Law and Transnational Corruption: The Need for Lincoln’s Law Abroad?

Unless and until means can be devised to deter bribery in impecunious nations, globalization can be of scant benefit to most of the people of those nations, for they are destined to be governed weakly, if at all, and to serve as havens here or there for all sorts of gangsters and terrorists. One need not be a humanitarian to take the transnational corruption problem seriously. This essay responds to that concern. It considers some possible reforms of international law that might serve to deter the corruption of weak governments. All its suggestions entail the use of the American practice of private enforcement of public law, a system that minimizes dependence on public officials who are subject to capture by wealthy outsiders. Privatized law enforcement in the American tradition generally threatens legal consequences on harmful practices ex post rather than preventing harmful practices ex ante. It offers the advantage to Business of greater freedom in the conduct of transactions. But its many costs result in resistance by many businessmen in the United States against whom law is often privately enforced and by wise lawyers of other lands blessed with public institutions that can be and are trusted to enforce public law. The relevance of the American practice of privatized law enforcement to the corruption problem results from the historical fact that it is a product of a nineteenth-century culture sharing very limited trust in government and its officers. Its cultural situation thus bears some resemblance to the situations both in impoverished lands and in the community of nations hoping for enforcement of international law prohibiting corrupt practices. It is a system of law enforcement that reduces the law\u27s dependence on the integrity of judges, prosecutors, and other public servants. Wherever public integrity is in great doubt, the American experience may offer useful instruction

Towards optical intensity interferometry for high angular resolution stellar astrophysics

Most neighboring stars are still detected as point sources and are beyond the angular resolution reach of current observatories. Methods to improve our understanding of stars at high angular resolution are investigated. Air Cherenkov telescopes (ACTs), primarily used for Gamma-ray astronomy, enable us to increase our understanding of the circumstellar environment of a particular system. When used as optical intensity interferometers, future ACT arrays will allow us to detect stars as extended objects and image their surfaces at high angular resolution. Optical stellar intensity interferometry (SII) with ACT arrays, composed of nearly 100 telescopes, will provide means to measure fundamental stellar parameters and also open the possibility of model-independent imaging. A data analysis algorithm is developed and permits the reconstruction of high angular resolution images from simulated SII data. The capabilities and limitations of future ACT arrays used for high angular resolution imaging are investigated via Monte-Carlo simulations. Simple stellar objects as well as stellar surfaces with localized hot or cool regions can be accurately imaged. Finally, experimental efforts to measure intensity correlations are expounded. The functionality of analog and digital correlators is demonstrated. Intensity correlations have been measured for a simulated star emitting pseudo-thermal light, resulting in angular diameter measurements. The StarBase observatory, consisting of a pair of 3 m telescopes separated by 23 m, is described.Comment: PhD dissertatio

Mass Torts—Maturation of Law and Practice

Mass tort litigation has been with us for about fifty years. This is dating the start from the MER/29 litigation in 1964. This field of law and practice has grown year after year, and it shows no sign of abating. At the same time, it can be said that this area of law and procedure has reached a mature stage; the practice is fairly standardized and earlier experiments have either become the model or have been abandoned. The term “mass tort litigation” (MTL), as used in this article, confines itself to product liability personal injury cases involving similar injuries from exposure to the same product and resulting in multiple claimants. “Multiple” may be as small as a hundred, but may also amount to 50,000, 100,000, or more. Thus, excluded from direct examination in this paper are consumer economic suits, often commenced in a class action format, and toxic tort lawsuits dealing with localized pollution. Mass tort litigation is as much a procedural topic as a substantive one. While there are some law issues specific to mass tort litigation, the greater area of development has been in the adaptation or invention of procedural mechanisms to the management of the cases in their organization, their development, and their disposition. The three phases just listed—organization, development, and disposition–form the three main sections of this article

Checks and Balances: Congress and the Federal Court

This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court\u27s status and power. The term life tenure is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of law in the other federal courts for which the Court and Congress share responsibility. Fixing the superannuation problem will not fix everything, but it would be a benign step in the right direction. I will conclude by suggesting numerous related reforms that might help more, all of which have been proposed to Congress in times past. Perhaps legislation addressing the superannuation problem would make it more likely that other needed reforms might be achieved in the future, by Congress or by a judiciary more aware of its own frailties

A Critical Assessment of the Cultural and Institutional Roles of Appellate Courts (Review Essay)

Reviewing, Daniel Meador et al., Appellate Courts: Structures, Functions, Processes, and Personnel (2d ed. 2006