Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In light of the recent implementation of race-conscious affirmative action in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Mato Grasso du Sol, determining who is Black has become a complex yet important undertaking in Brazil. Unlike in the United States, Brazilian judicial bodies have not prescribed formulaic criterion for determining race. Accordingly, the paper examines cases in which U.S. courts decided an individual’s Blackness or whiteness and the four main precepts used to make this determination: physical appearance; ancestry; community recognition; and racial performance. This discussion also illuminates the paradoxical nature of race—specifically Blackness and whiteness—in the Americas; race is contextual, subjective, and malleable yet simultaneously fixed, as constructs of Blackness and whiteness have transcended geography, time, ideology, and demography. Thus, the paper explores whether Brazilian arbiters can and should appropriate U.S. judicial methods when determining who is Afro-Brazilian for affirmative action purposes.

The paper also examines African slavery in Brazil and the United States, highlighting the primary differences in slave law, demography and settlement and the influence of these dynamics on the creation of race and racial ideology. Yet, the paper demonstrates that despite the contrasts in demography, slave law, and ensuing racial ideology—“racial democracy” in Brazil and “racial purity” in the United States—the enslavement and subordination of Africans and their descendants spawned a common racial hierarchy and assembly of phenotypes designating Blackness and whiteness, which continue to shape current understandings of Blackness and whiteness and the individual condition in both countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the early days of the republic, the U.S. followed the British trend of giving legislatures nearly complete freedom to determine their internal operating rules. To this day, 49 state constitutions contain rules-of-proceedings clauses, vesting legislatures with plenary rule-making power. Reacting to widespread legislative corruption, voters in the 19th century began placing procedural mandates in state constitutions. Such constitutional provisions endeavor to bring transparency and accountability to the legislative process by imposing voting procedures, reporting requirements, and other controls on the law-making process. Unfortunately, state courts have been overly hesitant in responding to legislative non-compliance with such procedures. Although separation-of-powers concerns limit the judiciary's ability to interfere with legislative affairs, judicial review allows courts to invalidate laws passed in violation of constitutionally prescribed procedures. Too often courts will misapply separation-of-powers rules or misconstrue the rules-of-proceedings clauses in order to avoid reviewing legislative non-compliance. This paper focuses on two barriers to judicial review: the separation-of-powers doctrine and the enrolled bill rule.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Street level bureaucracies, and the bureaucrats who work in them, play a central role in determine who benefits from government programs. Although the impact of elected officials on the bureaucracy has been well studied, we know less about the role that policy values within the bureaucracy play on how street level bureaucracies implement policy. Using both individual and aggregate level data, I explore the impact of bureaucratic values and hierarchical controls on eligibility determinations in the Social Security Disability program. I find evidence that client assessment and political ideology play a role in explaining variation in eligibility determinations across individual bureaucrats and across different bureaucracies, but that hierarchical control matters as well.

Publication Type: Student Paper
Abstract: We consider the determinant of the following matrix
$H_n^t=\left(m_{i+j-2}^t+m_{i+j-1}^t\right)_{1\leq i,j\leq n}$ where
$m_k^t$ is the number of $t$-Motzkin paths from $(0,0)$ to $(k,0)$
using steps $(1,1)$, $(1,0)$, and $(1,-1)$. The paths never go below
the $x$-axis and $(1,0)$ steps have a weight of $t$. This is our major
result: $\left|H_n^t\right|=(t+1)\left|H_{n-1}^t\right|-\left|H_{n-2}^t\right|,\
\text{with} \left|H_{0}^t\right|=1\ \text{and}\
\left|H_{1}^t\right|=t+1.$
Focusing on non-intersecting paths, we will prove the major result
using a method that counts. We will also investigate the interesting
sequences that emerge in the case $t = 1$.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I analyze statistically the political influences (and particularly those of the United States) on World Bank lending to poor countries from 1975-2005, finding shifting patterns between the Cold War and afterwards.