Digital Commons Network^™

Introductory Report On The World Trade Organization, Joost H. B. Pauwelyn

Faculty Scholarship

Presented at Palma Workshop, 20-21 May 2005, on Unity and Fragmentation in International Law.

Looking Forward: 2005-2010 - A Sovereign Debt Restructuring Reverie, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

In a prior article, the author asked why, if a sovereign debt restructuring treat would be effective and easy to implement, one does not yet exist. There appeared to be at least three reasons: the very novelty of the approach; the opposition of interest groups who believe that a treaty approach would make it too easy for sovereign debtors to default; and the failure of parties to appreciate the importance of a treaty approach, coupled with concern over ceding sovereignty. In this short reverie, the author hopes to show that these reasons are flawed and that, even where bond issues …

Exiting Treaties, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the under-explored phenomenon of unilateral exit from international agreements and intergovernmental organizations. Although clauses authorizing denunciation and withdrawal from treaties are pervasive, international legal scholars and international relations theorists have largely ignored them. This Article draws upon new empirical evidence to provide a comprehensive interdisciplinary framework for understanding treaty exit. It examines when and why states abandon their treaty commitments and explains how exit helps to resolve certain theoretical and doctrinal puzzles that have long troubled scholars of international affairs.

Why States Create International Tribunals: A Response To Professors Posner And Yoo, Laurence R. Helfer, Anne-Marie Slaughter

Faculty Scholarship

A recent article in the California Law Review by Professors Eric Posner and John Yoo, Judicial Independence in International Tribunals, argues that the only effective international tribunals are dependent tribunals, by which the authors mean ad hoc tribunals staffed by judges closely controlled by governments through the power of reappointment or threats of retaliation. Independent tribunals, by contrast, meaning tribunals staffed by judges appointed on similar terms as those in domestic courts, pose a danger to international cooperation. According to Posner and Yoo, independent tribunals are suspect because they are more likely to allow moral ideals, ideological imperatives or the …

Colored Speech: Cross Burnings, Epistemics, And The Triumph Of The Crits?, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines the Court's recent decision in Virginia v. Black. It argues that Black signifies a different approach to the constitutionality of statutes regulating cross burnings. It shows how the Court's conservatives have essentially accepted the intellectual framework and the mode of analysis suggested previously by the critical race theorists. In particular, this Essay explores the role that Justice Thomas plays in the case. The Essay explains Justice Thomas's active participation as a matter of epistemic authority and epistemic deference.

Judging The Law Of Politics, Guy-Uriel Charles

Faculty Scholarship

In this Review Essay I explore the rights-structure debate that has captivated the attention of election law scholars. The Essay juxtaposes the recent work of a leading individualist Professor Richard Hasen's new book, "The Supreme Court and Election Law," against the recent work of a leading structuralist, Professor Richard Pildes' recent Foreword to the Harvard Law Review. I argue that even though the rights-structure debate produces much heat, it does not significantly advance the goal of understanding and evaluating the role of the Court in democratic politics. I aim to return election law to a dualistic understanding of the relationship …

The Globalization Of Private Knowledge Goods And The Privatization Of Global Public Goods, Jerome H. Reichman, Keith H. Maskus

Faculty Scholarship

Global trade and investment have become increasingly liberalized in recent decades. This liberalization has lately been accompanied by substantive new requirements for strong minimum standards of intellectual property (IP) protection, which moves the world economy toward harmonized private rights in knowledge goods. While this trend may have beneficial impacts in terms of innovation and technology diffusion, such impacts would not be evenly distributed across countries. Deep questions also arise about whether such globalization of rights to information will raise roadblocks to the national and international provision of such public goods as environmental protection, public health, education, and scientific advance. This …

Reform Of Imf Conditionality - A Proposal For Self-Imposed Conditionality, Ofer Eldar

Faculty Scholarship

The IMF has faced criticism of its expansive use of conditionality. The paper proposes a new procedure for IMF lending designed to meet these criticisms by arguing for the legalization and formalization of the procedure for IMF lending in the light of legal concepts derived mainly from national administrative laws. The gist of the procedure is that, rather than have the IMF determine loan conditions following informal negotiations with member countries, countries seeking Fund assistance will design the conditions themselves. The IMF will have specified powers under which to review these conditions. Apart from other procedural requirements, conditions will have …

A Brief History Of Bioperl, Colin Crossman, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

Large-scale open-source projects face a litany of pitfalls and difficulties. Problems of contribution quality, credit for contributions, project coordination, funding, and mission-creep are ever-present. Of these, long-term funding and project coordination can interact to form a particularly difficult problem for open-source projects in an academic environment.

