Spartan Daily, February 14, 1975

Volume 64, Issue 10https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/5943/thumbnail.jp

The Dialogical Language of Law

We live in a dialogical world. The normative environment around us is many-voiced. Legal activities like drafting, negotiating, interpreting, judging, invoking, and protesting the law take place in dialogical encounters, all of which presuppose entrenched forms of social dialogue. And yet, the dominant modes of thinking about the law remain monological. How can we bring our legal conceptions into alignment with the dialogical world in which we live? The present article follows in the footsteps of a Bakhtinian dialogical theory of language that challenges the roots of contemporary positivist conceptions of law and language underpinning large swathes of legal academia and the legal profession—including recent approaches to legal interpretation called corpus linguistics. Against this backdrop, the article aims to develop a richer and more textured dialogical jurisprudence to encompass the various aspects, activities, and genres where legal language is employed

Informal bargaining in bicameral systems: Explaining delegation by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament

This project is about the effects of institutional design on decision-making in the European Union. Specifically: delegation to informal inter-institutional legislative bargaining (the ‘informal arena’). I develop a spatial complete information model to explain the decision to delegate to the ‘informal arena’ and test its empirical implications. The meta-theoretical umbrella for this project is New Institutionalism (more specifically, Rational Choice Institutionalism) and I view the decision to delegate through a principal-agent lens, i.e., delegation may result in policy outcomes that differ from counterfactual non-delegated acts (agency-drift). I contribute to the theoretical and empirical literatures on informal law-making in the European Union and legislative organisation more generally. In the EU, the ‘formal arena’ co-exists with the ‘informal arena.’ In the formal arena, bills shuttle back and forth between two chambers in a maximum of three reading stages. In the informal arena, inter-institutional negotiations are delegated. The delegations meet behind closed doors and the resulting compromise is rubber-stamped by the parent chambers. The extant literature suggests that law-making in the informal arena leads to agency-drift. The questions that I address in this project are: when does delegation to the informal arena take place and, equally, when does delegation not take place? Furthermore, does delegation lead to agency-drift? My findings suggest that delegation is less likely, the greater the risk of agency-drift and more likely the greater the legislative workload cost of not delegating. I show that the bicameral system alters the incentive structure of legislative actors such that agency-drift is rare or moderate if it occurs

Emile Borel's difficult days in 1941

The German forces occupying Paris arrested Emile Borel and three other members of the Acad\'emie des Sciences in October 1941 and released them about five weeks later. Why? We examine some relevant German and French archives and other sources and propose some hypotheses. In the process, we review how the Occupation was structured and how it dealt with French higher education and some French mathematicians

Polish Democracy under Threat? An Issue of Mere Politics or a Real Danger?

Poland has recently experienced a constitutional crisis. The crisis involves the role of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in the election of judges and amendments to the Constitutional Tribunal Act which threatens the independence of the Tribunal. The situation is exacerbated by changes in the media, civil service, police, and prosecution laws introduced by the ruling party. This article analyses the changes, as well as the domestic and international reactions to the crisis, and considers whether the heavy criticism of the PiS is justified, or whether it results from, for instance, specific characteristics of the Polish political system and an unfavourable opinion in Europe about the Law and Justice party

Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate America After Sarbanes-Oxley

The highly visible accounting scandals that surrounded the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and several other major companies -- together with the revelation of fraud and other acts of malfeasance by corporate executives -- aroused public outrage, called into question the values and ethics of business leaders, and undermined the public's confidence in public companies. CED is concerned about the reality, as well as the appearance, of corporate impropriety. This policy statement examines the state of corporate governance in the United States and offers practical recommendations for restoring public trust in business. Recommendations include:- Making Audit Committees Autonomous and Vigorous- Ensuring that users understand that financial information is based on judgments- Giving Sarbanes-Oxley a chance to work- Taming excessive executive compensation- Using independent nominating committees to select and appraise director