Digital Commons Network^™

Social Networks And Electronic Commerce In China, Jane K. Winn

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Communication technologies that make up the emerging global information infrastructure have the power to regulate online behavior. Social networks in Chinese society have survived the growth of formal legal institutions and liberalization of China's economy, but it is not clear whether they can survive the regulatory pressures created by global information technology networks.

The spread of electronic commerce technologies in China may strengthen legal institutions and open local markets to international competition, but is likely to be resisted by all the same interests that resist those changes in other contexts. The Chinese response to the spread of electronic commerce might …

Emerging Issues In Electronic Contracting, Technical Standards And Law Reform, Jane K. Winn

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The explosive growth of electronic commerce transactions in recent years has added fuel to efforts to harmonize international commercial law. Organizations such as the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the Hague Conference on Private International Law are all participating in an emerging global debate concerning the changes that should be made to the form or substance of international commercial law to accommodate innovation in the technology of international trade.

Many of the important legal issues raised by cross-border electronic commerce in the 1970s and 1980s have …

Of Punctilios And Paybacks: The Duty Of Loyalty Under The Uniform Trust Code, Karen E. Boxx

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Loyalty has been cited as the most desired of traits from those who serve others. One reason that loyalty is so highly valued is that it is impossible to guarantee and impossible to buy. The trust law concept of the duty of loyalty acknowledges that human nature will cause any person to favor his or her personal interests over the interests of another, and it is this assumption of disloyalty that gives rise to the strict prohibitions of trustee conflicts of interest required under the label of "duty of loyalty."

The duty of loyalty has been called "the essence of …

Defeating Environmental Law: The Geology Of Legal Advantage, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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My talk today will: (1) introduce the metaphor of geology, (2) suggest to you that complexity has "gainers" as well as "losers," and (3) show you how environmental laws can be defeated by these twin engines of complexity and clever human adversaries.

[Third Annual Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on Environmental Law, Pace University School of Law.]

The Customer Is Always Right . . . Not!: Employer Liability For Third Party Sexual Harassment, Lea B. Vaughn

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This article will ask a series of questions. What is third party sexual harassment? Under what conditions does it occur? Does it differ in any significant respects from traditional notions of sexual harassment? Should those differences, if any, make a difference in the way that the legal system addresses third party harassment? And indeed, should the problem be addressed solely through the legal system? What might an employer do to alleviate sexual harassment of this type?

The thesis of this article is that third party sexual harassment is a prevalent form of harassment that the legal system does not currently …

De-Bugging Open Source Software Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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Home computer users and businesses often rely on software developed by unconventional programmers known as "hackers." Hackers claim that the code they develop is superior in quality to the code developed by commercial software firms because hackers freely share the code they develop. This code sharing enables a multitude of programmers from around the world to rapidly find and fix bugs. The legal mechanism that enables hackers to deploy this worldwide team of de-buggers is a license agreement or, to be more precise,an assortment of license agreements known as "open source" licenses.

Although open source software developers may regularly fix …

Agency Rules With The Force Of Law: The Original Convention, Thomas W. Merrill, Kathryn Tongue Watts

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The Supreme Court recently held in United States v. Mead Corp. that agency interpretations should receive Chevron deference only when Congress has delegated power to the agency to make rules with the force of law and the agency has rendered its interpretation in the exercise of that power.

The first step of this inquiry is difficult to apply to interpretations adopted through rulemaking, because often rulemaking grants authorize the agency to make "such rules and regulations as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter" or words to that effect, without specifying whether "rules and regulations" encompasses …

Growth And Form: Indian Tribes, Terrorism, And The Durability Of Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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My target audience is the body of extraordinary law students here at the Vermont Law School who will define the shape and direction of tomorrow's environmental law. My plan is to derive five virtues of significant achievement—genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, and courage—and to convince you that the Indian tribes of the United States are fortuitously blessed with these capacities for positive change.

