This textbook reader discusses the importance of organization and reorganization in the contemporary structure of the American federal government. First, it deals with the decision to change structural arrangements within the bureaucracy. Through a range of conceptual readings, it explores why reorganization and changing the structure of government continues to happen, allowing the reader to understand the multiple and often conflicting goals involved in changing organizational structure. It highlights two contrasting approaches to reorganization: a management approach and a policy approach.Secondly, it discusses the consequences of reorganization activity by focusing on the results of a number of federal government reorganizations. The examples include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Education, and proposals to establish a U.S. Department of Food Safety.This is an ideal text for courses in public management, public policy, and political science courses covering the Presidency and Congress.

Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Although state executive branch reorganization has been surrounded by controversy and expense for more than sixty years and has been occurring at an unprecedented rate during the last thirteen, much of our knowledge of it has been anecdotal, fragmentary, conceptually imprecise, and untested, asserts Dr. Garnett. His book contributes conceptual and empirical order to the study of reorganization by analyzing competing and complementary models, evaluating research methodologies, stating hypotheses, and testing those hypotheses with data drawn from more than 150 of the state reorganizations that have taken place in this century. Dr. Garnett addresses three basic questions: Why do state reorganizations occur? How are they conducted? What forms do the reorganized executive branches take? His specific action guidelines for governors and other state officials, agenda for further research, and extensive bibliography will be particularly useful.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

June and Dec. issues contain listings of periodicals.