Showing papers on "Legislation published in 1983"

Stockholders and Stakeholders: A New Perspective on Corporate Governance:

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to show how the concept of stakeholders in an organization can be used to understand the tasks of the board of directors. The authors argue that a volunteeristic approach to questions of corporate governance which focuses on effective director behavior is preferable to structural change via legislation.

Medicare begins prospective payment of hospitals.

Abstract: The federal government, moving with unusual speed and unanimity, has enacted sweeping Medicare legislation that reverses key economic incentives that have driven the behavior of hospitals since the federal program for the elderly began 18 years ago. The government replaced "reasonable" cost reimbursement with a policy that requires Medicare to establish and fix prices in advance on a cost-per-case basis, using as a measure 467 categories called "diagnosis-related groups" (DRGs). The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary Margaret M. Heckler hailed the new law as "the first major element in the President's health care reform plan.... It's the . . .

Mental Health Act 1983

Abstract: KIE: After reviewing the history of mental health legislation in England, Hamilton discusses some provisions of the new Mental Health Act that went into effect in September 1983. Among the issues pertaining to involuntary commitment covered by the act are the terminology and definition of mental illness; criteria for emergency admission, admission for assessment, and length of detention; patients' rights; mental health review tribunals; and consent to treatment. Two of the more controversial provisions are the reinstitution of a mental health commission with protective functions for detained patients, and a mandatory second opinion for certain forms of treatment.

Statutory Interpretation—in the Classroom and in the Courtroom

Abstract: This paper continues a discussion begun in an earlier paper in this journal.1 That paper dealt primarily with the implications for statutory interpretation of the interest-group theory of legislation, recently revivified by economists; it also dealt with constitutional interpretation. This paper focuses on two topics omitted in the earlier one: the need for better instruction in legislation in the law schools and the vacuity of the standard guideposts to reading statutes-the "canons of construction." The topics turn out to be related. The last part of the paper contains a positive proposal on how to interpretstatutes.

Antitrust and the Economics of Federalism

Abstract: THERE is an uneasy coexistence between federal antitrust laws and state regulatory regimes. Regulation displaces competition. Displacement is the purpose, indeed the definition, of regulation. Limitations on the number of taxicabs, licensing of barbers and dentists, health and safety codes, zoning laws, and price supports for milk depend on a belief that competitive markets should be replaced with something else. Sometimes legislation may be justified as necessary to correct "imperfections" in markets, but in most cases legislation is designed to defeat the market altogether. Although state and local legislatures may say that their schemes are better than the markets they replace, many scholars believe, and much evidence shows, that regulatory laws owe more to interest group politics than to legislators' concern for the welfare of society at large.' The state and local laws reduce allocative efficiency and

A Common Law for Labor Relations: A Critique of the New Deal Labor Legislation

Abstract: During the nineteenth century, the area of labor relations was governed by a set of legal rules that spanned the law of property, contract, tort, and procedure. There was no special set of rules for labor cases as such. Since the advent of the New Deal, these common law principles have largely given way to a complex body of statutory and administrative law that treats labor law as a separate and self-contained subject. The central question in this paper is whether there is any warrant for the special treatment that labor law receives today. I shall concentrate upon the Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932,1 and the Wagner Act of 1935,2 the latter a New Deal statute and the former nearly so. My conclusion is that this (for ease of expression) New Deal legislation is in large measure a mistake that, if possible, should be scrapped in favor of the adoption of a sensible common law regime relying heavily upon tort and contract law. The tort principles protect all individuals against the use or threat of force, and-of great relevance here-against the deliberate inducement of breach of contract. The contract principles allow individuals within this

Academic Health Centers

Abstract: There are 123 academic health centers in the United States, and they are markedly diverse in organization and function. Some have large research programs, others emphasize the education of nurses and allied health professionals, but all have one characteristic in common--namely, the dominant role of the medical school-teaching hospital combination. Their evolution has been shaped to a great degree by four federal initiatives: funding of research and research training by the National Institutes of Health, legislation that permitted close relations between Veterans Administration hospitals and medical schools, health-manpower legislation, and Medicare and Medicaid. Although academic health centers were created to foster the integration of structure and function, federal funding has always been categorical in support of research, teaching, or patient care. No federal funding was ever intended to stabilize the overall academic health center as an institution. This mattered little during a period of expansion, but the future of academic health centers is now uncertain in a period of federal cutbacks, rising health-care costs, and worry about an oversupply of physicians. Academic health centers must enter a new phase of institutional planning for which they are ill equipped. Special interests must be submerged for the good of the whole, diversity must be encouraged, and each center should exploit its own special strengths.

