Allocating power and wealth in the global economy: the role of private law and legal agents

Over the past few years, scholars of global governance have paid increasing attention to the role of law and legalization in shaping the governance of global economic activity, focusing primarily on public international law and the institutions that articulate and enforce this law. In this paper, I shift the focus to the arena of private international law, particularly the dimension that concerns the rules by which global economic activity is ordered. Drawing on the literatures on the role of non-state actors and the practice of inter-governmentalism, I argue that private legal agents – the large U.S. and British law firms and their Continental competitors, the international commercial arbitration community, and managers of the major multinationals – play an increasingly important role in determining the rules of the global economic system and the relationship between global markets and the activities of states. The paper elaborates this argument in three sections. First, I describe and analyze the emergence of a transnational legal field in the context of the process of globalization, and offer an account of the institutions and actors – both public and private – that dominate this field. Second, I examine in detail the role of private legal agents in constructing and diffusing the norms that compete for influence in the transnational legal field. This section focuses on the role of private lawyers, and especially global corporate law firms, in the contemporary global political economy. Here, I argue that private lawyers should be seen as creative agents who have played an important role in articulating and disseminating neo-liberal norms throughout the transnational legal field. Third, I present sketches of two case studies of legal change in the transnational arena to illustrate the importance of private legal agents in the global political economy, and assess the importance of this process for future research on the legal and political dimensions of globalization. In these cases – the emergence of the GATS and TRIPS accords as part of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, and the emergence of a semi-autonomous law of transnational commercial activity through the spread of private international arbitration – I look closely at the way legal norms are diffused through the interaction of national and transnational legal fields. My overall conclusions are two-fold. The field of private international law is the site of an ongoing process of conflict and accommodation between different national conceptions of business law, structure, and practice – and thus between legal agents who advocate these conceptions – for dominance in shaping global business activity. The emerging doctrines in this field, which privilege the autonomy and authority of private corporate agents, have a significant impact in constraining the ability of public legal agents – domestically and globally – to challenge corporate priorities in shaping the global political economy

Employee Participation in Pollution Reduction: Preliminary Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory

Can the amount of toxic waste released into the environment by manufacturing facilities be reduced by formally involving employees in pollution prevention? Pursuant to the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began requiring that manufacturers report human resource management strategies related to source reduction (reduction of waste at the source), as part of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). These strategies often involve employee participation in some form. Here we report the preliminary findings of an ongoing study of the effect of employee participation on source reduction, based on the 1991-1992 TRI database. We find, for example, that manufacturers using a certain combination of three formal employee participation practices had triple the reduction in emissions of manufacturers using none of these practices. We also discuss competing predictors of source reduction, and future research directions

The stability of adaptive synchronization of chaotic systems

In past works, various schemes for adaptive synchronization of chaotic systems have been proposed. The stability of such schemes is central to their utilization. As an example addressing this issue, we consider a recently proposed adaptive scheme for maintaining the synchronized state of identical coupled chaotic systems in the presence of a priori unknown slow temporal drift in the couplings. For this illustrative example, we develop an extension of the master stability function technique to study synchronization stability with adaptive coupling. Using this formulation, we examine local stability of synchronization for typical chaotic orbits and for unstable periodic orbits within the synchronized chaotic attractor (bubbling). Numerical experiments illustrating the results are presented. We observe that the stable range of synchronism can be sensitively dependent on the adaption parameters, and we discuss the strong implication of bubbling for practically achievable adaptive synchronization.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Legal pluralism, private power, and the impact of the financial crisis on the global political economy

Private corporate actors have played a central role in the construction of the legal rules of globalized capitalism over the past four decades. In no sector has this been more true than in global finance, where private agents have reshaped the norms and practices of credit creation and allocation. The global financial crisis, however, has led many states to challenge aspects of this power and raised broader questions about the legitimacy and future of private power in the global legal order(s). In this paper, I argue that –while state actors have clawed back significant power in global finance– the specific powers of credit creation and allocation combined with the structural pull of transnational legal pluralism will enable major private financial institutions to retain substantial power in the face of these challenges and questions. In the process, I present some broad suggestion about how we can think about private power in the making of global commercial law. Durante las últimas cuatro décadas, actores corporativos privados han desempeñado un papel decisivo en la construcción de las normas legales del capitalismo globalizado. En ningún sector ha sido esto más cierto que en las finanzas globales, donde los agentes privados han reformado las normas y prácticas de la creación de crédito y asignación. La crisis financiera global, sin embargo, ha llevado a muchos estados a cuestionar aspectos de este poder y planteado cuestiones más amplias acerca de la legitimidad y el futuro del poder privado en el/los ordenamiento/s jurídico/s global/es. En este trabajo se sostiene que –mientras que los actores estatales han recuperado un poder significativo en las finanzas globales– los poderes específicos de la creación de crédito y asignación combinados con la fuerza estructural del pluralismo jurídico transnacional permitirán a las principales instituciones financieras privadas retener poder sustancial ante estos retos y preguntas. En el proceso, se presentan diversas sugerencias generales sobre cómo se puede pensar el poder privado en el desarrollo del derecho comercial mundial

Management of Elbow Dislocations in the National Football League.

