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The inspiration for the paper is a regional rail system proposal published in 2001 by the Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) of the Maryland Department of Transportation. This proposal, The Baltimore Region Rail System Plan (the Plan), calls for the construction of a regional rail system, modeled on the DC Metro. I believe that this rail system would have an enormously beneficial impact on the Baltimore region, by promoting local economic development as well as interregional competitiveness. In addition, it might help to promote cross-jurisdictional cooperation, which in turn would foster a more flexible regional economic system. In a broader view, it would help transition the Baltimore region away from its dark history of social and economic decline and towards a brighter future of global competitiveness based on New Economy industries. My analysis will both examine the existing support and opposition to the rail system, and make a case for its implementation. I will begin my paper with an introduction to the Baltimore region’s geography, economy, and government. This section will include an overview of transportation governance in Maryland as a whole. I will then describe in more detail the contents of the Plan and the existing public transportation infrastructure in the Baltimore region, especially within Baltimore City. The potential implementation of a mass rail transit system naturally generates many important political and financial questions. I will begin the analytical section of my paper by cataloguing the most important regional transportation stakeholders and describing their positions on the potential transit system. To do so, I will draw from the literature on regional transportation, documents published by various institutions, and, most importantly, a series of interviews I conducted with public officials, business leaders, community group leaders, lobbyists and transit advocates. The various transportation stakeholders make the case for the transit system in a variety of ways; I will attempt to arrange these various arguments into a coherent framework based on their intellectual underpinnings. As we will see, the arguments fall in to the related categories of local economic development, interregional competitiveness, and regional cooperation. In other words, there are local economic growth, national and international competitiveness and political arguments to be made on behalf of a regional transit system. Having catalogued these arguments, I will turn to analyzing their validity and providing evidence to support them. I will conclude by positing how consensus might be built among various stakeholders, and finally speculate briefly on the best strategy for achieving implementation. To build consensus among the region’s many interests, the transit system can not be viewed as simply a tool for moving people around. Rather, it must be viewed as a crucial step towards creating a new 21st century Baltimore region, one that can compete globally for talented individuals and cutting edge firms. This is a vision that can unite a divisive region, and build the support for the massive government investment that will be required to build the transit system. This paper is intended to be helpful to public officials, nonprofit leaders, and other potential policy entrepreneurs operating in the Baltimore region. To the best of my knowledge, no papers have examined all the arguments for the Baltimore transit system or examined the positions of the various stakeholders. In fact, no advocacy papers have even attempted a comprehensive evaluation. This paper adds to the existing literature by bringing together all existing arguments, making new ones, and detailing the thinking of the institutions and individuals that will ultimately have to support a mass rail transit system if it is to be implemented. The paper may also be of use to policymakers in other regions who are looking to build consensus across metropolitan areas.

Over the past two decades, the United States has waged an increasingly successful campaign to strengthen international intellectual property standards.  This is an example of “asymmetrical harmonization,” in which regionalism and multilateralism no longer move countries towards integration, but instead shift international policy to that of the most powerful bargainer.  In a progression through four stages of policy development, the U.S. has learned to use a combination of unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral policy instruments in order to both coerce through trade pressure and lure with incentives those developing countries that have been resist to policy harmonization.  Developing countries, although vulnerable to legislative change, have been successful in resisting reform through a process of lax enforcement, delay, and domestic industry resistance.  The U.S. needs to shift its strategy in two arenas.  First, the U.S. must move towards limiting coercion in lieu of more cooperative partnerships when dealing with developing countries, since a country’s willingness to reform leads to better enforcement.  Secondly, the U.S. needs to differentiate its IPRs policies in order to maximize the actual reduction in infringement while limiting developing concerns over drugs costs, biotechnology, and social resistance to reform.  By working to improve the international perception of IPRs, the U.S. can increase the welfare of both U.S. firms and developing countries.

