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According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world is experiencing the greatest refugee crisis in recorded history alongside increasingly restrictive limits on asylum seekers and refugees. In 2020, the US administration established a ceiling for refugees of 18,000 people, the lowest number on record, and only 11,814 refugees were admitted to the United States. The Biden administration has expressed commitments to building a coherent asylum and refugee system and quickly reversing recent detrimental policies. But the administration has cautioned how quickly change might occur, given how “agencies and processes…have been so gutted.”¹

2016 to 2020 included an overwhelming series of changes to laws and policies affecting asylum seekers, often with little documented planning or communication, wreaking severe effects on conditions for asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border. These changes had significant consequences for human rights, most notably the linchpin right of access to information. At the US–Mexico border, must the right “to seek, receive and impart information” be fulfilled in order to fulfill the right to asylum?

While information professionals are not expected to be experts in law, they are experts in understanding the link between access to information and the realization of justice and human rights. This chapter investigates the role of the information professional in the fulfillment of the right to asylum, particularly in the context of contemporary asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border, volatile information landscapes, and the legal and historical framework in the United States for seeking asylum.

This chapter attempts to uncover the decision code of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, based on 12 decisions he made concerning the Middle East during his third term as president, from 2012 until October 2015.

The study was carried out to understand Putin’s line of thought and decision-making, in light of Putin’s increasing importance throughout the last decade, globally and in the Middle East, in particular. After understanding the decision calculus of Putin, it might also be possible to predict his future decisions concerning the region.

Decision rules can be inferred by analyzing a set of decisions. Analysis of such decisions is made in this chapter using the Applied Decision Analysis (ADA) method that uncovers historic decisions, and aims to peer into the mind of the decision-maker.

The results show the main decision rule for each of Putin’s decisions. The work proves that when it comes to foreign issues, the decision code which leads Putin in his decisions is rational. The results also reveal Putin’s strong desire to promote Russia and himself, while using holistic, maximizing, and compensatory processing, as long as his political survival is not compromised.

All of the above proposals are realities in Western Europe, and it is suggested that the adoption of such “reforms” would substantially reduce the transaction costs of providing compensation to deserving plaintiffs, improve the efficiency of the tort system, and provide manufacturers and service providers with greater predictability and “fairness” in potential tort damages in the United States.

Germany has lower posttax income inequality than the United States and hence is doing better according to a strict egalitarian fairness ideal. On the other hand, the United States is doing better than Germany according to a libertarian fairness ideal, which states that people should be held fully responsible for their income. However, most people hold intermediate (responsibility-sensitive) positions, and this paper studies fairness of the income distributions in Germany and the United States according to these positions.

We find that only if peoples’ preferences are characterized by substantial degree of individual responsibility, the United States is considered less unfair than Germany. If we hold people responsible for the unexplained variation, the United States is considered fairer than Germany for all levels of responsibility sensitiveness. If we, on the other hand, demand compensation for the unexplained variation, Germany is fairer than the United States for all levels of responsibility. The latter may be seen as the preferred approach as it follows a “benefit of the doubt” strategy. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first cross-country fairness comparison based on responsibility-sensitive ideals.

Analyzing the 2004 U.S. General Social Survey and Korean General Social Survey, this chapter attempts to show that even similar climates of associationalism in two countries can lead to differential consequences for participatory democracy, depending on the associations’ capacities to foster civic resources. This chapter first examines whether the politically desirable traits of civic virtue and social trust essential to political participation can be developed by associational membership in the United States and Korea. Second, it investigates whether associational membership strengthens, weakens, or leaves unchanged the effects of socioeconomic resources measured by educational attainment and family income on political participation especially among association members in these two countries. The results indicate that voluntary associations in the United States, compared to those in Korea, do a better job of playing the role of civic educator and even of political equalizer. First, associational membership significantly and positively affects civic virtue and social trust in the United States. Second, associational membership does not affect civic virtue and social trust in Korea. Third, the effects of educational attainment and family income on political participation among members are weak in the United States. Fourth, the effects of educational attainment and family income on political participation among members are strong in Korea. Therefore, this chapter concludes that voluntary associations do not contribute to participatory equality in Korea despite its vibrant group-centered culture, whereas their American counterparts are relatively effective in bringing about the expected outcome.

One of the most important, least-known documents of the American Revolution was a 25-page pamphlet published in Amsterdam early in 1787: An Explanatory Message Concerning the Funds by Pieter Stadnitski. ¹ Within a year of its publication Peter Stadnitski's Message quite literally revolutionized American sovereign finance. My paper will summarize in detail the report's content and analyze its arguments in light of Dutch archival materials including deeds, newspaper reports, and letters, as well as congressional records from American sources. It will describe what Dutch investors knew (and did not know) of the state of American public finance and American political landscape, and the Dutch financial community's view of the American future. Its essential argument is that thanks initially to Stadnitski's persuasive case and ultimately to the success of the trusts he pioneered, Dutch investment specialists came to see the American republic as a safe haven at a time that Dutch Republic's own future seemed increasingly perilous. If their dream of achieving a new Golden Age through trade and investment with the new nation ultimately proved illusory, the effects of Dutch capital in creating financial stability for the United States government and igniting the first peacetime economic expansion in American history were revolutionary indeed.