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In experimental work, researchers have found that policymakers discount the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree. We build on these results with a national sample of local policymakers in the United States, exploring whether communicators can prevent policymakers from discounting their opinions by providing evidence of their own knowledge about a topic. We find that policymakers discount the opinions of hypothetical constituents with whom they disagree, but there is evidence that providing unambiguous evidence about a letter-writer's positive traits can reduce this discounting. We conclude with a discussion of implications for theory as well as practical implications for communicating with policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies concerning undocumented immigrants are inevitably ambivalent, creating uncertainty and confusion in the implementation process. We identify a clear example of this ambivalence —U.S. law setting standards for determining the credibility of asylum seekers—that resulted in an increase in asylum grants despite policymakers' intention to make it harder for individuals to obtain the status. We argue that this law, The REAL ID Act of 2005, sent mixed messages to immigration judges (IJs), street‐level bureaucrats who implement immigration policy. It increased IJ discretion, but set vague limits. We theorize that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, use their professional legal training as a short‐cut and look primarily to the courts for guidance. Our evidence supports our argument. After the passage of the REAL ID Act, IJ decision‐making is more closely aligned with the preferences of their political and legal principals, and, in the final score, the federal circuit courts are the winners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the public to considerable scientific uncertainty, which may promote vaccine hesitancy among individuals with lower tolerance of uncertainty. In a national sample of US adults in May–June 2020, we examined how both perceptions of uncertainty about COVID-19 and trait-level differences in tolerance of uncertainty arising from various sources (risk, ambiguity, and complexity) are related to vaccine hesitancy-related outcomes, including trust in COVID-19 information, COVID-19 vaccine intentions, and beliefs that COVID-19 vaccines should undergo a longer testing period before being released to the public. Overall, perceptions of COVID-19 uncertainty were not associated with trust in information, vaccine intentions, or beliefs about vaccine testing. However, higher tolerance of risk was associated with lower intentions to get vaccinated, and lower tolerance of ambiguity was associated with lower intentions to get vaccinated and preferring a longer period of vaccine testing. Critically, perceptions of COVID-19 uncertainty and trait-level tolerance for uncertainty also interacted as predicted, such that greater perceived COVID-19 uncertainty was more negatively associated with trust in COVID-19 information among individuals with lower tolerance for risk and ambiguity. Thus, although perceptions of uncertainty regarding COVID-19 may not reduce trust and vaccine hesitancy for all individuals, trait-level tolerance of uncertainty arising from various sources may have both direct and moderating effects on these outcomes. These findings can inform public health communication or other interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing frameworks of assimilation and group boundaries are limited in making sense of experiences of racial ambiguity. What happens when racial groups are mistaken for other groups, and how does this phenomenon relate to the racial hierarchy? This paper investigates the on-the-ground mechanisms of racial ambiguity that formal institutions, like the Census, do not capture, yet are the lived realities for many immigrant groups. Through analysis of 120 interviews and supplemental observations, I find that the racialization of second-generation South Asians shifts between racial ambiguity and racial legibility in daily life. I present a theoretical concept – localized racialization – to reveal the transient, yet defining, racial experiences of groups residing in the racial middle. Localized racialization centres multiple factors of skin colour, intersectional status markers, and situational contexts that tether racial experiences to the local. This study's South Asian participants reveal persistent racial dynamism at the micro-interactional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to explore middle aged mothers' and young adult daughters' perceptions of the impact of non-death loss. This qualitative study explored perceptions of loss and boundary ambiguity of 24 mother-daughter dyads through individual interviews. All mothers and daughters described losses such as illness, the daughters' launching, and dissolution of relationships that impacted the mother-daughter relationship. Comparison of mothers' and daughters' descriptions of the impacts of loss revealed convergence and divergence in their descriptions of associated levels of boundary ambiguity. Although experiences of loss do seem to be a universal human experience, perceptions regarding the impact of loss on both the individual and the mother-daughter dyad vary greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in elections, and candidates and parties often intentionally create uncertainty to benefit themselves. However, there is no consensus in existing research on how parties balance the trade-off between distinction and broad appeal without alienating their supporters. This paper proposes a novel theory that a party's brand structures when strategies that blur or obfuscate a party or candidate's position are effective. In particular, I argue voters respond negatively to appeals that signal brand deviation from co-partisans on issues that are central to their party's brand. Outside of the