I am obliged to defend my five virtues against the charge that they are "gray" virtues, mere tactics of opportunity open to use by the forces of hatred and destruction as freely as those of nurturing and protection. …

Lesbigay Identity As Commodity, David M. Skover, Kellye Y. Testy

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This Essay explores the deep dissonance that exists today between the validation of American LesBiGays in the commercial marketplace and their devaluation in political and legal arenas, and questions the failure of legal scholars and civil rights activists to account meaningfully for this dissonance in their theories and practices. I

n America's popular culture, LesBiGay identities abound. In its political culture, however, they emerge more tentatively. The commercial and entertainment industries increasingly commodify and celebrate LesBiGay identities. The courts and legislatures generally discount and condemn them. Thus, there is a deep dissonance between the validation of LesBiGay identities in the …

Linking Progressive Corporate Law With Progressive Social Movements, Kellye Y. Testy

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Professor Testy critically assesses what has been termed a "new" corporate social responsibility project After noting the hegemony of shareholder primacy in corporate law, she critiques four major counter-hegemonic discourses: team production theory, corporate social accountabiity, stakeholder theory, and corporate social responsibility (or progressive corporate law). Finding the first three ineffective foils for the problems of corporate power that have spurred calls for reform, she turns to an examination of the progressive corporate law project. That project, presently poised at a defining juncture as it attempts to use the "master's tools" to "dismantle the master's house," nonetheless holds promise for …

Holographically Recorded Photopolymer Diffractive Optical Element For Holographic And Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry, Sridhar Guntaka, Vincent Toal, Suzanne Martin

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A diffractive optical element is described that can be used to implement a self-aligning electronic speckle apttern interferometer and holographic interferometer requiring only a laser source and a camera in the optical set-up.

Integrating The Activities Required To Recruit And Retain Profitable Customers In Contemporary Retail Banking, Susan Walsh

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Today’s high street retail bank faces a major challenge in integrating the marketing activities required both to recruit new customers and to retain existing profitable ones. The challenge involves a judicious mix of “transaction marketing” – mainly aimed at winning new clients – and of “relationship marketing”- largely aimed at retaining present ones. Evidence from a detailed qualitative study of marketing practice in a UK high street bank, a subsidiary of an Irish headquartered bank, demonstrates just how problematic achieving this balance can be. The date indicates that this bank underinvested in a number of activities that are of primary …

The Future Of The Forestry Sector In Ireland, Siobhan Mccarthy

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The most recent government strategy statement on forestry sets a planting target of 20,000 hectares annually for the Republic of Ireland, but in recent years this target has not been met. Public afforestation is now limited to the management and replacement of existing forests, so private afforestation must increase if this target is to be achieved. This article quantifies the relative importance of competing forestry and agricultural policy incentives in explaining trends in private afforestation. Several policy reforms to encourage forestry planting are proposed, including greater integration of forestry with the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and increasing the upfront payments …

Washington, Patton, Schwarzkopf And Ashcroft?, Michael Herz

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No abstract provided.

Toward The Formation Of "Innocence Commissions" In America, Barry C. Scheck, Peter J. Neufeld

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The article advocates for the establishment of "innocence commissions" to investigate and address wrongful convictions in the U.S. criminal justice system. Drawing parallels to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigates transportation accidents, the authors propose that these commissions would identify systemic defects leading to wrongful convictions and recommend reforms to prevent future miscarriages of justice. They emphasize the need for independence, subpoena power, and public accountability to ensure the commissions' effectiveness.

Economic Rationality, Empathy, And Corporate Responsibility, Jeanne L. Schroeder

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Judge Richard A. Posner - the doyen of the law and economics movement - is probably the leading proponent of the hypothesis that legal subjects act as if they were economically rational. Over the years, however, Posner's conception of rationality has devolved from end-means reasoning by a conscious individual human actor, to unconscious instinct which is, nevertheless, beneficial to an individual subject (animal or human) to the mechanistic reproductive activity of individual genes which may or may not be beneficial to either the organism of which the gene is a part - or even to the gene itself. Indeed, all …

Intergroup Rivalry, Anti-Competitive Conduct And Affirmative Action, Michelle Adams

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Significant research in social science describes racial inequality as grounded in notions of group identity and group conflict. Sociologists and social psychologists who study discrimination and prejudice have moved away from theories that explain prejudice solely as a problem of individual perception, and toward theories that view individual cognitive processes as related to group membership. While present social science yields no consensus view, there is a striking emphasis in the current literature on group identity theories as "powerful determinants of behavior." These theories, which stress the importance of prejudice as a group-based phenomenon and focus on "social-structural theories of group …

Toward A Nonzero-Sum Approach To Resolving Global Intellectual Property Disputes: What Can We Learn From Mediators, Business Strategists, And International Relations Theorists, Peter K. Yu

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All societies, communities, organizations, and interpersonal relationships experience conflict at one time or another in the process of dayto-day interaction. Conflict is not necessarily bad, abnormal, or dysfunctional; it is a fact of life. Conflict and disputes exist when people are engaged in competition to meet goals that are perceived to be, or actually are, incompatible. However, conflict may go beyond competitive behavior and acquire the additional purpose of inflicting physical or psychological damage on an opponent, even to the point of destruction. It is then that the negative and harmful dynamics of conflict exact their full costs.

