Every US state requires drivers to pass a knowledge and skills examination before obtaining their driver’s license. Surprisingly little is known about the progression of people through the examination process. To date, no research has been conducted on the proportion of individuals who pass from one stage of the driver examination process to the next compared to those who fail and are required to be reexamined. The purpose of this study was to follow the progression of a cohort of new drivers in Washington State as they advanced through the driver examination process. We reviewed driving records for 2,604 teens who started a driver education course in 2024. Of those who attempted the knowledge test at least once, 96 percent passed their knowledge test and 85 percent passed their skills exam. There were significant differences in pass and fail rates by sex, race, and household income. The overwhelming majority of new drivers passed both the knowledge and skills exams after two attempts. The fact that teenagers have a high risk of crashing in the first year of licensure suggests that the full safety potential of the knowledge and skills exams are not being realized.

In this response to the four contributions to the Critical Forum on Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule, Michael David-Fox reflects on how our own twenty-first century crisis of liberalism may provoke new engagements with the twentieth-century age of extremes. His dialogue with commentators and critics is grouped into four areas. The first concerns how to reconceive the old comparison between Stalinism and Nazism in terms of entanglements and the non-synchronous life cycles of revolutionary regimes of far Left and far Right. The second is an explanation and defense of power and power relations as the work’s overarching focus, acknowledging decisions that entailed in terms of the research agenda. The third represents an intervention into a controversy over evidence, the Mints Commission interviews on the Great Patriotic War, and the utility of memoirs. The last section unpacks and refines the author’s approach to the concepts of choice, decision-making, and agency.

This paper argues that Kant’s theory of truth in the first Critique offers a qualified correspondence account that integrates key insights from both coherence and correspondence theories of truth. By distinguishing between formal and material conditions of truth, Kant shows that truth cannot be defined in real terms. The paper identifies two fundamental requirements any theory of truth must meet – objectivity and epistemic accessibility. It shows how rationalism fails to fulfil them, while Kant’s transcendental idealism transforms the correspondence relation into an epistemic one. In doing so, Kant provides a moderate realist account of truth that avoids both scepticism and dogmatism.

Lors des affaires judiciaires traitées devant le podestat et son juge des maléfices, des hommes et des femmes des communes marchésanes des derniers siècles médiévaux ont comparu en tant qu’accusateurs, querellants, inculpés, défenseurs ou témoins. Pour ce faire, les témoins masculins ont pu se rendre dans un seul et même lieu : le palais communal. En revanche, seules les femmes accusées de délits jugés suffisamment graves, inculpées, torturées et incarcérées en attente de jugement, ont pu entrer dans le palais. Celles qui ont commis de petits délits et celles qui ont été convoquées pour faire une déposition ont été entendues dans d’autres lieux, essentiellement dans les églises de leur ville ou de leur village, obligeant ainsi, podestat et juge à déplacer le banc de justice. Cette curieuse asymétrie de genre est capitale pour éclairer la nature masculine du pouvoir, la sanctuarisation du palais communal, la double polarisation de l’espace autour du palais et des églises, la présence féminine dans l’espace publique et politico-judiciaire, le genre de la citoyenneté, le crédit accordé au témoignage des femmes et le fonctionnement des régimes de genre. Cette partition tranchée s’explique par la méfiance à l’égard du témoignage féminin considéré comme de moindre valeur dans la recherche de la vérité. L’église est le lieu idéal pour rendre la parole des femmes plus crédible sous la surveillance divine en leur offrant une protection face au personnel judiciaire exclusivement masculin devant lequel elles doivent se présenter seules. L’étude s’appuie sur des rubriques de vingt statuts communaux du centre des Marches entre le début du xive siècle et le milieu du xvie siècle et sur les registres de la justice pénale (libri maleficiorum) du xve siècle de trois communes : Macerata, Tolentino et San Severino.

Employer complaints about rising health care costs have been ubiquitous for a number of years. Survey evidence, though, finds widespread employer shortcomings in the processes they use to select and monitor health plan service providers. The evidence provides a data-driven basis to assess whether employers meet their fiduciary obligations, leading to the conclusion that employers need to increase their diligence or face the possibility of significant liability. The increased diligence may also mitigate health care costs.