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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This paper expands previous research analyzing the impact voting laws have on voter turnout in national elections in the United States. I analyzed voter turnout in the 2008 Presidential Election and the 2010 off year election in all fifty states to see if voting restrictions declined turnout. My results show evidence that the further away from Election Day voter registration ends, the lower voter turnout a state can expect. I also found laws requiring employers to allow employees time off work to vote on Election Day had lower voter turnout rates than the states allowing employer discretion to determine whether an employee can take time off work to vote. Lastly, my paper shows evidence allowing anyone to vote by mail had a significant increase in the 2008 Presidential Election voter turnout rates compared to states requiring an excuse. However, I did not find any statistical significance in the 2010 off year election.

Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898. Since then, the island has remained in an ill-defined relationship with the United States, lacking autonomy and sovereignty. The Supreme Court and Congress have been the primary agents dealing with Puerto Rico's territorial trajectory. While the island has faced many setbacks throughout the years, this thesis asserts that the zenith in autonomy and sovereignty was reached in the 1950s, after two key legislative developments. This set forth an experiment in territorial administration. But the experiment was abandoned and closed in 2016, after two Supreme Court decisions and an Act of Congress sent Puerto Rico—the experiment—in retrograde motion. This thesis explores Puerto Rico's politico-legal developments, with a focus on the 1950s and 2016.

The neglect that recent political science has shown toward the concept of the State has drastically reduced the efficacy of analyses of environmental interest group politics. This thesis is an attempt to introduce a revamped concept of the State into such an analysis. The State is defined as both administrative and ideological. Through drawing out the logic of the environmentalist position, it can be shown how environmentalism challenges both these aspects of the modem State. It will then be shown how the State plays a decisive role in setting the parameters in which interest group activity operates, and how those parameters dictate that only groups which deny the logic of their own environmental ideological position gain access to existing power structures. The State, through the marketization, scientization, and technologization of the issues, has effectively defined the language of debate. This language is not the natural language of environmentalism, just as the definitions of the arena, and the norms of legitimacy and behavior sanctioned by the State are unsuited to the claims of environmentalism. By showing that the State has both the capacity and the incentive to intervene, the original premise of bringing the State back in to this analysis of environmental interest group politics in the United States is justified. / Master of Arts

Although some literature exists that examines special education due process practices, the studies have been done in different ways and consequently result in different outcomes. Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the one-and two-tier due process system in the United States. The study focused on national practices of due process, issues disputed, and disability categories involved in special education conflicts. A survey of the 50 state directors of special education and the director from the District of Columbia was conducted to obtain information concerning due process hearings and dispute resolution for the time period 1986-1987 to 1990-1991. Records of all reported special education litigation for the same time period were obtained from the Law Offices of Charles L. Weatherly in Atlanta, Georgia. Data from the states providing due process information were analyzed with a t-test. The remaining data, both from the survey instrument and litigation records, were analyzed using qualitative analysis, frequency counts, and percentages of the raw data. Findings of the study reveal a slight national trend toward a one-tier due process system for special education dispute resolution. Furthermore, placement remains the most frequently litigated issue, and specific learning disability the most frequently involved category in special education disputes. Finally, there is no predictable relationship between the size of the disability population and the volume of special education litigation. The results of the study evidenced the need for continued research of national practices of due process. Additional research is also needed in the areas of mediation, the costs of due process hearings, and hearing officer's authorization to award attorney fees. / Ed. D.