Street Crime, Corporate Crime, And Theories Of Punishment: A Response To Brown, Kyron J. Huigens

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In this response to Darryl Brown's important article, Street Crime, Corporate Crime, and the Contingency of Criminal Liability, Professor Huigens argues that Brown has chosen the wrong theory of punishment on which to rest his case for a more regulatory, less punitive, approach to street crime. Brown has chosen the best, most sophisticated consequentialist theory of punishment, as developed principally by Dan Kahan. However, consequentialist punishment theory of any kind has a significant drawback: it has no plausible conception of criminal fault. As a result, Brown is constrained to argue that the language of desert and retribution should be muted …

Rulemaking, Michael Herz

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No abstract provided.

Surcharge And Standing: Bankruptcy Code Section 506(C) After Hartford Underwriters, David G. Carlson

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The Supreme Court's decision in Hartford Underwriters Insurance Co. v. Union Planters Bank, N.A., which limited standing under 11 U.S.C. § 506(c) to bankruptcy trustees, fails to conclusively resolve the issue of who can bring such claims. The ruling creates legal complexities, as it does not fully address ownership of the proceeds or provide clear guidance, leading to potential workarounds by secured creditors and trustees. The article argues that the decision may be circumvented, and the current framework for handling § 506(c) claims remains unsatisfactory, necessitating further legislative or judicial clarification.

A Blackletter Statement Of Federal Administrative Law, Ronald M. Levin, Paul R. Verkuil, John F. Duffy, Michael E. Herz

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No abstract provided.

Solving The Apprendi Puzzle, Kyron Huigens

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No abstract provided.

How Extra-Copyright Protection Of Databases Can Be Constitutional, Justin Hughes

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Following the Supreme Court's 1991 Feist decision, intellectual property and Constitutional law scholars have debated whether extra-copyright protection of databases can be established by Congress under its Commerce Clause power. This article presents the problem as one of the gravitational zone of the Commerce Clause versus that of the Copyright and Patent Clause. The article reasons that the Supreme Court decisions in International News Service v. Associated Press, Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard, and the 19th century Trademark Cases all point to the possibility of limited protection of databases under the Commerce Clause. The Article also considers the constitutionality of extra-copyright protection …

Restoring Politics To The Commerce Clause: The Case For Abandoning The Dormant Commerce Clause Prohibition Of Discriminatory Taxation, Edward A. Zelinsky

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No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Sex Discrimination Argument For Lesbian And Gay Rights, Edward D. Stein

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The sex discrimination argument for lesbian and gay rights analyzes laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in terms of sex discrimination. For example, sodomy laws that prohibit only same-sex sexual activities are analyzed as discriminating on the basis of sex because they prohibit women from doing something men are permitted to do, that is, have sex with women. This argument has been championed by some scholars and litigators, and it has persuaded some judges. Edward Stein shows that there are sociological, theoretical, moral, and practical problems facing the sex discrimination argument. He suggests that there are better …

Popular Sovereignty And The Electoral College, John O. Mcginnis

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No abstract provided.

Twenty-Five Years Later With Promises To Keep: Legal Education In Dispute Resolution And Training Of Mediators, Lela P. Love

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No abstract provided.

Document Processing For Automatic Color Form Dropout, Andreas E. Savakis, Christopher R. Brown

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Color dropout refers to the process of converting color form documents to black and white by removing the colors that are part of the blank form and maintaining only the information entered in the form. In this paper, no prior knowledge of the form type is assumed. Color dropout is performed by associating darker non-dropout colors with information that is entered in the form and needs to be preserved. The color dropout filter parameters include the color values of the non-dropout colors, e.g. black and blue, the distance metric, e.g. Euclidian, and the tolerances allowed around these colors. Color dropout …

The Economic Analysis Of Evidence Law: Common Sense On Stilts, Richard O. Lempert

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There was a time when the empire of Law was not overrun by economists. The economists had their own fiefdoms to be sure-there was the Duchy of Antitrust and the Kingdom of Regulatory Law-but the economists lived in peace within these borders, welcoming many unlike themselves into their midst, only gently proselytizing their students in the first few classes of a term, and swearing fealty to the law. It is true that a few marauders from beyond the borders saw the wealth of the empire and sought to colonize it, but even the most daring, Archbishop Coase and Duke Gary …