brand, the trade-offs between clarity and ambivalence will be weaker. I test these expectations in two survey experiments on a quota sample of the United States population. I find that the efficacy of blurred electoral varies by the brand centrality of an issue, the blurring strategy deployed, and the co- or out-partisan status of the receiver. These findings have implications for our understanding of how parties can navigate the costs and benefits of clear brands and blurred appeals in contemporary party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on men to prevent sexual violence. This study uses data from 25 semi-structured interviews to explore how heterosexual undergraduate men have responded to cultural and organizational pressure to seek consent. Participants answered questions about their recent sexual experiences and attitudes toward campus sexual consent policies. Findings indicate that while participants condone key elements of sexual consent, they do not consistently apply reliable strategies to seek consent. Instead, they use ambiguous social cues that are common in both consensual and nonconsensual sexual interactions, which reinforce the notion that consent is unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through analysis of a classroom lesson led by a decorated teacher, we illustrate how instructional practices favor students seeking empirical patterns at the expense of using mechanistic reasoning. In the lesson, when students spontaneously come up with hypothetical mechanisms to explain why a light bulb in an electric circuit does or does not light, the teacher, following the guidance of standardized curricula, redirects them toward pattern‐seeking. We argue that this bias toward pattern‐seeking in Chinese national standards and curricula, along with ambiguity in those documents on what an "explanation" is, sits in tension with students' productive abilities and propensities for engaging in mechanistic explanation. In discussion, we extend the argument to show a less severe but similar bias toward pattern‐seeking in the United States' Next Generation Science Standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary Objective. The objective of this study was to investigate the factors that might have a negative influence on auditory processing and higher-level language processing in the US veterans of the recent foreign wars (Iraq and Afghanistan). Research Design. Exploratory, cross-sectional, correlational, prospective, cohort-design. Methods and Procedures. The experimental group consisted of 12 US veterans of war (10 males and 2 females) with blast exposure. The control group consisted of six US veterans (5 males and 1 female) without the history of blast exposure. Both groups were matched in mean age. Both groups were tested on Boston Assessment of Traumatic Brain Injury, Consonant Trigrams Test, Symbol Digit Modality Test, Trail Making Test, SCAN-3, CELF-5-Metalinguistics, CASL, and an unpublished test on the processing of sentence prosody. Main Outcomes and Results. Significant group differences in attention, and time-compressed sentence processing were found. For those veterans (in the experimental group) who were not wearing their helmets at the time of blast, additional significant differences were noted with inferencing and auditory figure-ground tasks. Conclusions: Findings support the importance of including speech/language pathologists in all stages of recovery for veterans post-blast exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have shown that the relationships people establish between moral orientations and market practices vary considerably across historical, geographic, and institutional contexts. Less attention has been paid to situational variation in how the same actors moralize different economic goals, especially in their workplace. This article offers an account of situational variation by theorizing the implications of the ambiguity of moral values for economic activity. I draw on the case of a post-acute care unit, where reimbursement policies create the contradictory demands of discharging elderly patients quickly while ensuring their safety to avoid re-hospitalization. Using ethnography and interviews, I show that the same actors switched between different normative evaluations of "independent aging" to legitimize divergent organizational goals. A shared understanding of autonomy as synonymous with "home" moralized the organizational mission of discharging patients off the unit. Expectations that elderly people attain independence by acknowledging need for assistance moralized the extension of services. Conversely, interpreting independence as a constellation of duties to be self-reliant moralized practices that lead to fast discharge. Based on these findings, I develop a framework of moral polysemy to analyze ambiguity as a resource for cooperation in organizations and a tool to expand understanding of moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious organizations have increasingly drawn the attention of communication scholars. This interest is due in part to the significant role these organizations have in building social capital – particularly in regard to improving racial/ethnic relations. This potential has remained largely unrealized, however, since the Civil Rights Movement over 50 years ago. Consequently, this study seeks to understand how church pastors frame the ambiguous discourse of organizational purpose. Building on an earlier research phase that included 42 pastoral interviews, this study adds to our understanding of framing practices via three dialectical tensions: integration-segregation, belief-practice, and vertical-horizontal. The analysis also reveals how these dialectics were framed through improbability, double bind, alternation, selection, connection, and transcendence, as well as their impact upon ethnic relationships. Theoretic and practical implications are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality improvement (QI) is an