A Model of the Law Communication Process: Formal and Free Law

This Article and the one to be published in the next issue depict how government decrees are made available to citizens and identify those conditions under which various citizens are not likely to acquire the knowledge essential for the deference that American government requires. The process by which government communicates its commands to citizens is often inadequate to make individuals or organizations aware of applicable laws. Even if the citizen receives the law, he may fail to understand or respond to the law as the law-drafters intended. The roots of these failures can be examined alternatively by (1) analyzing the law transmission process to determine where information loss is possible, or (2) analyzing the adequacy of receptory capacity of intended law subjects. This Article concentrates primarily on the law transmission process and secondarily examines how reception capacity is affected by the skills and proximity of personnel whom business organizations employ to increase knowledge of government decrees. Although the focus is on how the law transmission process of federal, state, and local governments in the United States affects the ability of business organizations to respond to laws, the model set forth is also relevant to other intended law subjects and other countries

Lawyers as Exchange Engineers in Commerce: An Empirical Overview

This article empirical explores the exchange relationship between lawyers and their clients with particular attention on the variables of experience and practice specialty. The lawyers\u27 perceptions of client relationships are preliminarily analyzed in terms of their discrete or relational properties and their distribution within experience segments within the firm. Enriched understanding of these matters can assist both lawyers and their clients in crafting more efficient and effective exchange relationships here viewed as critical to commercial activities

Relationships between Foreign Policy, National Security and the Regulation of Foreign Commerce

Federal regulation of industry is employed frequently to protect the consumer, frustrate extensive concentrations of power, and safeguard the national interest. History demonstrates that the effectiveness of regulatory provisions involving independent regulatory agencies is substantially affected by congressional and presidential attitudes and actions. The President\u27s actions may be premised on his congressionally delegated powers over particular regulatory activities, his prestige and strategic leverage, or his own constitutional powers. How the President\u27s constitutional and congressionally delegated powers over foreign relations and national security interact with the activities of independent regulatory agencies with respect to international commerce, especially concerning communication by satellite, will be examined herein. To isolate some basic principles applicable to the President\u27s interaction with independent regulatory agencies in matters involving foreign affairs and national security, attention is focused on three types of international commerce that reflect the diverse approaches to such functional interaction: air transport, gas transmission, and communication via satellite. An analysis of the three regulatory areas illustrates the substantial qualitative differences in the allocation of responsibilities between the President and the independent regulatory agency cognizant over each form of commerce. Study of these differences in the regulation of international air transport and gas transmission provides several insights concerning the past, present, and future regulation of communication by satellites

Ptolemaism in the Law and Concomitant Needs for Scientific Study of the Legal System

Traditional law review and text development efforts ensure the internal integrity of the law system. This article has attempted to explore research approaches that can improve the quality and quantity of the linkages between the law and other systems. Inherent in the approaches advocated with the physical science, social science and humanistic disciplines. Constructive reliance on other disciplines, however, is not easily achieved, since the parts of each major discipline are so disparate and their yearly achievements so substantial. In most instances, their import for the law system cannot be fully grapsed by law scholars, even if they are trained in a particular discipline at the doctoral level. Thus, law researchers undertaking interdisciplinary studies must acquire the skills necessary to (1) anticipate the fields of scientific knowledge relevant to a particular law topic, (2) identify individuals within each field having appropriate expertise and (3) efficiently communicate and collaborate with such individuals. Most importantly, on a question of apparent relevance to each discipline, lawyers must sense when to give deference to the solutions of others and when to trust their own intuition

Legal Malpractice: A Calculus for Reform

Our most distinguished professions do not maintain congruency between membership standards and actual performance. This deficiency is manifest; spiraling malpractice litigation witnesses a substantial increase in both the number of suits and the amount of recovery. Neither the professions nor public can long endure this trend. Governmental and possibly lay intervention in profession affairs is imminent unless the professions move decisively to understand better the dynamics of malpractice and do excise its causes. This article examines professional malpractice and existing responses to it, relates various cases in a calculus that can be employed to anticipate systemic patterns of malpractice, and suggests several approaches that should inhibit the development of such systemic patterns

Proposing new variables for the identification of strategic groups in franchising

The identification of strategic groups in the Spanish franchising area is the main aim of this study. The authors have added some new strategic variables (not used before) to the study and have classified franchisors between sectors and distribution strategy. The results reveal the existence of four perfectly differentiated strategic groups (types of franchisors). One of the major implications of this study is that the variables that build a strategic group vary depending on the respective sector the network operates in and its distribution strategy. This fact indicates that including sector and distribution strategy is absolutely necessary to achieve good classifications of franchisor type

Production and Consumption of Informal Law: A Model for Identifying Information Loss

This Article seeks to indicate where the probability of citizen ignorance is greatest, and to identify the important independent variables that determine the probable level of ignorance. On the basis of this analysis, the Article sets forth a model designed to facilitate development of law communication reforms that can restore legitimacy to the government\u27s assumption that ignorance is not a proper defense to noncompliance. The model can be applied at any jurisdictional level. The nine charts at the end of the Article illustrate how various communication factors individually and cumulatively condition information flow at each level

Streamlining Cross-Linking Mass Spectrometry Analysis

Cross-linking mass spectrometry maps the structural topology of protein complexes by usingthe distance between linked residues as spatial constraints, complementing other structuralbiology techniques. However, the identification of cross-linked peptides scales poorly with thenumber of proteins analyzed. Our lab has previously developed MS-cleavable cross-linkers toenable the separation of cross-linked peptides prior to sequencing, enabling peptide identifica-tion using standard peptide search databases. We describe the design and implementation ofplatform and application named XLTools for the automated identification of MS-cleavablecross-linked peptides. XLTools supports open and proprietary data formats and commonpeptide search databases, facilitating its integration into existing workflows. Furthermore,we developed peak-picking and validation algorithms to enable the accurate quantitation ofcross-linked peptides in complex samples. We demonstrate the application of XLTools tothe quantitative analysis of the 26S proteasome cross-linked in vivo and in vitro