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The purpose of this paper is to present an evaluation of a community-based arts programme for older people in Nottinghamshire.

The evaluation was conducted using a combination of pre- and post-initiative quantitative questionnaires and qualitative focus group interviews. This paper focuses upon the findings from the focus groups.

Participants reported feeling more positively about ageing and being more motivated to pursue new opportunities at the end of the programme. Five themes emerged from the focus group interviews, namely age and ageing, the finished product, new opportunities, aspirations and the future and personal benefits. These related to increased confidence, having greater creative expression, meaningful occupation and opportunities for socialisation.

The programme was found to be successful in helping individuals feel more positive about their age, to feel more confident and motivated, to engage with others through mutual creativity, as well as to challenge negative social stereotypes of older people.

The paper will be of relevance and value to those working with older people and those with an interest in the arts. This evaluation demonstrates the diversity of the older population with older citizen’s voices being at the heart of the programme.

The specific purpose of this paper is to research the relevant case law with regard to the constitutionality of generic advertising, i.e. “check‐off” programs, when they are required by state or federal legislation.

The methodology employed is traditional legal research and analysis.

The research indicates that although there have been various US Supreme Court cases which address the issue, the law in the USA is still in a state of flux regarding the constitutionality of check‐off programs. Determination of the constitutionality of a specific program is dependent upon the scope of the legislation.

The paper provides a starting point for those interested in the study of this type of advertising, which is becoming increasingly popular in the USA.

This paper is of value to both legislative bodies and producers in deciding the constitutionality of a check‐off program. Specifically it would be of use to a legislative body when determining how to design a constitutional “check‐off” program and to a producer in determining if a specific “check‐off” program is constitutional.

Published below are the course reading list and student notes taken by F. Taylor Ostrander in Frank H. Knight’s course, Current Tendencies, Economics 303, at the University of Chicago during Winter term of the 1933–1934 academic year. The reading list is surprisingly casual and uneven in detail among items. The notes are assumed, as usual in these volumes, to be a reasonably accurate summary account of what Knight said.

This chapter argues that the theoretical core of the First Amendment can be found in the concept of disestablishment, and that the meaning of disestablishment can be, and has been, extended from the religious sphere to the secular. It explores the historical development of rights of conscience and dissent, and the application of those rights to various changing historical circumstances, such as the development of political parties and the struggle over slavery. It then turns to an application of this analysis to several contemporary First Amendment controversies, including campaign finance and sexual expression.

This article posits that a more rigorous enforcement of the Constitutional Doctrine of Non-delegation would prevent many of the problems that have been identified with benefit–cost analysis. In particular, a rigorous application would prevent administrative agencies from using benefit–cost analysis as a screen to make policy decisions that the agency otherwise wishes to occur. Though the US Courts might have some difficulty in enforcing this notion, it is possible to do, and would greatly help the benefit–cost process, by regulating it to its proper place in an administrative system.

Popular constitutionalists seek to recover the popular sovereignty foundations of American constitutionalism, bringing the people in as active participants in the constitutional enterprise as they create and refashion the Constitution by “majoritarian and populist mechanisms” (Amar, 1995, p. 89). The result is to recover an understanding, in FDR's words, of constitution as a “layman's document, not a lawyer's contract” (Kramer, 2004, p. 207). This understanding has deep roots in American constitutionalism, tracing its lineage back to the founding and, as popular constitutionalists insist, finds powerful expression in the likes of The Federalist and Abraham Lincoln (Ackerman, 1991; Tushnet, 1998). In exercising popular sovereignty, the people founded the Constitution, but they did not simply retreat from the trajectory of constitutional development. Rather, as Bruce Ackerman argues, since the Constitution of 1787 the people have spoken in a manner that has re-founded the Constitution giving us a “multiple origins originalism” (Kersch, 2006a, p. 801; see also Amar, 1998 and 2005). In turning to founding era thought and the notion of constitutional foundations, popular constitutionalists like Ackerman and Amar make common cause with conservatives who turn to original intent, but then they seek to synthesize this understanding with democratic expressions of popular will by emphasizing both formal and informal constitutional change, giving us layered “foundings,” and a more complex version of “living constitutionalism.” Such constitutional change, however, can only legitimately come from an authentic expression of “We the People.”