important function of learning health systems, and public policy should promote QI activities. Use of systematic methodologies in QI has prompted substantial confusion regarding when QI is human subjects research under the Common Rule, and this confusion persists with the revised Rule. Difficulty distinguishing research from QI imposes costs on the quality improvement process. I offer guidance to IRBs to mitigate these costs and suggest a new regulatory exclusion for minimal risk quality improvement activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happy marriages provide protective health benefits, and social support is a key factor in this association. However, previous research indicates one of the greatest differences between same- and different-sex couples is less social support for same-sex couples. Our goal was to examine the extent to which formal markers of couple status (e.g., marriage) impact wellbeing among same-sex married partners. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 218 primarily White gay and lesbian individuals in the Midwest. Quantitative analysis revealed individuals in a prior formal union with a different-sex partner reported the lowest levels of sexuality specific social support and acceptance. Qualitative analysis revealed four primary impacts of marriage on support from family, friends, and co-workers: no change, increased support, decreased support, and a synthesis of mixed support. Three mechanisms prompting change in the family were identified and are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly interest in racial socialization is growing, but researchers' understanding of how and when racial socialization relates to well-being is underdeveloped, particularly for multiracial populations. The present study investigated moderated mediation models to understand whether the indirect relations of egalitarian socialization to subjective well-being and self-esteem through integrated multiracial identification were conditional on phenotypic racial ambiguity among 383 multiracial adults. Tests of moderated mediation in primary analyses were significant for subjective well-being and self-esteem. Consistent with the hypotheses, egalitarian socialization was linked to a stronger multiracial integrated identity, which was positively associated with subjective well-being and self-esteem for those with moderate and high phenotypic racial ambiguity. This indirect effect was not significant for those reporting low phenotypic racial ambiguity. Results suggested a positive role of egalitarian socialization in relation to integrated identity and well-being for multiracial adults. This study highlights a culturally relevant pathway through which egalitarian socialization impacts well-being through racial identification for multiracial adults and the conditions of phenotypic racial ambiguity that contextualize this indirect effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the public interest approach to governmental lawyering in the U.S. It identifies the various drawbacks, limitations, and normative value of the agency-centered approach and the public interest approach. Also discussed are some of the relevant organizational psychology concepts, including role conflict and role ambiguity, organizational justice, and organizational commitment.

Following the Gulf oil spill and US housing meltdown, policy-makers revamped the associated administrative infrastructure in an effort to sharpen each agency’s focus, based on the perspective that asking an organization to fulfill competing missions undermines performance. Using a formal model, I demonstrate that priority goal ambiguity introduced when an agency balances multiple roles does have detrimental effects. Yet, assigning competing missions to one organization can be better than separating them, as the underlying tasks supporting the goals may require coordination. In fact, it is precisely when ambiguity becomes more debilitating that the importance of coordination intensifies. Moreover, if the bureau is misinformed about which goals are more valued politically, fostering uncertainty in agencies charged with multiple goals can even be beneficial. The article thus describes how such organizations function and why these arrangements persist, demonstrating that structural choices impact behavior even when agencies and overseers agree on policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study used data provided by 349 professional staff employees from 17 different US higher education institutions to assess aspects of their working conditions that could influence their own work engagement and the work-related behaviours of their colleagues. Relationships among three role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload), work engagement, organisational citizenship behaviours, and in-role behaviours were examined using correlation, regression and relative weight analyses. The higher participants’ perceptions of role ambiguity, conflict and overload, the lower were the levels of their own work engagement and organizational citizenship and in-role behaviours of their colleagues. Work engagement partially mediated the relationships between role ambiguity, conflict and overload and both organizational citizenship and in-role behaviours. The analysis indicated that role ambiguity had the strongest relationship with work engagement, organisational citizenship and in-role behaviours, followed by role conflict and then by role overload. Practical implications are discussed and managerial interventions suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the author's views about the deterrence of juvenile crime, efforts to decrease punishment-related ambiguity, and a juvenile defendant's right to counsel during intake proceedings in the U.S. Rehabilitative deterrence and America's juvenile justice system are addressed, along with a traditional rational choice model of crime and deterrence. Behavioral insights and risk aversion are also examined.