Two weeks after murdering over 150 unarmed protestors and brutally raping over 40 women, the ruling junta in Guinea announced that it had signed a $7 billion resource-for-investment deal with a Chinese company, the China International Fund.  Reporters and commentators offered dire prognostications about the support such an investment could provide to the Guinean junta as the international community stepped up its censure of the regime.  The uproar over the investment raises two questions this essay addresses: First, has the deal indeed served as a “lifeline” to the Guinean military regime?  And second, what can the case of Guinea tell us about the way the international community should handle investments in the natural resources of countries ruled by regimes that show no respect for basic human rights? The answer to the first question, in brief, is no: China has not provided the junta with international support, money, or military assistance.  Three main forces have moved Guinea toward this outcome.  The first is the demonstration by the international community (excluding China) that it has increasingly less tolerance for authoritarian regimes that do not respect basic human rights.  Second, and somewhat less significantly, African leaders have begun to push back against the Chinese presence in Africa, demanding more transparent and responsible investments.  And third, the Chinese have realized that they have economic incentives not to pour too much money upfront into unstable regimes in which a new government might demand to renegotiate contracts.  The upshot of these three forces is that international pressure matters: while China focuses primarily on economic incentives, it is also vulnerable to reputational risks. In answer to the second question, condemnation of investments like the one in Guinea will lose moral force unless the international community itself takes steps to avoid its own role in perpetuating the “resource privilege,” in which rulers of authoritarian countries are given tacit permission by the international community to sell that country’s natural resources, often for their own personal gain.  Scholars and policymakers have tried to address this incentive problem with a variety of schemes — including unilateral and multilateral legislation, a “trust-and-tariff” mechanism, shared sovereignty entities, and constitutional amendments banning illegitimate resource transfers — that vary in their theoretical and practical strength.  The first step in any sort of plan, however, must be acceptance of responsibility by the international community for the part it plays in maintaining the resource privilege.

This essay has placed before its readers many of the arguments for and against holding terrorism trials in federal courts.  Based on the evidence developed in this essay, most of the arguments against the use of federal courts have been shown to fall.  There have not been significant or novel problems relating to speedy and public trial requirements, availability of defense counsel, politicization of jurors, pretrial publicity and bias, the authentication of evidence, Miranda warnings, illegal searches and seizures, the introduction of classified material, security, orientation of the system, or judicial expertise.[1]  “For all of their difficulties, civilian trials are superior to their most likely replacements, military commissions.”[2]  There are numerous political and legal grounds for rejecting military commissions.  Any claims of military commissions’ supposed convenience or greater likelihood for “successful convictions” have been disproved by their track record; federal courts have proven their ability to handle hundreds of terrorism cases effectively, while military commissions can be considered as having failed more often than not.  Military commissions and a framing of “war” have strengthened terrorists at our expense, reduced international cooperation with our courts, and weakened the rule of law.  Trying terrorists in federal courts is the most prudent and appropriate method of rectifying these harms. The primary arguments that do provide reason for pause include the potentially higher monetary costs and the possibility that accused terrorists’ incorporation into the system might weaken the protections afforded to other criminals.  The costs are not necessarily higher for federal courts than other viable options, and the effects on the system will not necessarily be negative; yet these issues are worthy of continued inspection and deliberation. In examining the comparative costs of federal trials and military commissions, society would do best to rely on trial security experts rather than the less trustworthy claims of politicians that lack even a basic report of their foundation.  