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The purpose of this research is to analyse the vehicular pursuit policy of State Police and State Highway Patrol agencies in the USA.

Written policies were compared against a Standard Policy, developed by the researcher, based on prior academic and legal research in combination with the existing policies of the Connecticut State Police, California Highway Patrol, and the Minnesota State Police. A total of 47 written pursuit policies were received for a 94 percent return rate.

All policies had statements pertaining to safety and the need to pursue with due care and regard for public welfare. Items not included in many policies involved elements pertaining to liability and negligence: concerns that have been demonstrated to be instigators of litigation.

This work centers solely on state agencies. This study is the first step in an ongoing, long‐term project aimed at law enforcement vehicular pursuit policy analysis. The first step in the project centered on state agencies but will grow to include municipal agencies as well.

A very useful treatment of the practical side of law enforcement policy. Existing pursuit policies are examined, as are the legal principles used to guide police policy development.

This paper fills an untapped niche in policy research. It is both a practical analysis of existing pursuit policies and an examination of legal cases and constitutional guidelines.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the historical evolution of campaign finance laws and suggest the legal implications for public relations practitioners after the US Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

The approach of this paper examines appellate case law and federal statutes to provide a legal analysis of the history of campaign finance laws and potential impact on public relations practitioners.

This research provides an overview of the evolution of campaign finance case law and federal statues in the USA and provides analysis of how the 2010 Citizens United case and a recent 2012 case, American Trade Partnership, are altering both the political and corporate landscapes. By allowing far greater contribution rights to corporations than any time since 1907, Citizens United is changing the role corporations may directly play in elections at all levels. Implications for how these changes may affect corporate public relations practitioners both professionally and ethically are discussed.

In a post-Citizens United era, corporate PR may now legally be engaged with many forms of highly political communications. Corporate PR may have a more political tone and ethical dilemmas may face practitioners who may be legally asked to perform communications tactics that are at odds with their political values.

Despite the academic analysis of Citizens United no study has evaluated the effect Citizens United and campaign finance laws on public relations practice.

Motivated by recent congressional interest in eradicating government sponsored enterprises (GSE), the purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to price the implicit government guarantee embedded in the bonds issued by the Farm Credit System.

The paper uses the Black‐Scholes model to extract the implied volatilities of the guarantee and then substitute into the model the volatility in historical land prices. The model is developed along the lines of Merton's bond pricing formulation of implicit calls and puts on bond yield risk and default.

Bottom line results show that the average bond yield for a 3M Farm Credit bond from January 13th 2009 to February 10th 2011 would be 0.3744 percent if the Farm Credit System had no GSE status, which is 13.62 bps higher than the actual bond yield. The difference between the hypothetical yield and the actual yield increases with increasing maturity and reaches its peak with 10Y bond where the difference between the hypothetical yield and the actual yield is 68.81 bps. The paper concludes that given the current state of the agricultural credit market in the USA that loss of GSE status and the implied guarantee of Farm Credit bonds would have a minimal effect on short term notes, with a more substantive increase in longer term yields.

The GSE status of the Farm Credit System is an important political issue. This paper provides first estimates of what impact might result from its loss of GSE status. The methods employed are consistent with current models of bond pricing and the results are of direct relevance to Farm Credit System regulators and congressional discussions.

Farm credit is important, if the Farm Credit System loses its GSE status this might affect the competitive balance between commercial and system lenders.

This paper uses option price theory based upon the spread between farm credit bonds and treasury. The approach used requires daily data, but not all attributes of bonds are known. Nonetheless, the results show remarkable consistency for a problem that is largely understudied. There is a need for policy makers, including the US congress to understand the value of government guarantees whether implicit or explicit.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states in 2018 that safeguarding “civil liberties is critical” to their official duties. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS, as its website explains,

reviews and assesses complaints from the public in areas such as: physical or other abuse; discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability; inappropriate conditions of confinement; infringements of free speech; violation of right to due process … and any other civil rights or civil liberties violation related to a Department program or activity.

My chapter tracks the centrality of deportability in shaping the civil liberties and rights that DHS is tasked with enforcing. Over the course of the twentieth century, people on US soil saw an expanding list of civil liberties and civil rights. Important scholarship concentrates on the role of the courts, state and federal governments, advocacy groups, social movements, and foreign policy driving these constitutional and cultural changes. For instance, the scholarship illustrates that coming out of World War I, the US Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did not protect something the Justices labeled “irresponsible speech.” The Supreme Court soon changed course, opening up an era ever since of more robust First Amendment rights. What has not been undertaken in the literature is an examination of the relationship of deportability to the sweep of civil liberties and civil rights. Starting in the second decade of the twentieth century, federal immigration policymakers began multiplying types of immigration statuses. A century later, among many others, there is the H2A status for temporary low-wage workers, the H2B for skilled labor, and permanent residents with green cards. The deportability of each status constrains access to certain liberties and rights. Thus, in 2016, when people from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS act, they are not enforcing a uniform body of rights and liberties that applies equally to citizens and immigrants, or even within the large category of immigrants. Instead, they do so within a complicated matrix of liberties and rights attenuated by deportability, which has been shaped by the history of the twentieth century.

The 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision accomplished more than the national legalization of same-sex marriage; it also laid bare a deep rift among US Supreme Court justices over the question of whether and how religious objections to same-sex marriage should be accommodated in this new era of marriage equality. This chapter will explore the rift revealed in Obergefell between the Court’s differing conceptions of religious free exercise and will highlight the ways in which this legal dispute was translated into a forceful mode of conservative religious activism in the buildup to the groundbreaking 2016 election.

The first amendment, a crucial component of American constitutional law, is under attack from various groups advocating for censorship in universities and public schools. The censors assert that restrictive speech codes preventing anyone from engaging in any expression deemed hateful, offensive, defamatory, insulting, or critical of sacred religious or political beliefs and values are necessary in a multicultural society. These speech codes restrict critical comments about race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical characteristics, and other traits in the name of tolerance, sensitivity, and respect. Many hate speech codes are a violation of the first amendment and have been struck down by federal and state courts. They persist in jurisdictions where they have been ruled unconstitutional; most universities and public schools have speech codes. This assault on the first amendment might be a concern to all citizens, especially university professors and social studies educators responsible for teaching students about the democratic ideals enshrined in our constitution. Teachers should resist unconstitutional speech codes and teach their students that the purpose of the first amendment is to protect radical, offensive, critical, and controversial speech.

According to national surveys, every year approximately 20% of school-age students report bullying victimization. The risk of victimization is even higher for students with disabilities, particularly those whose disabilities are characterized by social–emotional or behavioral traits. To address public concern over bullying, states passed anti-bullying laws and schools implemented bullying prevention programs, with little effect on the frequency of bullying. Consequently, parents of students with disabilities increasingly filed lawsuits to address the harm caused by bullying. Previous research established an increasing trajectory for the frequency of these lawsuits, although the outcomes remained largely favorable to the district defendants. To determine whether these trends continue, this study examined bullying-related court decisions over a 2.5 year period to determine the frequency of cases and claim basis rulings, the representation of disability categories among student plaintiffs, and the outcomes distribution for the claim rulings and cases. The findings noted a continued increasing trajectory for the frequency of cases with an overrepresentation of plaintiffs with ADHD, mental health diagnoses, and autism. Most commonly cited legal bases were Section 504/ADA and negligence, with the overall outcomes distribution more parent plaintiff-favorable than the previous research. To prevent potential liability, educators should strengthen efforts to both comply with reporting and investigation requirements as well as establishing a school culture that accepts differences among students.