James Gibson - US grants

Scientific study of the judicial process in the United States began several decades ago with the pioneering work of such scholars like J. Willard Hurst (the University of Wisconsin), Karl Llewellyn (the University of Chicago), and E. Adamson Hoebel (the University of Minnesota). In the early days of this movement, scholars were quite concerned about focusing their attention on the law-in-action in addition to the traditional interest in law-on-the-books. The key characteristic of this approach was its belief in examining theories, abstract concepts, and hypotheses about the role of law, courts, and legal processes in everyday life in terms of their actual operations. This commitment to scientific inquiry on law is being pursued through the U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Data Base Project. The project is designed to provide systematic, reliable, and standardized data on the operations of the Supreme Court. Beginning with the decisions of the Warren and Burger Courts, the data base contains extensive information on the kinds of cases that come before the Court, the types of decisions being made by the Court, the voting behavior and opinions of individual justices, and the nature of the parties engaged in litigation before the Court. This data set is intended as a resource for a wide-ranging group of scientists and legal scholars interested in analyzing a variety of questions about the public's use of law and the workings of the Court. In other fields, scholars often have a wealth of readily accessible and standardized data on which to draw. Until the development of this data set, judicial scholars painstakingly compiled their own data de novo from court records. Not only was this expensive, but it meant that there was little sustained attention to developing comparable measures of theoretical and practical significance. Phase I of this work is being conducted by Dr. Harold J. Spaeth at Michigan State University. The Phase II project, under the direction of Dr. Gibson, involves the expansion of this data set, an extensive reliability study, and data preparation and documentation to insure the usability of this resource. A Board of Overseers of active scholars in the research community continues to advise on the execution of this project. With this funding, NSF will have supported the creation of a data base that is unique, heretofore unavailable, intended to reduce the cost and redundancy of research, and compatible with the highest standards of reliability in science.

Important to the scientific study of the judicial process is the provision of data that can be meaningfully used to answer a variety of questions about the public's use of law and the workings of courts. The purpose of the project being undertaken by Dr. Gibson is to develop and test a new method for enhancing the reliability of content analysis of judicial opinions. The method can be termed "computer-assisted content analysis," though it has little in common with the traditional computer-based methods of content analysis. In particular, the method is an adaptation of computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) technology to the coding of opinions. The project consists of several tasks. First, the CATI system will be adapted to content analysis. Second, a sample of opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court will be coded. Finally, a formal assessment of the reliability of the computer- assisted content analysis will be conducted by comparing the data to the more traditional methods of analyzing opinions. This analysis will be conducted by merging the newly-coded CATI data with data from the National Science Foundation-funded U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Data Base. This project has considerable scientific promise. It should yield a new method that can be widely adapted to coding judicial opinions not just of the United States Supreme Court but of a wide variety of different courts. Such an analytic innovation will allow judicial scholars to turn their attention to the important goal of developing comparable measures of theoretical and practical significance. As important, it should yield a technique for coding data that can be executed in a systematic, reliable, standarized, and efficient way.

Within recent years the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have undergone major changes at a dramatic pace. While it might be expected that political values in a culture influence processes of change, there is little systematic knowledge about the legal and political culture of the Soviet Union. This research constitutes a unique and important opportunity to advance our understanding of how beliefs, values, and attitudes of ordinary citizens structure both the pace and the possibility of change. The core of the study is a survey of public opinion in greater Moscow. It is anticipated that approximately 500 respondents will be interviewed face-to-face in hour long sessions. While the research team is an interdisciplinary group of U.S. scholars, the data collection itself will be performed under the direction of the Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences. This research anticipates several contributions. First, it should enable developing a profile of the major attributes of Soviet legal and political culture. Second, it should permit testing a variety of hypotheses about the origins of Soviet values. Third, these survey data should lend themselves to exploratory analyses of the differences in value content and structure between the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and the United States. Finally, the survey will be extremely useful in establishing baseline data for studying processes of political change in the future.