It is more than reasonable to expect precise data and cost estimates to elucidate the large figures that have been thrown around as political rhetoric in heated yet potentially groundless debates.  Yet it seems, as with many of the arguments presented by critics in this essay, that some are driven to their arguments not by reality, but rather by mere political utility.  As a recent New York Times editorial criticizes, An election is coming, so the Republicans are trying to scare Americans by making it appear as if the Democrats don’t care about catching or punishing terrorists.  It’s nonsense, of course, but effective.  The be-very-afraid approach helped former President George W. Bush ram laws through Congress that chipped away at Americans’ rights…Congress should be helping the president fix those problems, not piling up sound bites for November.[3] As explained in this essay, costs have been a continuing hurdle for attempts to improve the criminal justice system, and terrorism trials in federal courts may not be an exception.  Yet it would seem that given the enormous political, ethical, and legal costs of military commissions, Americans are not unlikely to garner the additional resources that might be required for federal trials. As for the effects of terrorism cases on other criminals’ trials, it seems it would be helpful to examine the historical trends in England, as well as other countries that have had more extensive experience with terrorists similar to Al Qaeda.[4]  A careful analysis of past terrorism cases in England as well as the current workings of the system would serve to elucidate these matters and potential effects on the American system.  However, it is clear that even with such information, it would be difficult to predict the long-term effects on the American system due to differences in national jurisprudence, context, and circumstances.  Despite minor imperfections that result from the presence of jurors, the simple yet all-important fact that the jury system is based on the idea of impartiality, which is wholly lacking in military commissions, strongly suggests their use in terrorism cases.[5]  Respect for the rule of law and a dedication to justice have been fortified by the Obama administration’s attempts to pursue terrorism trials in federal courts; as Harold Koh reported at a recent American Bar Association event, “The administration’s changes…have been meaningful.  The United States…can now defend its national-security policies as fully compliant with domestic and international law under common and universal standards, not double standards.”[6] Many judges and attorneys have been outspoken in their confidence to continue to successfully manage terrorism trials.  In the case of United States v. Ressam (2005), Judge John Coughenour declared, “Our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart.  We can deal with the threats to our national security without denying the accused fundamental constitutional protections.”[7]  Judge Coughenour further stressed that Mr. Ressam, a foreigner intent on killing Americans, “received an effective, vigorous defense, and the opportunity to have his guilt or innocence determined by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens,” and that the entire proceeding took place “in the sunlight of a public trial.  There was no secret proceedings, no indefinite detention, no denial of counsel.”[8]  After the Ressam sentencing hearing, U.S. Attorney John McKay said he “agreed with the judge’s assessment that the U.S. legal system could handle cases such as Ressam’s.”[9]  Mr. McKay added, “The sentence sent an important message to would-be terrorists around the world,” that “in the United States a fair trial will be given…and where it is found that terrorism was committed, a lengthy prison sentence will be imposed.”[10]  Earlier, in sentencing Richard C. Reid to life in prison, Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Boston expressed his conviction that terrorists must be treated as criminals and tried in federal courts: Judge Young  “spoke scornfully of the notion that the defendant was somehow ‘a soldier in any war…You are not an enemy combatant.  You are a terrorist.’  And what we do with terrorists, he said, is ‘hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.’”[11]  Even the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, a famously challenging case which dealt with singular issues due to the defendant’s assertion of his right to defend himself in court and continued efforts to make a mockery of the American justice system, Judge Leonie Brinkema strongly defended the federal judiciary as the proper forum for terrorism trials and has emerged as an impassioned advocate for this cause.[12]  Rudy Giuliani, after Mr. Moussaoui’s trial, said, “I was in awe of our system.  