Although the gap is narrowing, Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with and die from heart disease than cancer, and yet many believe cancer is more common and their personal risk of cancer is higher than their heart disease risk. Using nationally representative 2013 Health Information National Trends Survey data, we assessed such beliefs and examined sociodemographic and psychological factors and health behaviors associated with these beliefs. 42.8% of participants rated cancer as more common and 78.5% rated their own cancer risk as equal to or exceeding their heart disease risk. These misperceptions were only modestly correlated. Beliefs about relative population risk were associated with various psychological factors, whereas beliefs about relative personal risk were not. Both beliefs were inconsistently associated with health behaviors. Accuracy in beliefs about cancer and heart disease relative risk and prevalence is low and future research should explore antecedents and consequences of these beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 9/11, the American policy towards Africa has been strongly influenced by national security interests and in particular by the fight against international terrorism and Islamic radicalisation. Traditionally, the American Africa policy has been the result of bureaucratic policymaking with the Pentagon and the State Department playing prominent roles. The paper argues that in the current century, evangelical Christian lobby groups have gained increasing influence on policymaking on Africa. Because policymaking has been influenced by a number of different actors, the American Africa policy may appear incoherent and ambiguous if judged narrowly on the expectation that it only aims to take care of US national security concerns and economic self-interests. The paper concludes that Africa was important to the United States during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama because of the combination of strong security interests and strong domestic lobby groups that have pressured to place Africa on the US foreign policy agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is extensive health and public health literature on the 'evidence-policy gap', exploring the frustrating experiences of scientists trying to secure a response to the problems and solutions they raise and identifying the need for better evidence to reduce policymaker uncertainty. We offer a new perspective by using policy theory to propose research with greater impact, identifying the need to use persuasion to reduce ambiguity, and to adapt to multi-level policymaking systems.We identify insights from secondary data, namely systematic reviews, critical analysis and policy theories relevant to evidence-based policymaking. The studies are drawn primarily from countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We combine empirical and normative elements to identify the ways in which scientists can, do and could influence policy.We identify two important dilemmas, for scientists and researchers, that arise from our initial advice. First, effective actors combine evidence with manipulative emotional appeals to influence the policy agenda - should scientists do the same, or would the reputational costs outweigh the policy benefits? Second, when adapting to multi-level policymaking, should scientists prioritise 'evidence-based' policymaking above other factors? The latter includes governance principles such the 'co-production' of policy between local public bodies, interest groups and service users. This process may be based primarily on values and involve actors with no commitment to a hierarchy of evidence.We conclude that successful engagement in 'evidence-based policymaking' requires pragmatism, combining scientific evidence with governance principles, and persuasion to translate complex evidence into simple stories. To maximise the use of scientific evidence in health and public health policy, researchers should recognise the tendency of policymakers to base judgements on their beliefs, and shortcuts based on their emotions and familiarity with information; learn 'where the action is', and be prepared to engage in long-term strategies to be able to influence policy; and, in both cases, decide how far you are willing to go to persuade policymakers to act and secure a hierarchy of evidence underpinning policy. These are value-driven and political, not just 'evidence-based', choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the behavioral phenomenon of ambiguity aversion in relation to the notion of deterrence in the U.S. juvenile justice system. The treatment of the right to counsel during juvenile intake proceedings is addressed. The views of economist Daniel Ellsberg on ambiguity aversion are noted. The frequency of detection of delinquent behavior by U.S. juveniles is mentioned.

Occupational stress researchers have given considerable attention to role ambiguity and role conflict as predictors of employee health, job attitudes and behaviour. However, the validity of the Rizzo, House, and Lirtzman’s (1970) scales – the most popular role stressor measures – has been a source of disagreement among researchers. In response to the disputed validity of the Rizzo et al. scales, we developed new measures of role ambiguity and role conflict and conducted five studies to examine their psychometric qualities (Study 1N = 101 U.S. workers; Study 2N = 118 workers primarily employed in the U.S.; Study 3N = 135 employed U.S. MBA students; Study 4N = 973 members of the U.S. Air Force (USAF); Study 5N = 234 workers primarily employed in the U.S.). Across these five studies, we found that the new role stressor scales have desirable psychometric qualities: they displayed high levels of substantive validity, high levels of internal consistency and test–retest reliability, they produced an interpretable factor structure, and we found evidence of their construct validity. We therefore recommend that these new scales be used in future research on role stress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An enormous literature has criticized patent claims for being ambiguous. In this Article, I explain that this literature misunderstands the real problem: the fundamental concern is not that patent claims are ambiguous but that they are drafted by patentees with self-serving incentives to write claims in an overbroad manner. No one has asked why the patent system gives self-interested patentees the leading role in delineating the scope of their own patents. This Article makes two contributions to the literature. First, it explicitly frames the problem with patent claims as one of patentee self-interest rather than the intrinsic ambiguity of claim language. Second, it provides a counterintuitive answer to the question of why the patent system relies on patentee-drafted claims. Although giving patentees claim-drafting power undoubtedly leads to overbroad patent rights, such an allocation of drafting power is nonetheless socially efficient. This is because the Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO") and the courts lack the information necessary to determine the correct scope of a patent in the first instance. Requiring patentees to write claims forces them to take a position, a process that discloses some of the patentee's private information and reduces the complexity of subsequent decision making by courts and the PTO. While patentees will overclaim, they cannot overclaim too much, and relying on an imperfect claim is better than having a court or the PTO make an uninformed guess in the first instance. The Article concludes by explaining the implications of this insight for the debate over claim construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses an American President's powers under the U.S. Constitution's Recess Appointments Clause in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 2014 case National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) v. Noel Canning which deals with the distribution of executive and legislative authority in the country and American constitutional law. Historical practice and a textual ambiguity concept are mentioned, along with adverse possession, separation of powers, and the U.S. Congress.

