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Full-Text Articles in Law
Tools For Data Governance, Michael J. Madison
Tools For Data Governance, Michael J. Madison
Articles
This article describes the challenges of data governance in terms of the broader framework of knowledge commons governance, an institutional approach to governing shared knowledge, information, and data resources. Knowledge commons governance highlights the potential for effective community- and collective-based governance of knowledge resources. The article focuses on key concepts within the knowledge commons framework rather than on specific law and public policy questions, directing the attention of researchers and policymakers to critical inquiry regarding relevant social groups and relevant data “things.” Both concepts are key tools for effective data governance.
Innovation Prizes In Practice And Theory, Michael J. Burstein, Fiona Murray
Innovation Prizes In Practice And Theory, Michael J. Burstein, Fiona Murray
Articles
Innovation prizes in reality are significantly different from innovation prizes in theory. The former are familiar from popular accounts of historical prizes like the Longitude Prize: the government offers a set amount for a solution to a known problem, like £20,000 for a method of calculating longitude at sea. The latter are modeled as compensation to inventors in return for donating their inventions to the public domain. Neither the economic literature nor the policy literature that led to the 2010 America COMPETES Reauthorization Act — which made prizes a prominent tool of government innovation policy — provides a satisfying justification …
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Articles
American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament—and to rectify it—is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances. This Article shows that the increasing concentration of wealth and political …
Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
Reply: The Complexity Of Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
Articles
Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment, and responses to that article by Professors Thráinn Eggertsson, Wendy Gordon, Gregg Macey, Robert Merges, Elinor Ostrom, and Lawrence Solum. This short Reply comments briefly on each of those responses.
Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
Constructing Commons In The Cultural Environment, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
Articles
This Essay considers the problem of understanding intellectual sharing/pooling arrangements and the construction of cultural commons arrangements. We argue that an adaptation of the approach pioneered by Elinor Ostrom and collaborators to commons arrangements in the natural environment may provide a template for the examination of constructed commons in the cultural environment. The approach promises to lead to a better understanding of how participants in commons and pooling arrangements structure their interactions in relation to the environment(s) within which they are embedded and with which they share interdependent relationships. Such an improved understanding is critical for obtaining a more complete …
The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
The University As Constructed Cultural Commons, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Katherine J. Strandburg
Articles
This paper examines commons as socially constructed environments built via and alongside intellectual property rights systems. We sketch a theoretical framework for examining cultural commons across a broad variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts, and we apply that framework to the university and associated practices and institutions.
Social Software, Groups, And Governance, Michael J. Madison
Social Software, Groups, And Governance, Michael J. Madison
Articles
Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. …