WHAT MOTIVATES LEGISLATORS TO ACT: PROBLEM DEFINITION & THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC, A CASE STUDY (original) (raw)

DEFINING THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC: CONGRESS, PRESSURE GROUPS, AND PROBLEM DEFINITION

Memphis Law Review, 2018

The passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 evidences a shift in federal legislative support from criminal justice oriented legislative alternatives to more health oriented legislative alternatives to addressing the ongoing Opioid Epidemic. Such a shift was preceded by a redefinition of problem drug use in the policy discourse from an issue of deviancy to a health issue. However, the redefinition of problem drug use as a health issue, has been dominated by policy narratives and causal stories that do not define problem drug use in a manner that aligns with a multi-modal public health oriented legislative solution, a solution type that has been shown to be successful in other developed nations across the world. In order to adopt such an approach in the U.S., pressure groups, including organized interest groups and administrative agencies, will need to utilize narrative techniques to strategically craft a narrative that defines problem drug use as a health issue affected by the social determinants of health. The purpose of this manuscript is to equip legal scholars, researchers, and all concerned citizens with a greater understanding of the legislative problem definition process and the role that pressure groups play in such a process. Through the utilization of examples from drug policy history, this manuscript demonstrates how pressure groups strategically used problem definitions to shape legislative discourse and pressure Congress into supporting policy solutions that aligned with their problem definitions—attributing addiction to disease at times and to deviancy at other times. By example, this manuscript outlines strategies that can be used by legal scholars, researchers, and concerned citizens to define problem drug use as a health issue caused by multiple sociological, psychological, economical and biological factors.

“Tough” laws: Policymaker perceptions and commitment

The Social Science Journal, 1995

Surveys were administered to assess policymaker perceptions on the effectiveness and consequences of, and their commitment to "tough" criminal legislation in California. In relation to this, policymaker reaction to California's 1982 DUI laws was assessed. Results suggest that the populations surveyed recognized that problems were created by "tough" laws, specifically jail crowding. Differences existed, however, between the various populations on the perceptions of the effectiveness of such law changes and their commitment to them. Policy implications drawn from this research are discussed. Research on the impact of legal reform has proliferated in recent years. Whereas in the early nineteen-seventies these "implementation" studies were viewed as political threats,' they are now routinely carried out on a variety of legal issues.' Examples of such studies range in topic from the effects of the British "breathalyser" crackdown of 19673 to the impact of air pollution control laws.4 Typically, three types of impact are assessed when this type of research is conducted. The first is measured in terms of the lawmaker's stated purposes for the policy; the second, in terms of those purposes which are unstated yet, nonetheless, intended' and the third, as unforeseen consequences of the law's implementation. Both "stated" and

Legislative Measures and Legislators' Motives

Comparative Constitutional Studies, 2024

This review of Wojciech Sadurski's Constitutional Public Reason (OUP 2022), forthcoming in Comparative Constitutional Studies, explores the relationship between the legislative measures voted on by legislators and their motivations for so voting. The relationship between such measures and motivations is examined by reference to GEM Anscombe's famous example of a man at a pump to illustrate the different descriptions that may be given for a human action. Where the relevant action requires the participation of more than one person, only that aspect of each person's plan of action that is shared with the others can be ascribed to them jointly, suggesting that the purpose of legislation does not encompass every motivation of the diverse legislators that voted for it.

Factors of influence on legislative decision making: a descriptive study-updated August 2009

Journal of Legal, …, 2010

Based upon a previous qualitative study, indentifying 18 key factors of influence,105 surveys were mailed to legislators in a northwestern state, asking them to rank the relative effect each had on decision-making. Results show fiscal impact having the most influence, followed by trust and constituents. Media and legislative staff received the lowest mean.

A Positive Theory of Legislative Intent

Law and Contemporary Problems, 1994

The ongoing debate about statutory interpretation has been profoundly affected by the introduction of social choice theory into the study of legal institutions. Prior to this development, legal scholars had relied on theories of civic virtue, arguments about judicial activism, and understandings of the Constitution to shape their debate. 1 The first mention of Arrow's impossibility theorem and the subsequent chaos results proved quite a bombshell for this enterprise. 2 As Judge Frank Easterbrook noted, Because legislatures comprise many members, they do not have "intents" or "designs"... It is not only impossible to reason from one statute to another but also impossible to reason from one or more sections of a statute to a problem not resolved.... The existence of agenda control [within a legislature] makes it impossible for a court-even one that knows each legislator's complete table of preferences-to say what the whole body would have done with a proposal it did not consider in fact. 3 In fact, one cannot rule out the possibility that, faced with filling a gap in a statute, the legislature would pass a provision clearly contrary to the provisions of the original statute.

The Role of Modals in Policies: The US Opioid Crisis as a Case Study

Applied Corpus Linguistics, 2021

The present study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine the role of modality in policy verb phrases, using California opioid policies as a case study. By tracking the behavior of permissive and restrictive modals across time, this study highlights two potential discourse functions of modals in policy drafting: (i) to reflect the gravity of the issues on the ground, and (ii) to express permission and restriction by highlighting and deemphasizing a policy’s suggestive intent, respectively. This study shows that the increased use of restrictive modality has significant positive correlations with California’s worsening opioid crisis and its rising fatalities. A closer examination of state policy amendments reveals that altering policy modals has the potential to either broaden or limit the terms of existing policies. Informed by Van Dijk’s “context models,” this study provides a cogent applied corpus linguistics framework for analyzing policy text and offers both political and linguistic perspectives into our understanding of modals and how communities address epidemics, respectively.