BioPerl was chosen as an example of a successful academic open-source project. Several of the roadblocks and hurdles encountered and overcome in the development of BioPerl are examined through the telling of the history of the project. Along the way, key points of open-source law are explained, such as license choice and copyright.

The …

Finding And Maintaining Rigid Components, Audrey Lee, Ileana Streinu, Louis Theran

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

We give the first complete analysis that the complexity of finding and maintaining rigid components of planar bar-and-joint frameworks and arbitrary d-dimensional body-and-bar frameworks, using a family of algorithms called pebble games, is O(n2). To this end, we intro- duce a new data structure problem called union pair- find, which maintains disjoint edge sets and supports pair-find queries of whether two vertices are spanned by a set. We present solutions that apply to generalizations of the pebble game algorithms, beyond the original rigidity motivation.

Congressional Authorization And The War On Terrorism, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

This Article presents a framework for interpreting Congress's September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), the central statutory enactment related to the war on terrorism. Although both constitutional theory and constitutional practice suggest that the validity of presidential wartime actions depends to a significant degree on their relationship to congressional authorization, the meaning and implications of the AUMF have received little attention in the academic debates over the war on terrorism. The framework presented in this Article builds on the analysis in the Supreme Court's plurality opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, which devoted significant attention to the …

Ten Commandments, Nine Judges, And Five Versions Of One Amendment - The First. (“Now What?”), William W. Van Alstyne

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the variety of opinions expressed by the Justices in the two “Ten Commandments” cases, specifically Justice O’Connor’s dissent and Justice Breyer’s concurrence in Van Orden v. Perry.

Canonical Construction And Statutory Revisionism: The Strange Case Of The Appropriations Canon, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lost In Translation: Social Choice Theory Is Misapplied Against Legislative Intent, Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Several prominent scholars use results from social choice theory to conclude that legislative intent is meaningless. We disagree. We support our argument by showing that the conclusions in question are based on misapplications of the theory. Some of the conclusions in question are based on Arrow's famous General Possibility Theorem. We identify a substantial chasm between what Arrow proves and what others claim in his name. Other conclusions come from a failure to realize that applying social choice theory to questions of legislative intent entails accepting assumptions such as "legislators are omniscient" and "legislators have infinite resources for changing law …

What Is New In The New Statutory Interpretation? Introduction To The Journal Of Contemporary Legal Issues Symposium, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Terrorism: The Politics Of Prosecution, Madeline Morris

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005.

Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature With E-Prints And Open Access Journals, Charles W. Bailey Jr.

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Scope of the Bibliography

The Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals presents over 1,300 selected English-language books, conference papers (including some digital video presentations), debates, editorials, e-prints, journal and magazine articles, news articles, technical reports, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding the open access movement’s efforts to provide free access to and unfettered use of scholarly literature. Most sources have been published between 1999 and August 31, 2004; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1999 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to sources …

Towards A Continuum Of Scholarship: The Eventual Collapse Of The Distinction Between Grey And Non-Grey Literature, Marcus A. Banks

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Abstract (from University of Arizona Campus Repository)

This paper argues that the distinction between grey and non-grey (or white) literature will become less relevant over time, as online discovery options proliferate. In the meantime, the political success of the open access publishing movement has valuable lessons for proponents of increasing access to grey literature.

Unshap'd Monsters: Political Farce On The London Stage, 1717-1737, Melissa Ann Bloom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reexamines the role of John Gay's and Henry Fielding's anti-government satirical farces during the politically contentious 1720s and 1730s in London. Although their plays were and still are considered, variously, burlesques, entertainments, farces, and satires, I call them satirical farce for two reasons. First, contemporaries used the term farce as much to signify political and social stances as dramatic type or function. Those political and social stances are the central focus of this dissertation. Second, I see in this collection of plays—Gay's Three Hours After Marriage (1717) and The Beggar's Opera (1728), Fielding's The Author's Farce (1730), The …

Aesthetics Of Movement And Everyday Aesthetics, Pentti Määttänen

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

How the general notion of experience is understood determines to some extent what one thinks about art and aesthetic experience. Pragmatism widens the concept of experience from that of sense experience. Action, practice and movement are epistemologically significant elements of experience. The environment is not just perceived, it is experienced also by acting, moving around and participating in different practices, as can be spelled out in terms of Peircean semiotics. From the pragmatist point of view, aesthetic experience is not characterized only as disinterested contemplation of art works and other elements of our environment as objects of perception. Aesthetic experience …