This Academic Research Facilities Modernization Program (ARFMP) award from the Research Facilities Office provides funds to Colorado State University for the relocation of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) which houses interdisciplinary ecological sciences research and research training activities to the Biochemistry and Radiation Biology Building. The Biochemistry and Radiation Biology building was constructed in 1947 and last renovated in 1987. The relocation is fully justified and cost- effective. The ARFMP grant of $360,000 and $542,121 provided by the grantee as cost sharing will be used to modernize these research and research training facilities. This project will address the need to improve the current research infrastructure by relocating NREL to another space, which is being completely repaired and renovated, in the old Biochemistry and Radiation Biology Building and thus providing a research and research training space adequate in size and design and complete with new wiring, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), and fume hoods that are adequate to accommodate the quantity, quality, and diversity of research conducted in this burgeoning program. The Center for Analysis of the Dynamics of Regional Ecosystems (CADRE), a multi-institutional and transdisciplinary center of excellence in the ecological and atmospheric sciences, has just been approved by the University. The strength and the experience of the research institute, NREL, which will be enhanced by this project, is one of the cornerstones upon which CADRE is being built. This award contributes to the infrastructure of science by providing an improved environment for the conduct of research and for the training of quality undergraduate and graduate students in an expanding program in ecosystems research that is of regional, national, and international importance. This project will assist in the fulfillment of the University of Colorado's commitment to enhance research on the effects of climate on arid and semi-arid ecosystems through training of future scientists with a holistic view of atmosphere-biosphere interactions.

This award supports exploratory research on the political and legal culture of the Soviet Union. The political culture of the Soviet Union is experiencing profound strains. In part, these are the cause, and in part an effect, of the dramatic convulsions taking place in the politics of that country as it attempts the difficult transition from authoritarian government and socialist economy to democracy and markets. This research examines the linkages between public opinion, political change, and the process of democratization. This project is structured around national surveys of public opinion and political elite attitudes to be conducted in the Soviet Union in mid-1991. The research will provide the basis for developing a profile of the major attributes of Soviet legal and political culture, permit the testing of hypotheses about the origins of and recent changes in Soviet values, and facilitate comparisons of the differences in value content and structure between the Soviet Union, Western Europe and the United States. When completed this research will provide valuable evidence for understanding the changes underway in the Soviet Union. It should facilitate assessments of the distance the Soviet Union has traveled down the road to democracy and whether it is likely to continue moving along that road. More generally, this research should help us understand the role of political culture in processes of democratization and global change.

This is a collaborative project, with Gregory Caldeira of the Ohio State University, to investigate the processes through which transnational legal institutions acquire mass political legitimacy and attain compliance with their decisions. The project focusses on the European Court of Justice, which is emerging as one of the most powerful judicial institutions in the world, and is based on a survey of the mass publics in the twelve nations of the European Community. The survey constitutes part of the Autumn 1992 Eurobarometer. Several hypotheses will be tested about the acquisition of legitimacy by transnational institutions, as well as the consequences of that legitimacy for compliance with both national and international courts. The project is one of the first research efforts investigating processes of the acquisition and maintenance of the legitimacy of transnational legal institutions. The analysis will contribute to the development of theories of institutional legitimacy through (1) determining whether the theoretical frameworks are useful beyond the confines of the nation-state;, (2) exploring the connections between legitimacy and compliance, relying heavily on theories of procedural justice; (3) testing a serious of conventional hypotheses about courts, legitimacy, and compliance for which there are no previous comparative inquiries; (4) providing a benchmark for future research into the processes through which institutions acquire a reservoir of good will; and (5) contributing to the development of democratic theory by analyzing how courts contribute to and profit from the legitimacy of transnational political and legal institutions. Overall, the project will contribute to prominent questions in comparative politics, the workings of legal systems, and in international relations.

9311397 GIBSON This project addresses questions of stability and change in mass support for the European Court of Justice. It is important for social stability in democracies to know how legal institutions sustain themselves. Most courts have no access to the powerful legitimizing process of elections, while at the same time they are often charged with making decisions contrary to the preferences of (sometimes impassioned) majorities. Why do citizens comply with unpopular decisions of courts? In the absence of stores of institutional legitimacy, compliance itself is a problematic question. These problems of legitimacy and compliance assume even broader importance in the context of emerging transnational legal institutions like the European Court of Justice. The European Court of Justice, the high court of the European Community, has become the most powerful judicial institution in Europe and has been the single institution most effective at promoting the integration of Europe. In light of its increasingly salient and controversial decisions, it is important to ask how this court is acquiring political legitimacy and how willing are individual Europeans to accept its decisions. This project investigates the connections between legitimacy and compliance, focusing on the European Court of Justice. It focuses in particular on change in mass attitudes toward the Court, on how these attitudes are formed, evolve and ultimately affect popular willingness to accept Court decisions. The data collection will be by survey of a panel of respondents (300 in each of seven countries that are members of the European Community). The projects promises to make a significant contribution to the scientific understanding of legitimation processes and how legitimacy affects compliance. ***

