Rule of Law Commons^™

Book Review Of The Quiet Power Of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, And The Rule Of Law, Sital Kalantry

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Anarchy, Status Updates, And Utopia, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Social software has a power problem. Actually, it has two. The first is technical. Unlike the rule of law, the rule of software is simple and brutal: whoever controls the software makes the rules. And if power corrupts, then automatic power corrupts automatically. Facebook can drop you down the memory hole; Paypal can garnish your pay. These sovereigns of software have absolute and dictatorial control over their domains.

Is it possible to create online spaces without technical power? It is not, because of social software’s second power problem. Behind technical power there is also social power. Whenever people come together …

Sealand, Havenco, And The Rule Of Law, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast, and launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo's founders were opposed to governmental censorship and control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to create a "data haven" for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other …

Promise Against Peril: Of Power, Purpose, And Principle In International Law, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I take two recent monographs on international law – Mary Ellen O’Connell’s "The Power and Purpose of International Law," and Eric Posner’s "The Perils of Global Legalism," as case studies in a more general inquiry into the role of the "rule of law" ideal in domestic and international law. I argue that international and domestic law alike give varyingly explicit and effective expression to the rule of law ideal, and that the task before us is accordingly steadily to improve their effectiveness in so doing, not to pretend that there is no role for this ideal to play in interpreting …

The Place Of Form In The Fundamentals Of Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The author explains that there is scope for a general theory about the nature and place of form in the fundamentals of law. Form organizes the institutions, rules and other varieties of law, and the system as a whole. All such constructs have non-formal elements, too, but form unifies each construct and provides its criteria of identity. Appropriate form makes a system of law possible. It also tends to beget good content in the law. It is indispensable to the basic needs of a legal system, and when such an end is organizational, as with democracy, liberty, and the rule …

Legal Institutions In Professor H.L.A. Hart's Concept Of Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Principles Of The Rule Of Law, Robert S. Summers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.