Parent Education and Public Policy

Abstract: This volume examines parent programs in the context of policy to support families, the disjunction between advocates of parent programs and federal policymakers, federal legislation for parent programs, and programs for parents of preschool children, school-age children, and children with special needs.

Soil conservation and water quality improvement: What farmers think

Abstract: DEBATE continues in the American agricultural community over policy for achieving soil conservation and the reduction of nonpoint-source pollution. This debate is sharpened by the goals to reduce nonpoint-source pollution expressed in such legislation as Section 208 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, the Clean Water Act of 1977, the Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act of 1977, and the Rural Clean Water Program outlined in the Agricultural Appropriations Act of 1980. “Best management practice” is a term commonly used to identify a practice or system of practices for controlling agricultural nonpoint-source pollution. Technical information on such practices attests to their effectiveness for improving water quality. But adoption of best management practices by farmers has been hampered by differences in perceptions between public officials and farmers as to what factors influence decisions. Most economic modeling studies of soil conservation and water quality issues use linear programming. Such studies assume that a farmer's primary motivation is profmaximization. But, there may be other factors involved in a farmer's adoption of best management practices. Personal valuse and beliefs, neighborhood and social pressures, and traditions may have as much or more …

Public Safety Legislation and the Risk Compensation Hypothesis: The Example of Motorcycle Helmet Legislation

Abstract: The 'experiment' in the United States of America in which twenty-eight states in the latter half of the 1970s repealed their laws which made the wearing of motorcycle helmets compulsory is widely believed to have proved conclusively that helmet legislation is a highly effective public health measure. The principal statistical foundations of this belief are found in a report to Congress by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and in a study by Watson et al. These foundations are examined and found to be open to criticism. The evidence surveyed here suggests that the effect, if any, of helmet legislation on motorcycle fatalities is perverse. The 'risk compensation theory' is proffered as a possible explanation of the available evidence. Language: en

Social Security Amendments of 1983: legislative history and summary of provisions.

Abstract: This article traces the legislative history of the new law from the report, on January 20, 1983, of the recommendations of the National Commission on Social Security Reform (which formed the basis of this legislation) to enactment, on April 20, 1983, of Public Law 98-21. It also analyzes the provisions of Public Law 98-21, which, among other things, delay the annual cost-of-living adjustments in benefits from July to January of each each year, make up to one-half of the benefits received by higher-income beneficiaries subject to income taxes, gradually raise the retirement age early in the next century, call for the earlier implementation of schedule payroll tax increases, and put new Federal employees under the Social Security program. The legislation also establishes a new system of prospective payment for hospital services under Medicare and extends supplementary unemployment compensation benefits that otherwise would have expired in March 1983.

CONGRESS AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: An Exercise in Symbolic Politics

Abstract: Even when federal authorities were legally empowered to impose a death sentence, the sanction was rarely carried out. Between 1930 and 1976, there were only 33 such executions. During the past decade, bills, both imposing and abolishing capital punishment, have been introduced repeatedly in the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, certain members of Congress have demonstrated intense interest in such efforts. The continued debate and interest is better explained by the symbolic rather than tangible components of such legislation. This article examines four aspects of the symbolic component of federal death penalty legislation: reassurance function, moral-educative function, model for the states, and the deterrence debate.

Competition in the health-care marketplace. A beginning in California.

Abstract: California has enacted legislation that has been termed a "revolution in health care."1 State lawmakers passed three measures designed to intensify competition among hospitals and physicians in the health-care delivery system.2 Confronted with a potential $2-billion deficit in its proposed $27-billion state budget, recurrent cost overruns in the Medi-Cal (Medicaid) program, and a whopping 17.9 per cent increase in hospital costs in 1981, the legislature voted to authorize both the government and private insurance companies to negotiate prepaid contracts with hospitals and providers as a "tool" to contain costs. Although negotiated contracting is not a new method of cost control, . . .