Background: Although much literature exists regarding the treatment and management of elbow dislocations in the general population, little information is available regarding management in the athletic population. Furthermore, no literature is available regarding the postinjury treatment and timing of return to play in the contact or professional athlete. Purpose: To review the clinical course of elbow dislocations in professional football players and determine the timing of return to full participation. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: All National Football League (NFL) athletes with elbow dislocations from 2000 through 2011 who returned to play during the season were identified from the NFL Injury Surveillance System (NFL ISS). Roster position, player activity, use of external bracing, and clinical course were reviewed. Mean number of days lost until full return to play was determined for players with elbow dislocations who returned in the same season. Results: From 2000 to 2011, a total of 62 elbow dislocations out of 35,324 injuries were recorded (0.17%); 40 (64.5%) dislocations occurred in defensive players, 12 (19.4%) were in offensive players; and 10 (16.1%) were during special teams play. Over half of the injuries (33/62, 53.2%) were sustained while tackling, and 4 (6.5%) patients required surgery. A total of 47 (75.8%) players who sustained this injury were able to return in the same season. For this group, the mean number of days lost in players treated conservatively (45/47) was 25.1 days (median, 23.0 days; range, 0.0-118 days), while that for players treated operatively (2/47) was 46.5 days (median, 46.5 days; range, 29-64 days). Mean return to play based on player position was 25.8 days for defensive players (n = 28; median, 21.5 days; range, 3.0-118 days), 24.1 days for offensive players (n = 11; median, 19 days; range, 2.0-59 days), and 25.6 days for special teams players (n = 8; median, 25.5 days; range, 0-44 days). Conclusion: Elbow dislocations comprise less than a half of a percent of all injuries sustained in the NFL. Most injuries occur during the act of tackling, with the majority of injured athletes playing a defensive position. Players treated nonoperatively missed a mean of 25.1 days, whereas those managed operatively missed a mean of 46.5 days

Miscibility and Viscoelastic Properties of Acrylic Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane-Poly(methyl methacrylate) Blends

Submitted to POLYMER, January 2005We investigate the miscibility of acrylic polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS) [characteristic size d ≈ 2 nm] and poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA) in order to determine the effect of well-dispersed POSS nanoparticles on the thermomechanical properties of PMMA. Two different acrylic POSS species (unmodified and hydrogenated) were blended separately with PMMA at volume fractions up to φ = 0.30. Both POSS species have a plasticizing effect on PMMA by lowering the glass transition temperature Tg and decreasing the melt-state linear viscoelastic moduli measured in small amplitude oscillatory shear flow. The unmodified acrylic-POSS has better miscibility with PMMA than the hydrogenated form, approaching complete miscibility for loadings φ Tg of PMMA, far less than the 17.4°C decrease in the glass transition temperature observed in a blend of 5 vol% dioctyl phthalate (DOP) in PMMA; however, the decrease in the glass transition temperature per added plasticizer molecule is nearly the same in the unmodified acrylic-POSS-PMMA blend compared with the DOP-PMMA blend. Time-temperature superposition (TTS) was applied successfully to the storage and loss moduli data and the resulting shift factors were correlated with a significant increase in free volume of the blends. The fractional free volume f0 = 0.046 for PMMA at T0 = 170°C while for a blend of 5 vol% unmodified acrylic-POSS in PMMA f0 = 0.057, which corresponds to an addition of 0.47 nm3 per added POSS molecule at φ = 0.05. The degree of dispersion was characterized using both wide-angle x-ray diffraction (WAXD) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Diffraction patterns for both blend systems show clear evidence of phase separation at φ = 0.20 and higher, but no significant phase separation is evident at φ = 0.10 and lower. The storage modulus measured in DMA indicates appreciable phase separation for unmodified acrylic POSS loadings φ = 0.10, while no evidence of phase separation is present in the φ = 0.05 blend in DMA.AFOSR (DURINT program

MAPk Activation Modulates Permeability of Isolated Rat Alveolar Epithelial Cell Monolayers Following Cyclic Stretch

We cultured (5 days) rat alveolar epithelial cells to investigate the role of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPk) signaling in ventilator induced epithelial barrier dysfunction. Cells were stretched to a magnitude of 12% or 37% change in surface area at a rate of 0.25 Hz with and without pretreatment with either the JNK inhibitor SP600125 or the ERK inhibitor U0126. Following stretch (0, 10, 30, or 60 min), MAPk phosphorylation was examined, monolayer permeability to the uncharged tracer carboxyfluorescein measured (0, 10, 60 min of stretch), and occludin expression determined (0 and 60 min of stretch). Stretch to 12%, previously shown not to increase monolayer permeability, did not alter phosphorylation of any MAPk or occludin expression at any time point. Following stretch to 37%, phosphorylation of JNK, ERK, and p38 was significantly higher by 10 minutes than in unstretched monolayers. Phosphorylation of JNK and p38 subsided as stretch continued, and by 30 minutes returned to unstretched levels. Phosphorylation of ERK remained significantly elevated compared to unstretched levels at all stretch durations. Epithelial permeability increased significantly by 10 minutes of stretch compared to unstretched controls, with further significant increases by 60 minutes. Inhibition with U0126 and SP600125 prevented stretch-induced phosphorylation increases of ERK and JNK, respectively, however neither prevented increases in permeability following 10 minutes. Separately, inhibition of JNK or ERK prevented subsequent additional permeability increases as stretch continued to 60 minute time points. Inhibition of JNK, not ERK, prevented loss of occludin, and minimized loss of cell-cell contact following 60 minutes of stretch. These data suggest that stretch-induced JNK signaling modulates epithelial permeability through regulation tight junction protein expression, and is a potential target for clinical treatments during mechanical ventilation