The article discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's (USSC's) ruling in the 2014 case Abramski v. United States which deals with the nation's Gun Control Act of 1968, the legal aspects of material misrepresentations, and false statements by straw purchasers of firearms. U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Form 4473, the identities of firearms buyers, and American gun law-related recordkeeping requirements. Statutory purpose and ambiguity are also mentioned.

All theories of statutory interpretation rely on an idea of how Congress operates. A commonly held supposition among scholars is that the procedures used in the creation of legislation are unsophisticated and almost anarchic. This supposition exists because scholars generally give little consideration to the underlying actors and their evolving roles in the drafting process. This Article deconstructs the many steps of, and actors involved in, the statutory-drafting process. It reveals an evolving process that is the opposite of what scholars generally believe: While Congress historically did not have the capacity or resources to draft statutes well, it has evolved through the last forty years to arrive at a point where modern statutes are carefully researched by professional researchers and clearly drafted by nonpartisan professional legislative drafters, with the entire process overseen by hundreds of specialized committee staff and countless lobbyists. This Article uses this better understanding of the evolution of Congress's institutional competence to explain how the rise of judicial textualism over the last few decades should be viewed at least partially as a response to Congress's improved drafting process. And not only do these practical findings provide a descriptive account of judicial behavior, they also provide a basis from which to make normative judgments about how to undertake statutory interpretation based on the era in which a statute was drafted, a method that this Article terms "intertemporal statutory interpretation." This Article demonstrates how consideration of the evolution of the real-world legislative process can allow for more fully developed theories of statutory interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawyering has changed dramatically in the past century, but scholarly and regulatory models have failed to keep pace. Because these models focus exclusively on the "practice of law" as defined by the profession, they ignore many types of work that today's lawyers perform and many sources of ethical tension they encounter. To address these shortcomings, I examine significant twentieth- and twenty-first-century social dynamics that are fundamentally altering contemporary lawyers' work by broadening and blurring the boundary between law and business. Within the resulting boundary zone, a growing number of lawyers occupy roles for which legal training is valuable but licensure is not required. I argue that the ambiguity surrounding these roles--regarding what constitutes legal practice, what roles lawyers play, and what professional obligations attach--creates opportunities for abuse by individual lawyers and for ethical arbitrage by sophisticated corporate clients. The proliferation of these roles gives rise to key ethical tensions, ignored by existing models of the profession, that threaten to extinguish the profession's public-facing orientation in favor of its private interests. I conclude that we cannot effectively understand and regulate the twenty-first-century legal profession until we move beyond the rigid constraints of existing models and begin to study the full range of roles and work settings--both in and out of practice--that today's lawyers occupy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that investigates the impact of ambiguity aversions in asset pricing of two-person and pure-exchange economy through the adoption of equilibrium general setting in the U.S. The continuous-time and pure-exchange competitive economy are mentioned. Moreover, ways on how to do financial analysis for uncertainty and ambiguity models are also stated.

The article discusses the legislative intent behind the U.S. Congress' passage of the nation's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in 1977 which amended the 1934 U.S. Securities Exchange Act, focusing on investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the moral ambiguity that is reportedly associated with the FCPA's passage. U.S. anti-bribery laws and the potential impacts of Chinese culture and guangxi (relationships) on business dealings are examined.

