Government Contracts Commons^™

Publication Of Government-Funded Research, Open Access, And The Public Interest, Julie L. Kimbrough, Laura N. Gasaway

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Public access to government-funded research is an issue of tremendous importance to researchers, librarians, and ordinary citizens around the world. Based on the notion that taxpayers finance research through their tax dollars, research data should be available to them. Rapid, unfettered access to research publications provides access to medical research to patients, encourages further exploration and inquiry by other researchers, informs citizens, and advances scientific research.

Scientists typically write articles that divulge the results of their government-funded research. Prior to the open access movement, these articles were published in commercially produced journals. Subscriptions to these journals are expensive, and cost …

The Likely Mismatch Between Federal Research & Development Funding And Desired Innovation, Joshua D. Sarnoff

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Scholars are beginning to develop theoretical analyses of the different forms of government funding that promote innovation. These analyses indicate the need for extensive empirical research into the comparative advantages and various abilities of differing governmental and private institutions. Currently, empirical analyses are lacking, as data for such studies is rarely obtained. Worse yet, analyses of the ways funding decisions are actually made indicate that research and development funding decisions are not governed by a theory of comparative innovation advantage. Accordingly, we can expect a substantial mismatch between actual funding choices and desired innovation policy.

This Article identifies practical considerations …

Putting An End To False Claims Act Hush Money: An Agency-Approval Approach To Qui Tam Prefiling Releases, Jeremy Johnston

Vanderbilt Law Review

The False Claims Act ("FCA") deputizes private citizens to combat fraud against the United States government by offering them a portion of the bounty.' This concept has existed in some form for hundreds of years-the strategy of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Medieval England used it in place of police forces. The American Colonies caught pirates this way. Even Abraham Lincoln protected the Union Army from faulty equipment by encouraging corrupt military suppliers to report one another. In modern American history, the FCA has proven extraordinarily effective at using this ancient tactic. The Act fines wrongdoers triple the …

Shotgun Weddings: Director And Officer Fiduciary Duties In Government-Controlled And Partially-Nationalized Corporations, David M. Barnes

Vanderbilt Law Review

Corporate law considers the affairs of a corporation to be private activity. The prevailing concept of the firm is a nexus of private contract rights among participants in an economic enterprise. But for many U.S. auto and financial services corporations, the events of the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2009 turned this presumption on its head. The U.S. government's $700 billion bailout injected an alien actor-the United States Treasury-into this once-private enterprise. The bailout enabled the Treasury to take a direct equity stake in many of the nation's struggling auto and financial services corporations. In the fall of …

Unfunded Mandates And Fiscal Federalism: A Critique, Robert W. Adler

Vanderbilt Law Review

The term "unfunded federal mandates" is used to challenge federal obligations imposed on states and localities without accompanying funding. Unfunded mandates were alluded to by both the majority and dissenting opinions in Printz v. United States, in which provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act were invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tenth Amendment grounds. In this Article, Professor Adler critiques the fiscal, legal, and policy arguments against unfunded federal mandates. This analysis, in turn, raises two broader issues. First, is the concept of unfunded mandates independently useful to the nation's ongoing debate about federal- ism? Second, does …

Bribery Among The Korean Elite: Putting An End To A Cultural Ritual And Restoring Honor, Daniel Y. Jun

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

On August 26, 1996, the criminal bribery convictions of two former South Korean Presidents sent shockwaves throughout the nation of South Korea. The court found former Presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Rof Tae Woo guilty of amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes during their respective presidential terms. The court also found corporate executives of major Korean conglomerates guilty of bribing the former Presidents in exchange for government contracts or political favors. Such events invite a look into South Korea's difficult past, revealing a history of remarkable industrial progress tarnished by pervasive government corruption. This Note first explores South …

Some Comments On Labor Dispute Settlement Processes, Paul H. Saunders

Vanderbilt Law Review

"A Strikeless Society on America's Horizon?" The question mark at the end of this recent headline

"A Strikeless Society on America's Horizon?" The question mark at the end of this recent headline on a syndicated newspaper column suggests appropriate skepticism about the substance therein, even thouperiod be the fullness of time for the emergence of significant new developments in labor peacemakinggh the column reported that the first eleven months of 1973 had been "the most serene labor climate in a decade with man hours lost at a 10-year low."' Well before the year-end "energy crisis" and attendant economic dislocations, however, …

Communist China's Foreign Trade Organization, Gene T. Hsiao

Vanderbilt Law Review

Although as of October 1966 Communist China has been diplomatically recognized by only fifty countries' and thus still remains outside the world legal community, it has trade relations with more than 120 countries and regions. The annual volume of Peking's foreign trade has been estimated at 2.96 billion dollars in 1963 and 4.5 billion dollars in 1966. The latest Western reports from Peking indicate that foreign buyers and sellers see in "China's 700 million people a market with dazzling prospects and a potential source "of supply of goods they can market profitably in their countries." The official organ of the …

A Symposium On State Trading, William W. Bishop, Jr., Edwin D. Dickinson

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is a privilege and an honor to be invited to introduce the following collection of articles on State Trading. In planning and organizing this symposium, the Vanderbilt Law Review has chosen to deal with an important factor in contemporary economic life--a factor which has widespread ramifications in both domestic and international law. The included articles cover a wide variety of subjects, and represent view-points which differ considerably. They have the common quality of clear and full presentation of information about current problems, while at the same time suggesting further lines for investigation. Each article offers much of interest and …

Aec Production And Distribution Of Radioisotopes: State Trading In A Free Enterprise Economy, E. Blythe Stason

Vanderbilt Law Review

Among the one hundred or so business-type activities of the Government are certain operations of the Atomic Energy Commission. In this article we shall examine the origin, growth and usefulness of just one phase of these AEC activities, that is, the production and distribution of radioisotopes. This activity is singled out for emphasis partly because of the remarkable success story resulting from the use of such isotopes, but more especially because of an unusual and even unique aspect of "state trading" introduced into the business by the AEC. We refer to, and shall explain in some detail, an unusual self-limiting …