9424287 Gibson This project seeks to trace the progress of democratization and political change in the new South Africa. It focuses on the systematic assessment of the causes and consequences for the legal and constitutional institutions of South Africa of intolerance in the political culture. To do so it assesses political tolerance and intolerance as demonstrated in the beliefs of both masses and elites. Survey research methods will allow the investigators to accomplish four related goals: 1) analyze the distribution of intolerance, considering its level, its breadth, and pluralism of distribution; 2) assess the etiology of intolerance, testing a number of hypotheses that have emerged from studies in Western literature; 2) examine the consequences of intolerance especially for interpersonal political interaction, and political participation; 4) test the pliability of intolerance by determining the extent to which citizens can be "talked out of" their intolerance or into giving "sober second thought" to repression of their political enemies. The surveys will be conducted under contract with a reputable South African firm under the supervision of an onsite South African collaborator. This research on South Africa should increase our knowledge about how democratic legal culture emerges out of the background of dictatorial government. %%% This project seeks to trace the progress of democratization and political change in the new South Africa. It focuses on the systematic assessment of the causes and consequences for the legal and constitutional institutions of South Africa of intolerance in the political culture. To do so it assesses political tolerance and intolerance as demonstrated in the beliefs of both masses and elites. The investigators will 1) analyze the distribution of intolerance; 2) assess the origins and foundations of intolerance; 2) examine the consequences of intolerance especially for interpersonal political interaction, and political participation; 4) test the plia bility of intolerance by determining the extent to which citizens can be "talked out of" their intolerance or into giving "sober second thought" to repression of their political enemies. This research on South Africa should increase our knowledge about how democratic legal culture emerges out of the background of dictatorial government. ***

Will democracy survive and flourish in Russia? Perhaps no question in contemporary politics is as important as the fate of Russian democracy. To the extent that democracy is consolidated in Russia, world politics is likely to be more peaceful, more humane, and less costly. In addition to the strategic importance of this question, the transformation of Russia raises important scientific questions. What factors contribute to the consolidation of democratic transformations, and how are these likely to change in the near future? What role do ordinary people (in contrast to elites) play in the processes of change? To what degree do Russian citizens support democratic institutions and processes; to what degree are they willing to trade freedom and liberty for security and economic prosperity? What factors contribute to the development of political tolerance--a crucial ingredient of democracy--and how might tolerance be fostered? To what extent does the existence of distinctive subcultures within a society make the development of democratic institutions and processes more difficult? Change in Russia produces a veritable laboratory for the analysis of democratization processes. This project seeks answers to these questions. In particular, the project extends existing research on the political culture of Russia through a new survey on the opinions of ordinary citizens. In conjunction with earlier surveys, analysis of changes in Russian culture will be conducted. On the basis of both longitudinal and cross-sectional analysis, the project will attempt to predict the likelihood of a democratic consolidation in Russia. Ultimately, the project seeks to contribute to theories of democratization by focusing on the all-important case of Russia.