The author presents information on two of the Civil Rules projects that she undertook with Edward H. Cooper, reporter at the U.S. Civil Rules Advisory Committee in drafting the U.S. civil procedures. She discusses the complete restructuring of civil rules on the request of chief justice of the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee to guarantee consistent language when similar meanings were intended, to reformulate the use of ancient language into the modern language, and to acuminate dubious language to make the rules more comprehensive for lawyers and judges. She informs that the second project aided the Advisory Committee decide which rule necessitated the changes and recognize the eventual challenges in framing the new rules.

Family businesses comprise the largest portion of organizations in the United States. Although much is known about how individuals interact in these businesses, little is known about how family businesses function at an organizational level. Family businesses are likely to use strategic ambiguity in their mission statements to allow for multiple interpretations of the same message by their stakeholders. This study analyzed the mission statements of the 20 largest family businesses in the United States to explore their use of strategic ambiguity. Family businesses used strategic ambiguity for the purposes of unified diversity, promoting varied understandings of goals, and for facilitating organizational change, but not for the purposes of deniability. This research begins to provide an explanation of the potential driving factors of family business mission statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courts have long given some amount of deference to executive agencies charged with administering bodies of law. When a statute is ambiguous, the agency charged with administering the statute may be better positioned than the courts to interpret it. But when is a statute ambiguous? How does a modem court determine whether a prior court thought a statute was ambiguous? Does a Supreme Court interpretation of an ambiguous statute remove the ambiguity? These are the questions that faced the Supreme Court in United States v. Home Concrete & Supply, LLC. The 1984 Supreme Court decision Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc. ushered in a new era of increased deference to agencies by replacing the previous circumstantial standard with a presumption of deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Chevron's policy was obvious but its limits were vague. In United States v. Mead Corp., the Supreme Court drew a procedural line beyond which deference to agencies was inappropriate in order to ensure due process. National Cable & Telecommunications Ass 'n v. Brand X Internet Services made administrative law more consistent by giving Chevron deference to all proper agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, regardless of whether courts had already interpreted those statutes. Home Concrete is the Supreme Court's most recent effort to adjust the standard for Chevron deference. This Comment analyzes Home Concrete on two levels: (1) by reviewing the case-specific issues that primarily controlled Home Concrete, and (2) by considering the decision's broader effects on administrative-deference law. The Comment suggests that the Supreme Court wrongly decided Home Concrete on the micro-level and unwisely retreated from the deferential approach of Chevron and Brand X on the macro level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain an international agreement that appears to run counter to the declared objectives of one of the key players? This article examines the US–EU Open Skies agreement signed in 2007 and asks why Europeans accepted the agreement after having rejected a comparable version three years earlier. Theoretical approaches that explain time inconsistency in international negotiations tend to focus on reasons why states can be constrained to accept suboptimal solutions. In multi-level bargaining, principal–agent and bureaucratization theories focus on loss of control and constructivists suggest that governments can become trapped in rhetoric. This article shows that paradoxical agreements can be voluntary and explains them by showing the rationale behind multi-games that include ambiguity about the future. In particular, increasing the flexibility of the agreement allowed negotiators to escape present-day constituent pressures by remaining ambiguous and betting on shifting coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As strategies for campaign political advertising become more complex, there remains much to learn about how ad characteristics shape voter reactions to political messages. Drawing from existing literature on source credibility, we expect ad sponsorship will have meaningful effects on voter reactions to political advertisements. We test this by using an original experiment, where we expose a sample of student and non-student participants to equivalent ads and vary only the paid sponsor disclaimer at the end of the message. The only thing that differs across stimuli is whether a political candidate, a known interest group, or an unknown interest group sponsors the advertisement. Following exposure to one of these ads, participants complete a posttest battery of questions measuring the persuasiveness of the message, source credibility, and message legitimacy. We find that ads sponsored by unknown interest groups are more persuasive than those sponsored by candidates or known interest groups, and persuasion is mediated by perceived credibility of the source. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for our understanding of contemporary campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article analyzes the inconsistency between different document review efforts on the same document collection to determine whether that inconsistency is due primarily to ambiguity in applying the definition of responsiveness to particular documents, or due primarily to human error. By examining documents from the TREC 2009 Legal Track, the Authors show that inconsistent assessments regarding the same documents are due in large part to human error. Therefore, the quality of a review effort is not simply a matter of opinion; it is possible to show objectively that some reviews, and some review methods, are better than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison between Iran's current nuclear efforts and those of the pro-Western regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi shows that Iranian ambitions for a full-fledged civilian nuclear programme have remained relatively constant for nearly half a century. Today, fuel cycle technology provides Iran with a latent nuclear weapon's potential. However, US concerns about an Iranian bomb, which began in the early 1970s and aggravated after the Iranian Revolution, long predate Teheran's uranium enrichment programme. Thus, Iran is a specific case of the general problem presented by the inherent potential of nuclear technology to both civilian and military ends. Approaches to dealing with a long-term, ambiguous, latent nuclear weapon threat, whether Iranian or other, are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Linear predictive coding (LPC) analysis was used to create morphed natural tokens of English voiced stop consonants ranging from /b/ to /d/ and /d/ to /g/ in four vowel contexts (/i/, /æ/, /a/, /u/). Both vowel–consonant–vowel (VCV) and consonant–vowel (CV) stimuli were created. A total of 320 natural-sounding acoustic speech stimuli were created, comprising 16 stimulus series. A behavioral experiment demonstrated that the stimuli varied perceptually from /b/ to /d/ to /g/, and provided useful reference data for the ambiguity of each token. Acoustic analyses indicated that the stimuli compared favorably to standard characteristics of naturally-produced consonants, and that the LPC morphing procedure successfully modulated multiple acoustic parameters associated with place of articulation. The entire set of stimuli is freely available on the Internet (http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~lholt/php/StephensHoltStimuli.php) for use in research applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: It has been frequently acknowledged that results of predictive genetic tests may have implications for relatives as well as for the individual client. Ethicists have noted that an individual’s right to know her genetic risk may conflict with a relative’s right not to know this risk. It is hardly recognised, however, that family members may have a role in the production of test results as well. This article reconstructs the actual process of predictive BRCA-testing in the Netherlands, with a special focus on the roles assigned to clients and families and the expectations about family relationships inscribed in this practice. Fieldwork was carried out in an outpatient clinic for clinical genetics in an academic hospital. Data collection included 11 interviews with members of families, observations of counselling interviews between research participants and their clinical geneticist, and interviews with the 2 clinical geneticists involved in the consultations. It compares this process to the American practice of BRCA-testing. Whereas Dutch practice presupposes active involvement of diseased relatives in the testing process, American practice constitutes the client primarily as an independent individual who may or may not decide to involve her relatives. Moreover, Dutch clients are expected to have a harmonious, open and communicative relationship with their relatives. The American client, in contrast, is supposed to have more distant family relationships. It is argued that an interpretation of these differences in terms of ‘the right to know’ and ‘the right not to know’ misses the point, because the production of informative test results depends on the cooperation of relatives. The differences between Dutch and American practice are more adequately interpreted as implying a preference for unambiguous test results versus a preference for individual independence. The paper shows what is lost when opting for one value at the cost of another and discusses several alternatives to circumvent the value conflict at stake. By opening up for discussion the values implicit in BRCA-testing practices, the paper aims to contribute to debates on the overall desirability of these practices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The EU co-decision procedure gave the Parliament and the Council the possibility to reconcile differences in a conciliation committee similar to US conference committees. This article examines why important rules regulating the scope of these committees, which at first outset look similar, are applied more flexibly in the US than the EU context. Learning about the conditions under which scope rules are applied flexibly is important for EU scholars because these rules control who affects the final legislative outputs. In accordance with insights from recent institutional literature, the article argues that variation in rule ambiguity, demand for flexible rule interpretation, and bargaining power of the actors interested in modifying the scope rules can help explain these differences in rule application between the two systems. However, it also shows how flexible interpretation of even unambiguous rules may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues concerning the resolution of statutory ambiguity by the U.S. House and Congress. It states that the costs of legislative enactment are greater than the benefits gained in resolving ambiguity concerns. It mentions the case Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. in which courts have allowed great deference to agency interpretations of statutes. It says that courts must focus first on the post-enactment congressional resolutions in interpretation.

The article discusses the Polar Tankers case as a test case for the Tonnage Clause found in Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution and the federal regulation of commerce. It elaborates on the ambiguity inherent in the Tonnage Clause and discusses a number of issues relevant to its interpretation. It suggests that the U.S. Constitution framers' intent with the Tonnage Clause was to reinforce the Import-Export Clause and federal control of commerce.