The impact of PL 94‐142 on the practice of school psychology: A national survey

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a national survey of school psychologists to determine the impact of PL 94-142 on the role of the school psychologist. Data were based on responses to 856 surveys by practicing school psychologists who were selected randomly from the NASP membership list during 1979-80. The results suggested that this legislation has had remarkably little impact on the evaluation procedures used or on the school psychologist's role. The two clear changes that have occurred may have negative implications for psychological services (e.g., an increased focus on handicapped children and increased paperwork). It was found that many school psychologists are involved in evaluation, but do not have time to be involved in the IEP process, or to provide follow-up consultation, or direct intervention for prevention and/or therapeutic purposes. This problem was exacerbated in districts that had ratios of greater than 1,000 to 1. Despite these problems, many respondents view the legislation in positive terms, and feel it has helped to enlarge the scope of practice.

Managing Oregon's growth: the politics of development planning

Abstract: Just before he died earlier this year, Tom McCall fought to preserve the most unique and successful land use program in the country from the fourth attempt to kill or maim it at the polls. McCall knew his activity would hasten his death, but commented that if the program failed, he wouldn't have wanted to live in Oregon anyway. Oregon is a most remarkable state and McCall was a most remarkable governor. In a sense, their destinies were inter twined?the cleanup of the Willamette River, the bottle bill, and the use of mandatory planning and regulation (in lieu of ad hoc solutions such as special regulations and environmental impact statements) all demonstrate the merging of a conservationist ethic and a positive attitude toward the future shared by the state and its most popular governor. There is a good deal written descriptively about the Oregon land use legislation, but not much about how that legislation has been implemented. Managing Oregon s Growth largely succeeds in filling that gap and in giving the reader an adequate evaluation of that state's land use program. This evaluation is significant, in that it comes at the tenth anniversary of the signing by Governor McCall of SB 100, which created the program. No statewide land use planning program is devoid of con troversy or criticism. Neither has been lacking during the past ten years in Oregon. Leonard is quite correct in this observation made of the program:

Ethnic and Partisan Minorities in Two Southern State Legislatures

Abstract: In the past two decades, the number of Republican, black, and MexicanAmerican representatives elected to Southern state legislatures has increased appreciably. This study addresses the question of whether these "new" representatives have had a significant impact upon the legislative process. It first examines the relationships between leadership and seniority on the one hand and activity and success in legislation on the other hand in the Texas and South Carolina Houses of Representatives. It then examines the relative activity and success of minority and majority representatives in these houses. houses. The findings clearly suggest that minority representatives are not disproportionately active in legislation and that majority members are not substantially more successful in passing their legislation, both findings contrary to what might be expected. The variables which tap legislative status (i.e., leadership and seniority) predict a legislator's activity and success better than do variables which tap majority or minority status.

The Dilemma of American Immigration : Beyond the Golden Door

Abstract: Recent research on the descendants of early immigrants to the US shows that most of the fears of those advocating immigration restriction were illfounded. Rather than forming a disadvantraged class late 19th and early 20th century immigrants have done very well and often earn more and have higher levels of education than those whose ancestors came decades earlier. The authors ask if the restriction on immigration in the 1920s was a necessary condition for the immigrants success and if today a stronger case can be made for restrictions. Government action in the regulation of immigration has passed through 3 phases: 1) the period before 1875 which involved relatively little regualtion and no numerical or national origin quotas; 2) 1875 to 1965 a time of both numerical and racial or ethnic restrictions; and 3) 1965 and onward with the elimination of national-origin formulas and a new series of preferences based on family reunification with a smaller role for personal skills. Legislation eventually responded to public opinion and a strong undercurrent of nativism has ended while there have also been strong prevailing sentiments in favor of continued immigration. Every stream of immigrants to the US brought skilled laborers as well as professional and commercial workers; immigration patterns have been similar for all groups. But todays immigration stream including illegal aliens is disproportionately Spanish speaking is lower skilled relative to the US labor force and is brought to the US by new factors. The continuities outweigh the discontinuities and the similarities outweigh the dissimilarities. The new immigrants do not however appear to be doing as well as the immigrant from the "old" sending countries of Europe. Unlike economic immigrants refugees are now given substantial assitance from both the public and private sectors and are selected on some basis other than their economic ambitions and abilities or the transferability of their skills. The handling of these problems has been complicated by a piecemeal crisis-by-crisis approach to refugee policy. The recent refugee legislation while a step in the right direction does not represent a fundamental shift on refugee policy. US immigration policy must be considered in light of its effects on domestic policies as well especially since immigrants tend to be concentrated in certain locales and wield considerable political and economic power. Some recommendations for new immigration policies include: 1) establish a point system for admission based solely on personal characteristics with a primary focus on the persons skills and without consideration to national or ethnic origin 2) impose an immigration tax to capture some of the economic rent accorded those permitted to immigrate 3) establish policies to facilitate temporary immigration and regulate the flow of temporary entrants and 4) impose fines and brief imprisonment for apprehended illegal aliens.