Abstract Gibson 9710214 This research extends the PI's previous research on the process of democratization in South Africa. The current project is a second wave panel study of 3,0331 persons who were interviewed in 1996. The second wave will explore further respondents political intolerance, and changes that are occurring in how South Africans are becoming committed to democratic institutions and processes over the course of the early period of democratization, the role institutional change plays in creating more democratic attitudes, values and behaviors, the effect of efforts to induce tolerance through persuasive communication, and the roles cognitive mobilization and civil society play in creating more democratic attitudes and values. Great care is being taken to minimize the loss of respondents in the second wave of the design, to be sure that respondents can answer in their language of choice, to be certain the questions and experimental scenarios used in the interviews are equivalent across languages, that respondents represent the racial and linguistic heterogeneity of the population, and that reliability estimates for the instruments are calculable. The sophistication of the surveys in this project fill a void that previous survey work in Africa has left because of the questionable methods employed. The project extends theoretical developments in our understanding of the process of democratization as well as provides an invaluable dataset that will be available to other researchers at the conclusion of the project. %%% This research extends the PI's previous research on the process of democratization in South Africa. The current project is a second wave panel study of 3,0331 persons who were interviewed in 1996. The second wave will explore further respondents political intolerance, and changes that are occurring in how South Africans are becoming committed to democratic institutions and processes over the course of the early period of democratization, the role ins titutional change plays in creating more democratic attitudes, values and behaviors, the effect of efforts to induce tolerance through persuasive communication, and the roles cognitive mobilization and civil society play in creating more democratic attitudes and values. Great care is being taken to minimize the loss of respondents in the second wave of the design, to be sure that respondents can answer in their language of choice, to be certain the questions and experimental scenarios used in the interviews are equivalent across languages, that respondents represent the racial and linguistic heterogeneity of the population, and that reliability estimates for the instruments are calculable. The sophistication of the surveys in this project fill a void that previous survey work in Africa has left because of the questionable methods employed. The project extends theoretical developments in our understanding of the process of democratization as well as provides an invaluable dataset that will be available to other researchers at the conclusion of the project. ***

The purpose of this research is to test hypotheses connecting the desire for retributive justice with the legitimacy of South African legal institutions. Based on a survey of the mass public, the PI will assess the implications of the truth and reconciliation process for mass perceptions of justice, for support for key legal and political institutions, for attitudes toward the rule of law, and ultimately for lawful behavior and willingness to acquiesce to outputs of policy-making institutions. An important component of this project involves connecting "Social Identity Theory" (SIT) with theories of legitimacy and retributive justice. Recent research has posited that identity plays a crucial role in determining the consequences of perceived injustice. The racial/linguistic/ethnic diversity of South Africa provides a good context for testing these hypotheses. It is unlikely that the lessons of the West readily translate into transitional and traditional societies like South Africa. This research will therefore provide a more general understanding of the ways in which injustice undermines the legitimacy of law. Ultimately, this research should provide insight into the ways in which perceptions of justice and injustice affect the consolidation of democratic transitions.

Dealing with consequences of historical land dispossessions associated with colonialism, racism, and capitalist expansion dogs a variety of countries throughout the world. Nowhere is the issue of land reconciliation more important than in South Africa. That country today confronts a variety of land issues flowing from the country's history of land dispossessions, ranging from "land grabs" by the urban landless, to efforts by farm workers to achieve rights of ownership to their land, to claims by "surplus people" to land from which they were removed by government actions under apartheid. Land reconciliation raises and illustrates many significant theoretical issues related to the emerging interdisciplinary fields of transitional justice and justice psychology. Generally speaking, justice research argues that people judge law and politics by whether they comport with their standards of fairness. Such judgments are important since legal and political institutions perceived to be unjust are unlikely to be accorded legitimacy, and without legitimacy, compliance becomes problematical (i.e., it may become more closely related to calculations of costs and benefits) -- perhaps thereby exacerbating behaviors such as illegal land invasions. At the level of the political system, this project will examine land reconciliation, which is hypothesized to be most effective when law and elite and mass preferences coincide. At the micro-level (the level of this research), this study examines preferences on land reconciliation policies. These preferences are hypothesized to flow from (1) how issues land get framed in terms of the four sub-dimensions of justice (distributive, procedural, retributive, and restorative); (2) instrumental interests, especially as reflected in experiences with various forms of land dispossession; and (3) basic cultural values, in particular individualism (expected to be most common among those of European ancestry) versus collectivism (which may predominate among Africans). In addition, the principal investigator will investigate (4) whether South Africans approve of land invasions and are likely to join such movements in the future. The principal component of the research design is a survey of samples of both South African elites and members of the mass public. The survey incorporate a variety of innovative techniques, including persuasibility experiments, the use of experimental vignettes designed to assess the role of competing dimensions of justice on preferences for land reconciliation, and follow-up in-depth interviews with especially knowledgeable respondents.