From Mobile Ontologies To Mobile Aesthetics, Jos De Mul

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

We are living in a globalizing world, characterized by constant and rapid innovation. As we are inclined to go with this flow and its accompanying discourse of mobility, there is a danger that we overlook the persistence of cultural traditions. However, this paper argues that important differences exist between pre-modern, modern and post-modern traditions with regard to the form mobility takes. After a short discussion of the role information and communication technologies play in post-modern traditions, it is argued that these technologies transform our world, and not only our electronic files, into a global database and, as a consequence, generate …

The Aesthetics Of The Road, Road Art, And Road Traffic, Yrjš Sepänmaa

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Three things are required for a good road: economy, safety and beauty. A key concept of this trinity is fitting: how to fit the road into the landscape. Together, the road and the landscape form a work of road art. Art attached to the road environment - in this case the other meaning of road art - is at its simplest art works placed beside a road. Art in a more demanding form gives the landscape new dimensions of meaning. Road and art in unison are more than the sum of their parts. Furthermore, travelling is a way to get …

Movement And Participation: Journeys Within Everyday Environments, Johanna Hällsten

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Motion is an elementary part of our everyday life; it determines our perception and appropriation of environmental features. We are immersed in the world while on foot, grounding awareness of the three-dimensionality of the world and ourselves through movement. As a site-specific installation artist, movement is a crucial aspect of my practice in the sense that it makes the work occur. I argue that the installation comprises the experience of the participant through his or her interaction with the space and the intervention that has occurred through movement. The experience is one which unfolds and changes as the participant walks …

Editorial

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Are Supertasters Good Candidates For Being Human Ideal Critics?, Francis Raven

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper asks whether supertasters possess the criteria for ideal critics that David Hume outlines in his essay "Of the Standard of Taste." This might seem like a straightforward question, but there is a paradox involving supertasters: They possess more tastebuds than normal tasters, making it reasonable to assume they fulfill the requirements for Humean ideal critics with respect to taste. However, because they have more tastebuds, supertasters find certain foods bitter that normal tasters do not and thus negatively evaluate them. This might indicate that supertasters actually make poor candidates for being Humean ideal critics with respect to taste. …

Avant-Garde Or Pré-Jugé?, Sinead Murphy

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper receives its impetus from Gadamer's account of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte) and his corresponding challenge to the 'problem of purity' that he locates in Kant's critique of aesthetic judgment and that derives from the attempt to establish universal founding principles for thought and action. This is a deep and wide-ranging issue, and so I focus on a very specific aspect of it: the division between intuition and understanding, between history as a given flux and enlightenment as a unifying synthesis, that motivates Kant's search for pure reflective grounds to reconcile them, and on the challenge posed to this division …

The Aesthetic Dissonance Of Industrial Wind Machines, Jon Boone

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Yuriko Saito recently published an essay in this journal, "Machines in the Ocean: The Aesthetics of Wind Farms" (Contemporary Aesthetics, 2 (2004)). The bulk of her essay is a search for the right aesthetic justification for wind plants sited in the ocean as well as for those onshore. Because wind power does not emit toxins into the air and its source of energy is recurrent, it offers the promise of a clean, renewable alternative to fossil fuels. The central problem with harnessing any form of energy is that enormous energies are wasted in the process of producing and channeling a …

Immersive Contemplation In Video Art Environments, Tiffany Sutton

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This essay examines a form of video art -- what is called a "video environment" -- that calls upon as much as it departs from familiar conventions that are bound up in museum display. I argue that the way that works in this genre are housed in museums enables them to give rise to a form of contemplation, one involving immersion, that is, if not unique to this genre, then certainly demonstrated by it. My examples of video environments make a case for the coherence of this rarely experienced immersive form of contemplation, the value of which, in turn, makes …

Carrying The Jade Tablet: A Consideration Of Confucian Artistry, Eric C. Mullis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

In this paper I discuss the aesthetic dimension of ritual action. In order to demonstrate how the rites render action aesthetically expressive, I draw on the notion of an "art of context" and further detail the Confucian understanding of artistic practice as an essential component for moral cultivation. In turn, I use John Dewey's account of aesthetic form in order to support and further demonstrate the ability of the rituals and arts to organize action and to thereby render it aesthetically significant. However, Dewey's account entails that we question either conceptual or institutional limitations of aesthetic form as such limitations …