Women Activists, Southern Conservatives, and the Prohibition of Sex Discrimination in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Abstract: TITLE VII OF THE 1964 CwI RIGHTS ACT PROHIBITED DISCRIMNAtion in employment on the basis of sex as well as on the bases of race, color, religion, and national origin. This prohibition was added to the civil rights bill through an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives by Howard Worth Smith of Virginia, an ardent opponent of the legislation as a whole. Because his motives in proposing the amendment were questionable, because of the occasionally facetious tone of the debate on the amendment, and because women's rights were generally not taken seriously then, the prohibition of sex discrimination originally tended to be lightly regarded, even after it became law. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), established by Title VII to administer the law against employment discrimination, initially treated the ban on sex discrimination as something of a joke. Others, however, did not. In the first two years of enforcement, over four thousand charges of sex discrimination were lodged, representing roughly one-quarter of all complaints. EEOC's languid record of enforcement precipitated formation of the National Organization for Women in 1966, an important institutional development in the birth of the women's rights movement. Pressure from this and other groups and individuals, along with a changing consciousness about sex roles, led in time to more rigorous enforcement and generally sympathetic court rulings. By 1975 legal experts on women's rights could aptly characterize Title VII "the most comprehensive and important of all federal and state laws prohibiting employment discrimination." 1

A private network of social control: insurance investigation units*

Abstract: Fraud investigation units have sprung up within insurance companies across the United States to counter corporate losses due to fraud and the restrictions imposed on the industry by government regulations. This paper looks at the birth, operating strategies, and effectiveness of these units in three automobile insurance companies in Massachusetts. Because fraud cases are rarely brought to court, these units operate as a kind of private police. They exchange information with the public police and other companies and circumvent judicial control, often using investigative procedures which would render the evidence they collect inadmissible in court. Recent legislation has strengthened their power and cut off avenues of redress once available to wronged policyholders.

Influencing retirement behavior: A key issue for social security

Abstract: Recent trends toward earlier retirement threaten future supplies of labor and the financial stability of many of our public and private pension systems. One of the few federal efforts now in place to reverse this trend has been the 1977 law outlawing mandatory retirement before age 70 for most American workers. This legislation by itself will have little effect on retirement patterns, because strong financial incentives to retire remain imbedded in the system. Changes in the Social Security Act enacted this year begin to recognize these incentives but are highly controversial and at best will not begin to go into effect until 1990. To be successful, efforts of policymakers to increase work at older ages must focus on the financial incentives at the heart of retirement plans rather than on merely attempting to weaken mandatory retirement constraints.