The program is revising curricula for an engineering design and electronics program to build it around an entrepreneurial component that immerses the students in reengineering throughout the two-year program. The objectives of the project are to provide technical students with continuous quality improvement (CQI) experience, to recruit more students into engineering design, manufacturing, and electronics, and to improve student performance. The revised curricula bring freshmen into the CQI loop in their first semester technical courses where they analyze and recommend improvements on products previously designed by student teams. In succeeding semesters, the students build prototypes, analyze them, and continue to redesign them. They undergo training in workplace skills, including project management, teamwork, problem solving, critical thinking, and communication. In the last semester, the curricula combine technical and business students to form student teams or companies, which manufacture, market, and sell a product. To meet the recruiting objective, the project uses student teams as a magnet to draw high school technical instructors and their students to the campus and uses video streaming technology to delivers project activities to the high schools. To improve student performance, the initiatives include: (1) creating a leadership track for promising high school students, enrolling them in a class designed to improve their success in college, and utilizing them as mentors; (2) addressing the language needs of non-native speakers of English by assessing their skills and providing assistance, especially in speaking and listening skills; and (3) involving industry representatives in an advisory committee and utilizing them as mentors. The evaluation effort is comprehensive using a variety of approaches from several perspectives at various points in the students' development. The dissemination efforts includes outreach to high schools and plans to publish materials and results on a web site, at conferences, in journals, and through a workshop.

In recent years, U.S. Supreme Court decisions allowing state judges to make policy statements during campaigns for judicial offices, together with the growing economic, political, and social importance of state judicial systems and the vast sums of money being invested in judicial campaigns, have led to substantial changes in elections for state supreme courts. Both legal pundits and social scientists predict that the consequence of this new style of judicial campaigning will be the loss of legitimacy for state legal systems and courts; as citizens come to see courts as not unique -- that is, as ordinary political institutions -- the impartiality of the courts will be questioned, undermining the basic legitimacy of these institutions. These new-style judicial campaigns thus provide a propitious context for further development of theories of judicial legitimacy in the laboratories of the American states. Specifically, this project will test the hypothesis that the politicized character of judicial campaigning influences perceptions of the legitimacy of law and courts. Using a three-wave panel survey of a representative sample of citizens in the state of Texas, the research will examine whether changes in attitudes toward law and courts are a function of exposure to politicized judicial campaign advertisements. The project takes advantage of the relatively new databases of actual campaign ads, which allow the researchers to know the nature of the advertising content to which voters are exposed. Beyond the project's contributions to research infrastructure and graduate student training, the project will make the data collected available to the scholarly community with very little embargo period. In addition, the project will yield much-needed empirical evidence on the consequences of electing judges in the contemporary political environment.

Abstract
Although scholars have devoted a considerable amount of effort toward understanding public attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court, almost all earlier research has been static in nature. This is unfortunate, since there can be little doubt that major exogenous events can have an enduring impact on public opinion.
One such major exogenous event is a contentious confirmation process for nominees to the United States Supreme Court. And one such attitude of interest has to do with the legitimacy citizens ascribe to the Court. Thus, the purpose of this project is to examine the impact of confirmation processes on the willingness of the American people to extend institutional legitimacy to the United States Supreme Court.
This project takes advantage of the historical rarity of three Supreme Court nominations taking place essentially simultaneously. With the death of William Rehnquist, the Roberts nomination for the position of Associate Justice was withdrawn and resubmitted for the position of Chief Justice. President Bush then nominated Harriet Miers, to replace Justice OConnor but that nomination was withdrawn. The President has nominated Samuel Alito for OConnors seat. All these nominations have become more controversial as a result of (1) the shift to the chief justice in the case of Roberts, (2) questions about low qualification in the case of Miers and (3) OConnors centrist position on most issues compared to Alito, who is viewed as more ideological. Thus the American people are being exposed to an eye-catching level of conflict over not just the nominees, but also the role of the Supreme Court in American politics.
During earlier confirmation fights, scholars have indeed examined public opinion. But no such earlier research has had in place a survey conducted prior to the confirmation process that might stand as a baseline for an analysis of change in perceived legitimacy. Fortunately, a national survey we conducted in the summer of 2005 did indeed address the Courts legitimacy. This face-to-face nationally representative sample can be mobilized in a three-wave panel designed to provide rigorous estimates of the nature of the impact of politicized confirmation processes on public attitudes. That is precisely the research design of this project.
Intellectual Merit. Legitimacy theory is one of the most important theories we have for understanding the role of courts in democratic societies. The theory asserts that courts are especially dependent upon legitimacy for their effectiveness (since they have neither the power of the purse nor the sword). But legitimacy is fragile, and its origins are poorly understood. Current theorizing posits a positive bias, which means that increased attentiveness to courts (for whatever reason) results in greater exposure to powerful symbols of judicial legitimacy. But what if increased attention to courts results in exposure to attacks on court nominees impugning their impartiality? Undoubtedly, little positivity can be found in such ads. Highly politicized nomination processes (themselves perhaps a reflection of deep ideological divisions in American politics) provide a propitious context for further development of theories of the origins of judicial legitimacy.
Broader Impact. One element of the project is to establish a research approach that can be utilized to study important events as they unfold in politics. Research designs are overwhelmingly reactive, and as such, have limited ability to deal with processes of change. This research will stand as a model for how existing surveys can be exploited in the context of unfolding events to allow studies of the impact of those events on public opinion.

