Bougainville: Large-scale Mining and Risks of Conflict Recurrence

Research on conflict resolution suggests that the significant risk of conflict recurrence in intrastate conflicts is much reduced by political settlements that �resolve the issues at stake� between parties to the conflict, and that in conflicts involving grievances about distribution of natural resource revenues, such settlements should include natural resource wealth-sharing arrangements. This article shows that the Bougainville conflict origins involved far more complexity than natural resource revenue distribution grievances, and that the conflict itself then generated new sources of division and conflict, the same being true of both the peace process and the process to implement the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA). As a result, the BPA addresses many more issues than natural resource-related grievances. Such considerations make it difficult to attribute lack of conflict recurrence to particular factors in the BPA. While the BPA provisions on wealth-sharing address relations between the Papua New Guinea National Government and Bougainville, moves by the Autonomous Bougainville Government to explore possible resumption of large-scale mining has generated a new political economy in Bougainville, contributing to new tensions amongst Bougainvilleans

Future direction for infrastructure research

Infrastructure was not a widely researched topic until Aschauer identified the wider economic benefits of investment in the United States during the 1980s. Achauer's work was a catalyst for further research and debate as researchers tackled weakness in the production function approach to measurement and sought to adjust for two-way causation. The literature that followed confirmed a significant and causal connection between public investment, productivity and output and research moved to international panel data, regional economies and the relationship between infrastructure investment, output capacity, growth and productivity.</jats:p

Corporate Norms and Contemporary Law Firm Practice

Larry Mitchell\u27s book describes the movement toward share price maximization by corporate managers. More intensive market competition both domestically and abroad has led managers to believe that their corporations have little choice but to focus on short-term profits. This practice leads to greater instability for corporate workers and efforts to externalize other costs on third parties. It also intensifies the erosion of local cultural practices that are seen as impediments to profit maximization, whether they are associated with countries abroad, communities in the United States, or within the corporation itself. In this process, the norms of the market gain increasing influence as the impetus for the rhythms of daily life even beyond the formal institutions of the economic system. Professor Mitchell has done an admirable job of laying out the implications of this development for many aspects of modern life both here and abroad, thereby indicating the wide impact of corporate behavior. In this essay, I want to focus on how the changes in the corporation that Professor Mitchell describes have prompted similar shifts in another important social institution: the large American corporate law firm

Ethics, Law Firms, and Legal Education

A rash of recent corporate scandals has once again put professional ethics in the spotlight. It\u27s hard to pick up the Wall Street Journal each day and not read that authorities have launched a new investigation or that additional indictments are imminent. Stories of financial fraud and outright looting have galvanized the public and shaken the economy. What ethical lessons can we draw from these events? Two explanations seem especially prominent. The first is a story of individuals without an adequate moral compass. Some people\u27s greed and ambition were unchecked by any internal ethical constraints. For such deviants, no amount of money was enough and no level of consumption too high. One trader at Enron, for instance, reportedly paid $6250 a month for an especially desirable parking space. For people like that, the basic problem was flawed character. The lesson is that we need to make greater efforts to transmit moral values and sensitize people to basic ethical precepts. The second story is of individuals who did have a sense of right and wrong, but who buckled under organizational pressure. Enron pushed its executives to devise ever more questionable schemes to keep apparent profits growing and its stock price high. Arthur Andersen auditors felt pressure to accept Enron\u27s numbers in order to preserve millions in consulting fees from the company. In this story, some people knew the right thing to do, but lacked the fortitude to do it. The problem therefore was organizational corruption. The lesson is that we need to provide people in organizations greater protection from retaliation for sticking to their values

This thinking lacks a language: Heidegger and Gadamer's question of being

Martin Heidegger's preparation of the question of human existence was the focus of his seminal work Being and Time, first published in 1927. This paper refers to Heidegger's phenomenological work through Heidegger's colleague and friend Hans-Georg Gadamer to focus on how Heidegger prepares the question of Being and the problem of language in his later work. In his conversation with the Japanese scholar professor Tezuka, the meaning of language in the west appears to restrict an understanding of Being by conceptualising it ad infinitum. To the Japanese the simple term "what is" appears to be closer to Being because it does not attempt to conceptualise it. Therefore, Heidegger, Gadamer and Tezuka's discussion about ontology concludes that language does get in the way of understanding Being

Book Review of Jean Stefancic & Richard Delgado, How Lawyers Lose Their Way: A Profession Fails Its Creative Minds (2005)

How Lawyers Lose Their Way claims that lawyers\u27 unease stems from a distinctive source: their excessive use of and exposure to formalism in their work. I think that they are on to something, but the analysis in this book is too underdeveloped to provide much insight into what it is. The authors\u27 use of the term formalism risks being so inclusive that it loses explanatory power. In addition, their claim that overreliance on formalism is the chief culprit in lawyers\u27 unhappiness is vulnerable to the charge that lawyers arc suffering the effect of trends in the workplace affecting a wide range of occupations. Finally, Stefancic and Delgado fail to explore in any depth the material conditions of law practice, and how the evolution of those conditions might relate to the formalism they decry. Their treatment of formalism is, well, formalistic. Formalism seems to be an independent force that rises, falls, and now has reemerged, on its own. This makes it difficult to identify any steps that might help reshape law practice beyond the personal responses of individual lawyers. The result is that the authors leave us with no sense of any collective efforts holding out any promise. One can\u27t help but be disappointed at this conclusion. In what follows, I lay out the authors\u27 arguments, and suggest how its limitations lead to this result. I then offer some thoughts on how what I think of as hyperabstraction may well pose particular hazards for lawyers, which could have broader social ramifications as well