Bleak House 1968: A Report on Consumer Test Litigation

The author presents the practical problems of consumer test-case litigation. Writing in an informal, anecdotal style, he addresses himself to law students, telling them of the many obstacles they will face in this type of practice. The author relates the innumerable and exasperating delaying tactics employed by his adversaries in several cases now being litigated. Looking beyond the theoretical efficacy of test-case litigation as a solution to the morass of consumers\u27 grievances, the author\u27s experiences suggest the need for basic reform of state procedure in order to permit more speedy resolution of the issues raised by such litigation

Directors\u27 Duties in Failing Firms

Despite many cases with seemingly contrary dicta, corporate directors of failing firms do not have special duties to creditors. This follows from the nature of fiduciary duties and the business judgment rule. Under the business judgment rule, the directors have broad discretion to decide what to do and in whose interests to act. There is some authority for a limited creditor right to sue on behalf of the corporation to enforce this duty. However, any such right does not make the duty one owed to creditors. The creditors individually may sue the corporation for breach of specific contractual, tort, and statutory duties, particularly on account of fraudulent conveyances. But the creditors are not owed general fiduciary protection even if they are subject to a special risk of abuse in failing firms

Rawls’ Political Constructivism as a Judicial Heuristic: A Response to Professor Allen

In her Dunwody Lecture, Professor Anita Allen insightfully calls our attention to the social contract tropes that pepper American case law. She claims that these tropes function ideologically, disguising politics, biases, and raw power in judicial decision-making. To examine this claim, I distinguish two versions of social contract theory Professor Allen groups together. Metaphors drawn from classical social contract theory-epitomized by the work of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau may well function as Professor Allen suspects. Tools taken from twentieth century neo-Kantian social contract theory-inaugurated and developed by John Rawls-could have precisely the opposite effect. Rawlsian social contract theory might function critically in case law, forcing judges to shed unconsidered or irrelevant prejudices

Theory and ontology for sharing temporal knowledge

Using current technology, the sharing or re-using of knowledge-bases is very difficult, if not impossible. ARPA has correctly recognized the problem and funded a knowledge sharing initiative. One of the outcomes of this project is a formal language called Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF) for representing knowledge that could be translated into other languages. Capturing and representing design knowledge and reasoning with them have become very important for NASA who is a pioneer of innovative design of unique products. For upgrading an existing design for changing technology, needs, or requirements, it is essential to understand the design rationale, design choices, options and other relevant information associated with the design. Capturing such information and presenting them in the appropriate form are part of the ongoing Design Knowledge Capture project of NASA. The behavior of an object and various other aspects related to time are captured by the appropriate temporal knowledge. The captured design knowledge will be represented in such a way that various groups of NASA who are interested in various aspects of the design cycle should be able to access and use the design knowledge effectively. To facilitate knowledge sharing among these groups, one has to develop a very well defined ontology. Ontology is a specification of conceptualization. In the literature several specific domains were studied and some well defined ontologies were developed for such domains. However, very little, or no work has been done in the area of representing temporal knowledge to facilitate sharing. During the ASEE summer program, I have investigated several temporal models and have proposed a theory for time that is flexible to accommodate the time elements, such as, points and intervals, and is capable of handling the qualitative and quantitative temporal constraints. I have also proposed a primitive temporal ontology using which other relevant temporal ontologies can be built. I have investigated various issues of sharing knowledge and have proposed a formal framework for modeling the concept of knowledge sharing. This work may be implemented and tested in the software environment supplied by Knowledge Based System, Inc

Deriving explanations from partial temporal information

The representation and manipulation of natural human understanding of temporal phenomena is a fundamental field of study in Computer Science, which aims both to emulate human thinking, and to use the methods of human intelligence to underpin engineering solutions. In particular, in the domain of Artificial Intelligence, temporal knowledge may be uncertain and incomplete due to the unavailability of complete and absolute temporal information. This paper introduces an inferential framework for deriving logical explanations from partial temporal information. Based on a graphical representation which allows expression of both absolute and relative temporal knowledge in incomplete forms, the system can deliver a verdict to the question if a given set of statements is temporally consistent or not, and provide understandable logical explanation of analysis by simplified contradiction and rule based reasoning