Research Library

Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar and University Professor Moshe Vardi analyzes three recent crises — the 2021 winter storm in Texas, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Boeing 737 Max software failure — that highlight the cost of valuing efficiency over resilience and provide lessons for bringing society into balance.

University Professor Moshe Vardi condemns the actions taken by the U.S. government to restrict the immigration of technical workers into the country but also questions why the U.S. has become so dependent on international students as the major workforce for its academic science and engineering research enterprise. Baker Institute Blog: https://bit.ly/3llmHg2

An overview of the ABA's Cannabis Law & Policy Committee, which is composed of attorneys across North America who have various mainstream practices and who seek to be stewards of historic changes in the pioneering field of marijuana law.

Products containing hemp extracts high in CBD are gaining mainstream popularity, acceptance and federal legality. In this article, Lisa Pittman, nonresident fellow in drug policy, focuses on litigation issues particular to hemp.

According to the authors, as a leading agricultural state, Texas is poised to become the new leader in hemp production, whether for medicinal or industrial purposes.

According to the authors, developments in cannabis law, arbitration clause interpretation and the economic loss doctrine show that numerous facets of business litigation are changing rapidly.

In a recent commentary, Baker Institute science and technology policy experts described two international court cases that aimed to define “research” — and that ultimately arrived at two different answers. “What makes this interesting is that the courts’ definition of ‘research’ was based on politics — what the court wanted the end result to be,” said Kirstin Matthews, the institute’s fellow in science and technology policy. To reach a decision prohibiting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) patents, the EU court ruled that “research” occurs in a continuum. To reach a decision supporting federal funding of stem cell research, the U.S. court ruled that “research” involves a specific project.