The project is a comprehensive recruiting effort designed to increase the number of students in engineering and engineering technology, particularly in the Illinois Valley Community College district. At the local level, the objectives of the project are to increase awareness of and interest in engineering and engineering technician careers, to assist in preparing students to enter engineering and engineering technology programs by integrating science, technology and math into activities, and to increase enrollment in engineering technology programs at Illinois Valley Community College. Major project activities include: (1) offering project-based short-term events to interest a broad base of high school and middle school students, (2) offering project-based camps for middle school students, especially young women, (3) organizing high school engineering technology clubs, (4) offering a Taste of Engineering Careers course to high school juniors and seniors with college credit, (5) creating a leadership team for high school students, (6) providing exciting special projects for high school students, such as building a musical instrument, a project from the e-CREATE program at Purdue University, (7) developing and disseminating promotional materials targeting young people, parents, adults, and women, and (8) publicizing successes of participants in area media . The investigators are collaborating with two other ATE programs, MatEd Center at Edmonds Community College and the RCNGM Center at Connecticut Community College, to share approaches and to broaden their audience. The evaluation effort, involving both internal and external evaluators, is using surveys of students, teachers, counselors, parents, and industry representative along with data on participation, enrollment, and career choices to monitor awareness, interest, and enrollment, particularly among women. Dissemination is being accomplished through postings on the project's website and through presentation and workshops at state and national conferences, particularly the ASEE and NAWI conferences. Broader impacts include the dissemination of their materials and results, the middle and high school outreach efforts, and the focus on women, an underrepresented population in engineering and engineering technology.

The attitudes citizens hold toward judicial institutions are of great political significance. Social scientists are now generally in agreement that few forms of political capital are as useful to political institutions as legitimacy, and no institution is more dependent upon legitimacy than the judiciary. The conventional view is that courts have neither the power of the purse nor of the sword and are therefore dependent upon the voluntary compliance that typically springs from legitimacy. But the truth is that, however useful legitimacy may be to courts, no political institution could be effective without some mechanism for inducing citizens to believe that accepting its policy outputs is the right thing to do. Using a nationwide survey, the PI will investigate public attitudes about the Supreme Court in light of the recent nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Specifically, the PI will test the hypothesis that attention-getting judicial events (such as the nomination of Sotomayor to the Court) will activate dormant attitudes toward law and courts. The findings from this study will enhance understanding of the dynamics of public opinion and the courts as well as provide unique insights into the process by which members of the federal judiciary are selected.

The legitimacy of state high courts has become increasingly fragile as a result of politicized elections for the judges sitting on these courts. One of the most threatening of the many recent developments is conflicts of interest (real and apparent) that arise when those litigating before a court are the very same individuals and institutions contributing money to the judges during their election campaigns. Many believe that such contributions fundamentally undermine the legitimacy of elected courts. In no instance is this conflict more severe than in the case of Caperton v Massey, a decision from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeal, to which the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari. This case involves a crucial vote to overturn a $50,000,000 lower court judgment against Massey by a justice who received large campaign contributions from the Massey side during the preceding judicial election. Using this context, our goals in this project include: (1) determining how much legitimacy the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeal enjoys; (2) assessing whether that legitimacy is affected by the campaign contribution controversy; (3) investigating whether the contribution issue taints only the implicated justice or whether more general institutional consequences arise; (4) determining whether recusals rehabilitate an offending justice; (5) testing hypotheses about the specific attributes of campaign contributions that influence perceptions of judicial impartiality, and hence of the legitimacy of courts; (6) conducting all of this analysis within the context of an expectancy theory of courts that recognizes that some citizens have come to expect that the judiciary should act in a reasonably ideological fashion; and (7) investigating whether the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court affects perceptions of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeal via "legitimacy conferring" processes. This project is based upon a two-wave panel survey of the residents of West Virginia.

Majority rule and minority rights are important values in a democracy. The balance between them, often reflected in the size of the majority required for a decision, is a central issue in the making of constitutions, motivates the design of key features of legislative institutions and parliamentary rules, and regularly figures in cases before courts. Unfortunately, the social sciences have very limited understanding of how the public weighs majority rule and minority rights.

This research examines public attitudes about majority rule and minority rights in the United States. It does so by focusing on public views about prominent legislative battles involving the Senate filibuster - extended debate intended to prevent a vote. The Senate's cloture rule provides that a three-fifths majority of elected senators is required to close debate and move to a vote on a motion, a rule that allows a large minority to prevent majority action. This study exploits an existing survey panel to assess the public's views of majority rule and minority rights both in the abstract and in response to major legislative episodes. The study examines the effect of abstract views of majority rule, minority rights, and the filibuster, policy preferences, party preferences and other factors such as political sophistication and education on evaluations of legislative outcomes involving the filibuster.

This research engages several students as research assistants, which will create an opportunity for the students to become more deeply involved in survey research, attend professional meetings, and collaborate in writing research reports. The findings will be reflected in on the investigator's textbook on congressional politics, which is one of the most widely-read textbooks by undergraduates on the subject. The investigators are frequent speakers before civic and academic groups, frequent guests on radio and television programs, and frequent consultants to legislatures, all of which are forums in which the public's understanding of majority rule, minority rights, and congressional procedure is frequently an issue. By working with the Weidenbaum Center, the research findings will be incorporated in non-technical publications and distributed to a large general audience

This project is creating a model alternative energy certificate program, that leads to a new Associate of Applied Sciences degree in industrial technology and a new certificate program for wind energy technicians. The project is establishing career pathways to technical work in the renewable energy fields. The specific needs for a renewable energy certificate are being identified, and space in the planned Community Technology Center is to be devoted to the laboratory areas needed for the program. The A.A.S. degree in industrial technology is meeting the needs of students and incumbent workers by providing a clear career pathway from an industry-related certificate to an A.A.S. degree and then to a baccalaureate degree. The new A.A.S. degree is meeting the needs of industry by encouraging students and incumbent workers who earn a technical certificate to pursue the additional education/training that offers the most benefits to the worker and the employer. That additional education focuses on areas often referred to as "soft skills", for example, communication, teamwork and critical thinking. The need for soft skills in the industry workplace is widely recognized and has been documented in a number of reports.

This Laboratory Safety Workshop is funded by the Chemistry Division at the National Science Foundation. The Laboratory Safety Workshop will gather researchers, students, and health and safety professionals to provide a forum for in-depth dialogue regarding the challenges and opportunities for improving the effectiveness of laboratory safety programs in the research setting, with particular emphasis given to chemical hazards in laboratories. Chemical hazards receive very little regulatory guidance or oversight and have the potential to cause serious and immediate injury. The aim of the workshop is to establish research priorities and criteria to study laboratory safety empirically, with the goal of translating research outcomes into evidence-based, fit-for-purpose best practices in the laboratory. At the November 2010 National Academy of Sciences (NAS)-sponsored Safety Summit in Washington, D.C., problems and challenges in laboratory safety were identified. This proposed workshop will strategize solutions to address those problems by focusing on research (led by the University of California (UC) Center for Laboratory Safety and its affiliates) that would lead to the development of data-driven laboratory safety practices.

Diverse participation is important to the success of this workshop. There is a high level of interest from a diverse group of leaders in this field, including representatives from NIOSH, OSHA, the Chemical Safety Board, NIH, NAS, NSF and Principal Investigators and students across the country. In addition to partnering with traditional professional health and safety organizations, outreach efforts will be made to relevant scientific organizations that promote women and minorities who are currently underrepresented in the sciences. The intended partnering organizations include the American Public Health Organization, the Campus Safety Health and Environmental Management Association (CSHEMA), the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the Association for Women in Science, the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE), the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS), and Great Minds in STEM.

Social scientists know at least two important things about law and politics in the United States. First, public opinion matters. What the public prefers - and what it will tolerate - is an important element of many aspects of law and politics, as in the support the public is willing to extend to legal institutions, especially when they make unpopular decisions. Second, states matter. The U.S. is a federal system, so states always matter. But when it comes to law, the vast majority of legal activity takes place in the individual states. It follows, therefore, that public opinion in each of the American states is important.

However, in the social sciences, the large survey data bases have been far more concerned with ordinary politics (primarily electoral), rather than law and politics, and therefore have not surveyed the American people on issues relevant to those concerned with law and politics.

This project will produce a state public opinion data base on this topic that can be used by scholars of widely varying theoretical foci. Marrying a newly developed statistical methodology that can derive state-level estimates from national survey data to an existing survey data base focused on legal matters, this project promises to create a treasure-trove of measures of how the residents of individual states feel about numerous issues of law and politics. For instance, this project will allow the assessment of whether the methods of selecting and retaining judges in the American states have any consequences for public attitudes toward law and courts. By creating and disseminating state-level measures of public opinion on law and legal institutions, this project will stimulate new efforts to understand the relationships between the judiciaries and their constituents, the people of the American states.

This project aims to create a new database of judicial decisions, to measure all policies relevant to inequality in a dozen or so policy domains, in all 50 states since 1971, and to test a series of conjectures about the conditions under which the state supreme courts act to mitigate or aggravate inequality. In particular, the project will use statistical analyses to test the hypothesis that the preferences of a state's citizenry on matters of inequality affect supreme court decisions. We further expect that this relationship depends on the methods used to select and retain judges in the state. Because the project's timeframe encompasses the rise of interest group involvement and television advertising in judicial election, the project will also investigate how the increasing politicization of judicial elections has affected judicial responsiveness to public opinion. Overall, the analysis will be able to determine whether greater judicial accountability results in greater responsiveness to the mass public and/or to organized interests. Thus, this study will shed important new light on the causes of social, political, legal, and economic inequality in the states of the United States.

The development of a diverse, globally competitive advanced manufacturing workforce is critical to US stability and growth. Major areas of focus for the Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (RCNGM) have been to change negative perceptions of manufacturing careers and to increase the participation and success of historically underrepresented minorities, women, and veterans in the technical workforce. RCNGM has created nationally-recognized materials for educators, career counselors, students, and parents that focus on choosing community colleges as a next step to high paying careers in manufacturing. With support of this award, RCNGM plans to establish an NSF ATE Resource Center. RCNGM will broaden its partnerships by expanding community college/industry partnerships throughout the Northeast, specifically in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and by partnering with the National Coalition for Advanced Technology Centers and the National Association for Workforce Improvement.

The RCNGM Resource Center will provide exemplary resources for advanced manufacturing online learning via online tools (website, webinars, and social media), as well as through regional and national professional conferences that engage the RCNGM's stakeholders. These resources will assist current and prospective principal investigators to identify and implement successful materials and strategies for creating career pathways that include certificates and degrees that include stackable credentials and multiple entry/exit points. The Resource Center will also foster industry, business, and academic partnerships by increasing the availability and variety of exemplary, industry-driven advanced manufacturing curricula that emphasize both technical and professional skills. The Resource Center will promote advanced manufacturing careers with a focus on modernizing the image of manufacturing careers and disseminating successful models for recruiting and retaining students in advanced manufacturing. Finally, the Resource Center will coordinate and support regional and national industry, business, and academic partnerships that have the potential to create a sustainable network for advancing manufacturing programs at community colleges nationwide. This project is funded by the NSF Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.