It does demonstrate that we can give people a fair trial.”[13]  The words of these judges and lawyers demonstrate professionals’ commitment and confidence in the federal courts, which ought to assist the American public in dismissing lingering doubts.[14]  Terrorism defendants are not predestined to receive unfair trials.  They need not be treated as Joseph K. in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, who was arrested “without having done anything wrong,” tried by an appallingly inaccessible, unpredictable, and incomprehensible system, and executed “like a dog.”[15]  To prevent this unnecessary and unacceptable treatment, those accused of terrorism should be tried in the light of day.  They must be brought to the established, transparent, reputable, and successful federal courts, where protections ensure that individuals receive fair treatment and that the system promotes accuracy and convicts the guilty while freeing the wrongly accused.  And there are certainly individuals who have been wrongfully accused; of the 779 imprisoned in Guantánamo since 2000, 705 have been released or cleared for release.[16]  It behooves the government to pursue these values, thereby supporting the American rule of law and fortifying important and deserved confidence in the American justice system. These values have long been part of the American way.  “The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre.”[17]  After the 1770 Boston Massacre, where British soldiers had fired on American civilians in a clash that helped spark the American Revolution, the American public was outraged.  Rather than lock them away indefinitely, or punish them without due process, those British soldiers were afforded a fair trial.  Two were convicted and the rest were acquitted.  John Adams, who agreed to assist in the defense of these extensively unpopular figures, declared in his closing statement, “’Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.  Nor is the law less stable than the fact…To your candor and justice, I submit the prisoners and their case.’  The best weapon we have against terrorists is not our passions.  It is the rule of law.”[18]  As Mr. McCarthy has said, “Trials are won every bit as much outside as inside the courtroom.”[19]  The United States must do what it can to win these cases, not by taking shortcuts to potentially erroneous convictions and shortchanging the accused and the American people of the challenges and benefits essential to the rule of law, but by pursing a path that promotes accuracy and justice in the federal courtroom. To reiterate the quotation with which this essay started. No description can do justice to how intense, rewarding, and preposterous a terrorism trial is. The patina of danger and death hang over the proceedings. It is a thrill and a source of patriotic pride to observe the world’s greatest legal system grant the full flower of due process to our committed enemies and to see them, nonetheless, brought to heel.[20] [1] There has been difficulty regarding attorney-client privilege because its protections have been infringed; Chapter 3 of this essay has shown why such violations may be undesirable. [2] Precht, p.x. [3] “The Politics of Fear.” [4] The Author hopes to continue research of these questions.  At present, the author has encountered only limited discussions of such issues. [5] Precht, p.169. [6] Savage, “Obama Team Is Divided on Anti-Terror Tactics.” [7] United States v. Ressam, No. 99-cr-00666 (W.D.Wash. July 27, 2005); Zabel and Benjamin, 2009. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid. [11] Haberman. [12] Wittes, Law and the Long War, p.172. [13] Mayer. [14] A critic might argue that judges and attorneys have an obvious interest in maintaining the strength of the federal courts, which provide their salary.  In response, the author acknowledges that the potential for such dynamics is not impossible, but maintains that the judges and attorneys quoted for their support are in no danger of losing their employment based on their remarks, and further maintains that if these professionals believed that the incorporation of terrorism trials would cause problems and embarrassment to their office, they would have a significant incentive to speak out and encourage the removal of such cases to military commissions.  American courts have not been shy in declining (both explicitly or implicitly) to decide cases that would result in their embarrassment.  Justice Stephen Breyer, in a lecture at Yale Law School, explained that such decisions are, somewhat surprisingly, sometimes necessary to maintain the public’s faith in the court system.  Breyer. [15] Kafka, pp.3, 231. [16] Moore. [17] Ibid. [18] Precht, p.169. [19] McCarthy, pp.294-5. [20] Ibid., p.294.

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court instituted the “one person, one vote”principle in the landmark Reynolds v. Sims case. The ruling sought to establish legislative districts of equal population sizes so that every citizen’s vote would have the same weight in the election of their representatives.1 When a legislative district is under-populated, its citizens have disproportionately large voting power compared to the citizens of other districts, whose voting power is diluted. In the majority opinion for Reynolds v. Sims, Chief Justice Earl Warren explained the deleterious effects of these unevenly apportioned legislative districts on democracy, arguing that “…the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or a dilution of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as wholly prohibiting the free exercise of this franchise.”2 One cause of unevenly apportioned districts was gerrymandering, the practice of purposely drawing legislative districts to increase the voting power of certain populations for politically strategic reasons.  Although Supreme Court and legislative action have sought to uphold the “one person, one vote” principle over the years, vote dilution continues to occur across the country as the result of politically strategic gerrymandering that goes unnoticed or unchallenged. For example, changes in census and prison policy over the past two decades have led to a new, particularly insidious form of gerrymandering based around prisons. At the time of each decennial census, every incarcerated person is counted as a resident of the prison, and thus the district, where he or she lives. As prisoners in most states cannot vote, the unincarcerated residents of legislative districts with prisons have more voting power than do the residents of districts that do not have prisons within their boundaries. Recognizing the importance of the “one person, one vote” principle, advocates and legislators have fought to count prisoners as residents of their pre-incarceration home communities for purposes of redistricting. Although their cause often garners substantial popular and legislative support, they still face significant opposition from incumbent politicians who wish to preserve their relatively small district sizes and keep supportive non-prisoner constituents in their original districts. Because prison-based gerrymandering is a highly technical issue that is most relevant during the decennial census and redistricting processes, advocates also confront the challenge of maintaining interest in and support for their work.  In this paper, I will examine efforts to end prison-based gerrymandering in Maryland,Delaware, and New York with a view to understanding how advocates and legislators brought about successful legislation. While the previously mentioned obstacles to advocacy can endanger legislative success, advocates fight to overcome opposition by developing a communications strategy that emphasizes how prison-based gerrymandering undermines the “one person, one vote” principle, explaining the technical ease of remediating prison-based gerrymandering, and exercising high levels of perseverance and preparedness in obtaining the support of elected officials.  To begin, I will provide a brief history of gerrymandering in the United States as well as an overview of the prison-based gerrymandering issue. Next, I will explain the political science framework that I will use to analyze prison-based gerrymandering advocacy efforts. Finally, I will provide detailed case studies of the efforts in Maryland, Delaware and New York. I will conclude by situating the Maryland, Delaware and New York cases in an expanded political and civic context.

Abstract: What is the impact of military conflict on state strength? I revisit this classic question in state building literature and theorize that military conflict increases state capacity only when elites believe that the center is credible. Elites lose faith in the center when the state fails to meet their expectations, which includes protection from violent conflict and preservation of elite privileges. When state credibility is low during periods of military conflict, elites disinvest from the center and develop alternative means of self-protection. Through this process, elites may create private militaries and taxation bureaus that compete with central military and fiscal institutions, thereby diminishing state capacity. This hampers the state’s ability to meet elite expectations in the future, which sparks a downward spiral of state credibility and strength. Over time, this vicious cycle shifts the balance of power from the center to elites, which increases the likelihood that elites may one day contest the state for power. I support my theory with historical evidence from the final century of the Qing Dynasty, which suffered from many internal and external conflicts in close succession.

Microcredit, the provision of small loans to lower income population, has won popular acclaim for promoting self-employment activities and empowering women. This paper goes beyond the positive narrative to trace the divergence between the economic and anthropological literature on microcredit. The overarching argument consists of three layers: first, that economic and anthropological literature on microcredit can and should inform each other—anthropological literature by revealing mechanisms behind counterintuitive economic research results, and economic literature by directing anthropologists to outliers as important case studies; second, that the economic literature dominates the prevailing discourse in the development community, resulting in policies that undermine anthropological criticisms; and third, that this discursive dominance is detrimental to achieving the microcredit missions of lending to the poor and empowering women.

An investment in the education of our nation’s youth is arguably one of the most important investments a person, community, state, or nation is able to make. It is an investment in human capital that is expected to payoff in future prosperity of the economy.However, this investment is not always equal, as some communities are wealthier and thus have a broader tax base from which to fund education. It seems unfair that a young child’s access to education is dependant largely on the community in which he or she lives. The purpose of this paper is to explore the history, the national trends, and a specific example of judicial attempts to equalize educational opportunity for all students. The first portion of this paper will discuss the history of judicial challenges to education funding laws. Since the 1970s multiple attempts have been made, with varying success, to overturn unequal systems of financing education. These attempts have used the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause, individual state constitution’s equal protection clauses, and, most recently, state education clauses. This has led to 19 states overturning their methods of education finance. These court rulings and changing education finance systems have been studied in academia, and scholars have uncovered many national trends. The second part of this essay will provide information on what trends the most prominent and respected of these scholars have found. In general, they found that a court overturned education finance system generally leads to an equalization of district spending across a state. This equalization usually “levels up” lower spending schools instead of bringing down high spending ones. This leveling up of spending generally was found to lead to a similar leveling up of student performance. The final, and most substantial, section of this paper provides an original, statistical case study of what is currently happening in the state of Vermont. Vermont is an example of a state that imposed a new, court ordered, radical, and progressive educational equalization policy. This policy was imposed in 1997 in response to the Vermont Supreme Court case Brigham v State. Vermont provides an excellent opportunity to conduct original research because it is an example of a state which imposed a radical policy that, due to its relatively recent imposition, has not yet received extensive research. This paper will find that Vermont’s radical policy, called Act 60, generally corroborates many of the national trends that scholars found in their national surveys. Act 60 has caused an equalization of school spending across the state, it has done this by bringing the spending levels of the poorer schools closer to the spending levels of the richer schools, and it has equalized performance on statewide assessment tests. Although, there has been a large backlash to the extremely progressive act, its success in equalizing spending and performance stand as triumphs of the school funding equalization process, and provide hope for more equal access to public schooling for all children.

The paper focuses on the challenges of unemployment, and particularly long-term unemployment, in post-reunification Germany.  The paper takes a historical approach, tracing the evolution of the German Social Market system from the late 19th Century, with a particular focus on the current structure’s evolution in the post-WWII period. It examines the role that the system of codetermination, in which labor takes a formal role in firm management and supervision, played and plays in developing the German labor market. The paper focuses on the growth in long-term unemployment in Germany, with consideration of the economic causes and impact, the political calculations that influenced the system, and the moral implications of a system which trades off job security for higher unemployment.

Alexander Hamilton’s Wall Street was a creation of the mind as much as it was the market, a political edifice in the deepest possible sense. In the roaring 1790s, the secretary sought to ground an oligarchic philosophy in the financial apparatus of public debt and central banking. Today, we have revived many of his structures, while our partisan debates give new voice to the war of words that surrounded them. There are those who echo the secretary: “The interest of the state is in intimate connection with those of the rich individuals belonging to it.” But there are also those who reissue James Madison’s stern 1791 warning: “The stockjobbers will become the praetorian bank of the Government, at once its tool and its tyrant; bribed by its largess, and overawing it.” This paper takes the latter view, and casts new skepticism on a political order forged by debt-driven, government-gilded finance. What follows is a multi-perspectival, multi-disciplinary account — written in the founders’ own tradition — weaving together historical narrative, economic modeling, market theory, political philosophy, and recent events. Hamilton trusted the nation’s wealthy to bind weak, isolated citizens into a powerful, national whole. But the bridge between self and society would not be the unreliable institutional framework of legislative democracy. Instead, social order and unity would be mediated by the economic logic of debt, interest and profit, all centralized in the hands of a managing elite. Hamilton’s goal was to place the wealthy and their Bank at the vital center of government so as to preserve a faltering union. To the secretary, the nation was precious by virtue of its energy, management, and largesse — not its liberty. From 17th-century London to Philadelphia, 1792, central banking forges a volatile nexus between the administrative state and the financier class, increasing their energy and damaging their democratic character. The liquid assets of the very many are controlled, compounded, and capitalized by the politico-economic calculus of the very few, centralized in urban power centers and transnational trading floors. The essential motivator of such a system is republican skepticism: a profound doubt in the very idea of self-determination. The institutionalization and rule of the leveraged financial state has several historically, conceptually, and economically demonstrable effects: profits replace aristocratic titles, debt service replaces public service, and self-governance becomes mere management. Such a system is neither inevitable, nor is it a necessary feature of a modern free market. Public debt and central banking did not create it alone. Rather, Hamilton’s system drives capitalism’s engine to specific ideological ends. The secretary’s debt regime was supplanted, in principle and practice, by the Jeffersonian financial revolution. The Hamiltonian citadel was not inevitable in the framers’ age, nor is it in our own.