The article discusses the typology spaces of the U.S. Constitution. It examines each of the 14 spaces specifically enumerated by the Constitution to expose ambiguity on the significance and scope of every space and show how similar ambiguities re-emerge in multiple contexts. It highlights spaces not expressly addressed by the Constitution, such as the so-called adjacent spaces and tribal lands. It notes that the Constitution formulates typology spaces that rely on formal categories.

This study investigates the effectiveness of two variants of a prompting strategy that guides students to focus on important issues when learning in an ill-structured domain. Students in three groups studied individually Software Project Management (SPM) cases for a week, using a web-based learning environment designed especially for this purpose. The first group (control) studied the cases without any prompting. The second group ('writing mode') studied the same cases, while prompted to provide written answers to a set of knowledge integration prompts meant to engage students in deeper processing of the material. The third group ('thinking mode') studied the cases, while prompted only to think of possible answers to the same question prompts. Results indicated that students in the writing condition group outperformed the others in both domain knowledge acquisition and knowledge transfer post-test items. Several students in the thinking condition group skipped the question prompts, while those that reported having reflected on the material were unable to achieve high performance comparable to the writing condition group. Overall, the study provides evidence that the implementation of prompting techniques in technology-enhanced learning environments may lead to improved outcomes, when combined with the requirement that students provide their answers in writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a social constructionist approach in maintaining that indeterminacy of meaning is an unavoidable aspect of interview research. It uses positioning analysis to examine how subject positions and contingently constructed meanings are produced in interview interactions. The analysis focuses on excerpts from a series of three interviews with a Chinese-born immigrant to the US in which the interviewee responds to questions asking whether he has experienced discrimination. The interviewee produces accounts that are seemingly ambiguous at times and seemingly clear on another occasion. Rather than determining exactly what he means across these three accounts, the article uses fine-grained micro-analysis to examine the linguistic constructs and interactional strategies used to construct such ambiguity and clarity. It also examines the role of the researcher in contributing to such interpretations given her projection of the ‘imagined subject’ who is producing these accounts. The article concludes with a discussion of the agentive subjectivity constituted for interviewees through the interview process, which contributes to the indeterminacy of meaning true for all interview research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the importance of keeping the activities of interpretation and construction of the U.S. Constitution separate. The essayist deduces that originalism is a method of constitutional interpretation that the meaning of the text, at the time of enactment, is identified as its public meaning. It discusses how ambiguity and vagueness contribute to the problem of ascertaining semantic meanings and that normative theories are needed for proper interpretation and construction.

The article discusses the traditional use of dictionaries in statutory interpretation and cites the case Muscarello v. U.S. where the issue was the interpretation of the phrase "carries a firearm" and which reveals common but fallacious assumptions regarding the structure and content of dictionaries. It examines the role of dictionaries in the Court's jurisprudence and how they were used by judges to help them understand the meaning of a forgotten or unknown term. It suggests the corpus method as a means of resolving questions of lexical ambiguity.

The concept of ambiguity plays an underappreciated and undertheorized role in the judicial review of agency statutory interpretations. Its importance is difficult to exaggerate. Ambiguity often functions as the determiner of whether an agency's statutory interpretation will receive deference, as well as whether courts will apply the stare decisis standard for statutory interpretation cases instead of the recent principle that agencies can change their interpretations even in the face of a previous conflicting judicial interpretation. The prominence of ambiguity has caused many commentators and courts to proclaim a bright line distinction between interpretive tools that help evaluate statutory clarity and those that resolve statutory uncertainty. Although linguists would agree that ambiguity is unexceptional in normative legal texts due to its ubiquity, the judiciary, which has created a highly idiosyncratic definition, is far more selective about declaring language to be ambiguous. The judiciary's selectivity regarding ambiguity is driven by its conflation of ambiguity identification with ambiguity resolution, which allows courts to determine arbitrarily the context for resolving statutory meaning through the discretionary selection of judicially created, but untested, interpretive tools. This Article addresses the concept of ambiguity from a linguistic perspective and argues that the United States Supreme Court's Chevron doctrine has fostered an unfortunate emphasis on ambiguity. Instead of Chevron's misguided elevation of the explicit ambiguity determination, judicial review should focus on other considerations. Such a commitment would mean the end of the bifurcated review process that distinguishes between ambiguity identification and ambiguity resolution. It would also allow for the consideration of substantive canons of statutory construction equally in agency and nonagency cases. Finally, it would view Chevron's contribution to statutory interpretation as a softening of the strict stare decisis standard that would no longer depend on a previous explicit ambiguity determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]