Medicare and Medicaid: the process, value, and limits of health care reforms

Abstract: jracG HEN President Johnson signed the Medicare and Medicaid legislation into law on July 30, 1965, a great many g Ry jr 2Americans believed that the elderly would no longer be g W j impoverished by medical care costs and that the poor would get the care they need from essentially the same kc3eA sources as the middle class. Under the Medicare program, the federal government would pay for most of the costs of hospitalization for the elderly and would insure them for physicians' services and related care-coverage the elderly were unable to obtain at a price they could afford from the private insurance industry. Under the Medicaid program, the federal government would provide grants to the states to greatly expand medical care for the poor, subsidizing those on public assistance and several related categories of low-income persons not receiving public assistance, to enable them to get their care from the private medical market. These legislative reforms culminated an intermittent half-century of struggle for compulsory health insurance. They represented a substantial compromise of the goal of national health insurance, vigorously pursued in the 1940s. Medicare and Medicaid partially succeeded in fulfilling their more limited objectives of improving the access of the poor and the elderly to medical care and preventing the pauperization of the elderly due to medical expenses. But even these more limited objectives have been compromised by political and fiscal pressures on federal, state, and local governments. The programs proved far more costly than almost anyone imagined, and within a year of their implementation in 1966, cost containment competed with and then replaced the original legislative goal of equity as the dominant concern of state legislatures as well as the Congress.

Implementing Equality: Ideology, Contradiction and Social Change

Abstract: This Article is an exploration of the tension between “instrumental” and symbolic’ law reform. Instrumental law reform involves creating legislation oriented “towards influencing behavior through enforcement,” while symbolic reform is “an emergent property” of the legislative process, a result of intermingled legislative ideas that inform our social world and form a basis for political action.This phenomenon is examined in the context of the feminist reform movement to revise the rules governing the economic incidents of divorce in Wisconsin during the mid-seventies. The tensions in this particular reform movement arose from the potential conflicting goals of result equality (“instrumental” reform), and rule equality (“symbolic” reform). While both depend on certain theoretical and factual assumptions about society, the role of women and the function of law, there are important areas where these underlying assumptions and the reforms that might be based on them, diverge.This paper argues that given the socioeconomic factors that typically disadvantage women in the market while simultaneously favoring their assumption of major domestic responsibilities, result equality must be the primary focus of any effect reform of the economics of divorce.

Unemployment: Toward a Social Work Agenda

Abstract: volved in efforts to promote employ ment-related legislation, such as H.R. 50—the Full Employment and Bal anced Growth Act of 1978 (originally known as the Humphrey-Hawkins bill)—and of plant-closure laws. Still others have participated in the design and implementation of employment and training services such as those under the Comprehensive Employ ment and Training Act (CETA). These activities of individuals need to be

The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Early Stuart England

Abstract: This pamphlet examines recent research into the poor laws of Tudor and Stuart England. Dr Beier asks the question ‘who were the poor?’ and in answering it places the ‘problem of the poor’ in its historical context, examining it in relation to medieval provisions for dealing with poverty. He shows how far legislation was influenced by economic changes, by ideas about poverty and by the interests of the legislators themselves. Dr Beier evaluates the varying interpretations of the poor laws, from those who have seen them as an early ‘welfare state’ to those who have considered them to be the manifestation of a ‘Protestant ethic’. The major poor-law statues are summarized in an appendix, and there is a useful bibliography.

Beverage Container Deposit Laws: A Survey of the Issues and Results

Abstract: Much of the movement toward mandatory beverage deposit legislation has withered away in the current anti-regulation mood of the country. Even before the change in mood, the major focus of deposit laws was moving away from litter control and toward energy and resource savings. In fact, deposit laws have had a variety of repercussions on such factors as jobs, consumer prices, industry capital expenditures, energy consumption, and litter. The cooling emotions and lapse in time since most of the regulations were enacted provide a good opportunity to sort through the arguments and review the results. This paper attempts to present a balanced view of the issues surrounding this complicated topic. It find that the consequences of mandatory deposits have generally been somewhere between the initial predictions of groups favoring legislation and those opposing it.

The legal status of collective bargaining by public school teachers

Abstract: This paper examines the characteristics of area populations that predict the content of bargaining legislation for public school teachers. The authors provide evidence suggesting that 1) pro-bargaining legislation is correlated with the representation of union members and related workers who benefit from collective bargaining, and 2) the legislation appears to be demanded by career workers as a means of transferring resources away from teachers with relatively short career horizons. An N-chotomous probit model is used to estimate the form of legislation that ranges from bargaining prohibition to prescribed bargaining. Data for the study were obtained from 95 SMSAs in 35 states.