing company, whose products are fiberboard, hardboard and softboard products manufactured by a highly specialized industry using only pure wood fibers. Long changeover times used to conduct to bad results in timely delivery of orders. Therefore, in this work each element of the changeover time was analyzed to understand if it could be eliminated, moved or simplified. Implemented solutions significantly reduce setup time and improve the Company's competitiveness.This work is supported by Portuguese National Funds through FCT “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” under the projects: “Projeto Estratégico–UI 252–2011–2012”, reference PEst-OE/EME/UI0252/2014, and FCOMP-01-0124FEDER-PEst-OE/EEI/UI0760/2014.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio