The Health Information Exchange Deadline

Friday’s deadline, November 16, calls for each state, including Wisconsin, to give the federal government a “blueprint” for a Health Information Exchange.  State exchanges compare the benefits and costs of insurance policies and post the results online so people and employers can choose which are the best values for them.  They will also make electronic patient records accessible for treatment and research for the public health.   As I noted in my election-eve blog post, exchanges (also called HIEs) are central to health care reform by making better consumer choices possible.

State blueprints would resolve such choices as whether the exchange will be a private non-profit company or a state agency, and what consent and protections are in place for patient privacy.  Overall, a state can choose whether its exchange will be run by the state, in a partnership with the federal government, or by the federal government.  If a state doesn’t provide a blueprint, its exchange will be formed and run according the rules and models in federal regulations that will be issued soon. 

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Federal Criminal Cases, 1928-1930: Surprisingly Similar to Today, But Also Very Different

In anticipation of the conference here next month on the Wickersham Commission, I’ve been reviewing the thirteen voluminous reports the Commission issued in 1931 on various aspects of the criminal-justice system.  One that holds some interesting surprises is the “Progress Report on the Study of the Federal Courts.”  The heart of this report is a fascinating, detailed statistical analysis of the criminal cases in the District of Connecticut for fiscal years 1928-1930.

One thing that strikes me as remarkable is the almost complete absence of trials — the system was dominated then, as now, by guilty pleas.  Old-timers today will sometimes tell you about a golden age of trials in the federal system in the 1970′s.  In that decade, guilty plea rates hovered between 77% and 82%.  After 1981, the rate climbed steadily, reaching more than 96% of adjudicated cases in 2009.  But this, apparently, is not a new phenomenon.  Among 740 criminal cases filed in the District of Connecticut between 1928 and 1931, only nine went to trial.  That’s right, only nine trials in three years, or 1.5 criminal trials per judge per year.  (Eight of these trials, by the way, took less than one full day to try.)  The guilty plea rate in adjudicated cases was over 98%.

After doing some digging for national data, I discovered that the guilty plea rate rose steadily between 1916 and 1933, reaching a peak of 91%.  (See Ron Wright’s helpful data compilation here.)  So, Connecticut seems not to have been terribly atypical.

The Connecticut data are, in fact, quite reminiscent of a modern“fast-track” plea-bargaining system.  

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The Criminal Jurisdiction of Indian Tribes

This is the third in a series of posts addressing commonly asked questions regarding American Indians, Indian Tribes, and the law. The first post dealt with casinos, taxation, and hunting and fishing rights, while the second focused on the relationship between the unique legal treatment of Indian tribes or their members and the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. This post will explore the criminal jurisdiction of tribes, with the expectation that one or more future posts will similarly explore the criminal jurisdiction of the federal and state governments in relation to Indians or conduct on Indian lands.

Sovereignty, as conceptualized in the Western legal-political tradition, has customarily included the power to enact and enforce a criminal code against persons who, within the sovereign’s territory or against its citizenry, commit conduct injurious to health, safety, welfare, and morals. This is a theoretical standard, however, and today across the globe as well as in the United States—and not just with regard to Indian tribes—one can observe forms of sovereignty that include degrees of diminished (or less-than-plenary) criminal jurisdiction.

The most obvious domestic example involves the respective authority of the federal and state governments.

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