This dissertation examines the free banking laws of seven states and the impact of three provisions of the laws on the states' banking experience. In Chapter I, a review of two current theories of the free banking experience is presented. One theory contends that the laws themselves induced the banking experience of the states. The second theory asserts that economic activity induced the banking experience. This study includes a discussion of both theories in the analysis of the provision's effect on the banking experience. In Chapter II, a simple model of the operations of a free bank is presented. Also, the laws of the seven states that determine the establishment and the operations of a free bank are reviewed. The review reveals that the states enacted similar provisions, but restrictions included in the provisions differ considerably. In Chapter III, the experiences of the states are examined. The states represent a spectrum of banking experiences. The experiences of each state are characterized by four measures; the entry rate, the failure rate, the below par rate, and the average loss per dollar. Each of these measures reflects a different aspect of banking behavior and each is examined in order to determine the effect of the provision and the effect of economic activity on the behavior of the free banks. The analysis shows that both the provisions and the economic activity influence bank behavior. In Chapter IV, a theoretical analysis of the effect of the stockholders liability provision on entry and on the bank's portfolio is developed. The theory shows that an increase in the stockholders liability of a free bank reduces entry into the free banking market and increases the risky asset-capital ratio of the free bank. The testing of the theories is presented in Chapter V. The empirical evidence confirms the hypothesis that an increase in the liability of the stockholders increases the risky asset-capital ratio. The evidence does not confirm the hypothesis that an increase in the liability of the stockholder reduces entry. / Ph. D.

LL.D. / Powers are granted to local authorities in South Africa by way of the specification of each power in the empowering legislation. The possibility has been mooted to change this way of empowerment to a specification of powers, combined with an additional general grant of powers to the effect that local authorities be authorized to do anything which may be required in order to perform their functions. Such a general form of authorization is in accordance with the situation in France and other continental systems as well as the majority of the federal states comprising the United States of America...

In this study, I examined the Supreme Court's agenda from 1801 to 1993 to determine the composition and dynamics of the issues that have dominated the business of the Court. Specifically, I set out to test empirically Robert G. McCloskey's (now standard) characterization of the Supreme Court's history, which sees it as dominated by nationalism/federalism issues before the Civil War, by economic issues just after the War through the 1930s, and by civil rights and liberties since the 1930s. The question that drove my investigation was "Is McCloskey's interpretation, which appears to be based on the great cases of Supreme Court history, an accurate description of the agenda represented in the Supreme Court's total body of reported decisions?" To test McCloskey's historical theses I employed concepts adapted from Richard Pacelle's (1991) important work on the agenda of post-Roosevelt Court and used the methods of classical historical analysis and of interrupted time-series analysis. Data for my research came from existing datasets and from my own collection (I coded the manifest content of thousands of Supreme Court's decisions from 1887 back to 1801). The most important finding from my analyses is that McCloskey not withstanding, the pre-Civil War Supreme Court's agenda was clearly dominated by economic issues of various sorts, not by nationalism/federalism as previously believed. Another key finding is that partisanship had a pronounced impact on the Court's attention to this category of issueseven in the periods when the Supreme Court had very little control of its docket. These results suggest that Supreme Court scholars should reassess or rethink their previous notion of the Court's pre-Civil War agendathe now well-established view that nation-state issues dominated the business of the Court in its formative yearsand the idea (often expressed implicitly) that the Court's mandatory jurisdiction suppressed attitudinal factors on the Court in the earlier eras.

Karl Polanyi started his career as a doctor of law and practiced law for a while; but he did not become a legal scholar. As an economic historian, anthropologist, or sociologist, he was concerned with the relation of economy and society. But even though law is an important factor in mediating this relationship, Polanyi gave little attention to the law as such. As part of an endeavour to advance a "Polanyian" economic sociology of law, this article develops the "law of market Society" as an analytical category. For thi s purpose, three argumentative strategies are combined. First, the article draws on The Great Transformation to reconstruct the role of law in the processes of commodification and decommodification. Second, it turns to Marxist scholarship to explore the conceptual link between law and economics and to ponder to what extent law itself can become a commodity. Third, it links Polanyi's approach with American institutionalism, and Commons' work in particular, to show how the evolution of the "law of market Society" can also be understood as a collective enterprise which continuously evolves. It is argued that these perspectives complement each other and help to bring the law back in where it is missing.