The Reckless Pursuit of Dominion: A Situational Analysis of the NBA and Diminishing Player Autonomy

This Article examines required genetic testing of NBA players from a situational vantage point, integrating socio-psychological, legal, and ethical analyses. The core argument may be expressed as follows: required genetic testing of NBA players appears consistent with a broader and largely deleterious agenda by the NBA to control players. Since implementation of the rookie wage scale in 1995 through the recent imposition of a paternalistic player dress code, the NBA has increasingly usurped player autonomy. The NBA\u27s capacity to do so largely rests in its adroit manipulation of the situational influences that influence fans and media. For instance, because of unappreciated cognitive biases, fans and media often embrace distorted views of player\u27s maturity, arrest propensity, and collegiate experiences. As a result, NBA players tend to be wrongly identified as immature, out-of-control, and hopelessly uneducated. In turn, the NBA has designed policies that ostensibly remedy these feigned problems while less-detectably transferring autonomy from player to league. In short, the league sees that others often fail to see, and that enables it to surreptitiously control players

The Harmonization Game: What Basketball Can Teach About Intellectual Property and International Trade

In the recent World Men\u27s Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, Team USA found out painfully that the international game is very different from what they play at home and that the gap between USA Basketball and the rest of the world has been closing. While the United States\u27 losses might have a significant impact on how the country will prepare for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and on how Americans train youngsters to play basketball, their teachings go beyond basketball. The international harmonization process is a game with different rules, different officials, and players with different visions and mindsets. By watching how players interact with rules, officials, and other players, one therefore could gain insight into globalization and the international harmonization process. Team USA\u27s recent loss might be a painful lesson to Americans, but it provides a beneficial lesson to all of us who are involved in intellectual property and international trade

The Harmonization Game: What Basketball Can Teach About Intellectual Property and International Trade

In the recent World Men\u27s Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, Team USA found out painfully that the international game is very different from what they play at home and that the gap between USA Basketball and the rest of the world has been closing. While the United States\u27 losses might have a significant impact on how the country will prepare for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and on how Americans train youngsters to play basketball, their teachings go beyond basketball. The international harmonization process is a game with different rules, different officials, and players with different visions and mindsets. By watching how players interact with rules, officials, and other players, one therefore could gain insight into globalization and the international harmonization process. Team USA\u27s recent loss might be a painful lesson to Americans, but it provides a beneficial lesson to all of us who are involved in intellectual property and international trade

Dynamics of biosciences regulation and opportunities for biosciences innovation in Africa: Exploring regulatory policy brokering

Knowledge brokering has been explored in the innovation literature to understand how different innovation tasks are organised toward technological development. This paper reflects upon the role of different organisations as knowledge brokers in regulatory policy processes towards putting biosciences research into use. It identifies a practical function-based typology that describes four categories of policy brokers who perform different tasks, with the potential to impact biosciences regulatory policy change. The paper concludes with a brief exploration of how policy can support the different functions of regulatory policy brokerage to enhance the translation of biosciences research into use for the benefit of the poor. Using regulatory policy-making in Kenya as an example, it contributes to growing scholarship that seeks to link knowledge emanating from research with policy-making and economic development, particularly in an African context.Biosciences, Biotechnology Regulation, Knowledge Brokers, Policy Brokering, Africa, Kenya

Sports, Inc. Volume 3, Issue 1

The ILR Cornell Sports Business Society magazine is a semester publication titled Sports, Inc. This publication serves as a space for our membership to publish and feature in-depth research and well-thought out ideas to advance the world of sport. The magazine can be found in the Office of Student Services and is distributed to alumni who come visit us on campus. Issues are reproduced here with permission of the ILR Cornell Sports Business Society.https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/sportsinc/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Basketball Court

Public law scholars often consider how to separate power among and within governmental entities in order to encourage that power to be used effectively. However, public law scholars only rarely bring the insights they have developed about the separation of powers to bear on questions of how to design private business firms. But these firms often need their own private separation of powers to diffuse power among their officials and ensure compliance with foundational firm objectives.This Article considers an emerging form of the private separation of powers: a private supreme court-like institution internal to a single firm. The consistent application of firm rules may be commercially valuable in some contexts, and private supreme courts can help provide firms with that kind of consistency.We consider the case for private supreme courts from the perspective of one illustrative example: sports leagues, and, in particular, the National Basketball Association (“NBA”). We argue that the NBA should create a “Basketball Court,” a somewhat-independent adjudicatory body that uses the tools of judicial decision-making to interpret league rules in a consistent way that can provide commercial value to the NBA. Creating a court-like body would promote the ability of the NBA to convince spectators of the fairness of competition, encourage casual spectators to make the types of emotional and financial investments that turn them into rabid fans, and dissuade governments from regulating their sports.We pattern our discussion of a court-like structure on the Oversight Board created by Facebook (now Meta) in 2018. The Oversight Board has largely been considered for what it means for speech, but we are interested in what it means for private institutional design more generally. Creating a court-like institution with independent judges writing opinions justifying their interpretations of private firm rules will be desirable for many, the NBA included

Chinese sports policy and globalisation: the case of the Olympic movement, elite football and elite basketball

This thesis seeks to analyse to what extent, in what ways and with what success does the Chinese government seek to manage its interaction with sport globalisation in Olympic Movement, football and basketball? Held et al's (1999) conceptualisation of globalisation provides the major theoretical framework for the analysis. In order to analyse the behaviour of the Chinese state we adopt Houlihan's (1994) concepts of 'reach' and 'response' which focus attention on global actors and pressures external to the country and state (reach) and the capacity of states to determine their response. A set of quantitative and qualitative indicators of globalisation have been identified. Data were collected from a number of sources including official government documents, news media, and a series of 32 interviews with Chinese officials. The analysis reveals that the Chinese government has demonstrated a desire and a capacity to manage the impact of the Olympic Movement, global football and basketball on domestic sport practices; and second, the Chinese government has attempted, with reasonable success, to manage the impact of commercial interests on Chinese domestic football, basketball and other Olympic sports practices, elite athletes and professional clubs. However, a number of tensions exist: first, between the priorities of commercial clubs and national teams' development; and second, between the highly paid and internationally mobile 'star players' and the centrally controlled elite development system

Open the Jail Cell Doors, HAL: A Guarded Embrace of Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments

In recent years, criminal justice reformers have focused their attention on pretrial detention as a uniquely solvable contributor to the horrors of modern mass incarceration. While reform of bail practices can take many forms, one of the most pioneering and controversial techniques is the adoption of actuarial models to inform pretrial decision-making. These models are designed to supplement or replace the unpredictable and discriminatory status quo of judicial discretion at arraignment. This Note argues that policymakers should experiment with risk assessment instruments as a component of their bail reform efforts, but only if appropriate safeguards are in place. Concerns for protecting individual constitutional rights, mitigating racial disparities, and avoiding the drawbacks of machine learning are the key challenges facing reformers and jurisdictions adopting pretrial risk assessment instruments. Absent proper precautions, risk assessment instruments can reinforce, rather than alleviate, modern criminal justice disparities. Drawing from a case study of New Jersey’s recent bail reform program, this Note examines the efficacy, impact, and pitfalls of risk assessment instrument adoption. Finally, this Note offers a broad framework for policymakers seeking to thoughtfully experiment with risk assessment instruments in their own jurisdictions