Law and contemporary problems 

About: Law and contemporary problems is an academic journal published by Duke University School of Law. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Legislation & Supreme court. It has an ISSN identifier of 0023-9186. Over the lifetime, 2488 publications have been published receiving 28734 citations.

The emergence of global administrative law

Abstract: 1is an effort to systematize studies in diverse national, transnational, and international settings that relate to the administrative law of global governance. Using ideas developed in the first phases of this project, in this article we begin the task of identifying, among these assorted practices, some patterns of commonality and connection sufficiently deep and farreaching as to constitute an embryonic field of global administrative law. We point to some factors encouraging the development of common approaches, and to mechanisms of learning, borrowing, and cross-referencing, that are contributing to a degree of integration in this field. We also note some major constraints and enduring reasons for non-convergence. We begin to assess the normative case for and against promotion of a unified field of global administrative law, and for and against some specific positions within it. This paper

The Effects of Volunteering on the Volunteer

Abstract: JOHN WILSON [*] MARC MUSICK [**] I INTRODUCTION To most people, a "volunteer" is someone who contributes time to helping others with no expectation of pay or other material benefit to herself. However, this does not mean that volunteer work is of no consequence for the volunteer. Indeed, it is widely believed that helping others is as beneficial for the donor as it is for the recipient. "Research studies show that most people do in fact hold the belief that helping others is a good way to gain fulfillment for yourself." [1] In this article, we review some of the research on the supposed benefits of volunteering and describe briefly some of the results of our own work in this area. We first examine the contribution volunteering is thought to make to a society's social capital, its supply of the generalized trust and norms of reciprocity that make democratic politics possible. Are volunteers more civic minded and more likely to take an active role in political life? Next, we examine the possible link between volunteering and "leading the good life." Are vol unteers less likely to engage in anti-social behavior? We then consider the contribution volunteering might make to both physical and mental health. Is there any evidence to suggest that volunteering can make people healthier or contribute positive feelings of well-being? Finally, we examine the contribution volunteering makes to occupational achievement. Is there any empirical evidence to support the notion that volunteering is either a direct path to good jobs or indirectly provides the self-confidence and skills needed to secure good jobs or to do well in the jobs we have? II CITIZENSHIP For a number of reasons, the possibility that volunteering is useful for building and maintaining civil society--a sphere of activity where people feel free to organize groups, engage in public debate, and in which norms of mutual respect and toleration protect the voices of majority and minority alike--has recently been undergoing fresh scrutiny. Part of this renewed interest stems from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the task faced by newly democratizing countries trying to build, or re-build, the infrastructure of participatory politics. How do people acquire the skills and aptitudes necessary for the give-and-take of democratic government? Some of this renewed interest also stems from concerns expressed in established democracies that fewer and fewer people are taking the time to vote, run for local office, or support political organizations with their time and money. Ever since de Tocqueville's mid-nineteenth-century analysis of American democracy, it has been assumed that a healthy voluntary secto r is vital to the survival of democratic politics. [2] De Tocqueville believed that voluntary associations were essential intermediary bodies between the mass of individuals and their institutions of government. [3] Active membership in a voluntary association created the generalized trust--a trust that extends beyond the boundaries of kinship and friendship--on which democratic political life depends. If the habit of "joining" were allowed to die, so too would democracy. Robert Putnam, who found substantial variation in the performance of Italian governmental institutions across different regions, has recently revived this idea. [4] His explanation for this variation centered on the concept of social capital. Putnam defined social capital as "features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions." [5] His theory, redolent of de Tocqueville, is that active membership in voluntary associations generates the trust necessary for people to organize effectively and act collectively. The associations need not be political to have this beneficial effect, although those that were organized "horizontally," where members could easily participate in running the organization, would be more likely to produce it. …

The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain

Abstract: The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. The poor and wretched don't escape If they conspire the law to break; This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law. The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back. Anonymous PART ONE: ENCLOSURE I THE FIRST ENCLOSURE MOVEMENT This poem (1) is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement, the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property. (2) In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power. And it does this all with humor, without jargon, and in rhyming couplets. Academics (including this one) should take note. Like most of the criticisms of the enclosure movement, the poem depicts a world of rapacious, state-aided "privatization," a conversion into private property of something that had formerly been common property or, perhaps, had been outside of the property system altogether. Sir Thomas More went further, though he used sheep rather than geese to make his point. He argued that enclosure was not merely unjust in itself, but harmful in its consequences--a cause of economic inequality, crime, and social dislocation: But yet this is not only the necessary cause of stealing. There is another, which, as I suppose, is proper and peculiar to you Englishmen alone. What is that, quoth the Cardinal? Forsooth my lord (quoth I) your sheep that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up, and swallow down the very men themselves. They consume, destroy, and devour whole fields, houses, and cities. For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen and gentlemen.., leave no ground for tillage, they enclose all into pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing, but only the church to be made a sheep-house.... Therefore that one covetous and insatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country may compass about and enclose many thousand acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own. The enclosure movement continues to draw our attention. It offers irresistible ironies about the two-edged sword of "respect for property," and lessons about the way in which the state defines and enforces property rights to promote controversial social goals. The most strident critics of the enclosure movement argue that it imposed devastating costs on one segment of society. Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which, by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had long regarded as theirs and their heirs'. The fabric of society was being disrupted. Desolate villages and the ruins of human dwellings testified to the fierceness with which the revolution raged, endangering the defences of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves. Though this happened only in patches, the black spots threatened to melt into a uniform catastrophe. …

Youth violence in Boston: Gun markets, serious youth offenders, and a use-reduction strategy

Abstract: Since the mid-1980s, there has been a dramatic increase in youth gun violence.1 In most areas, juveniles and many other youth are legally prohibited from purchasing firearms, especially handguns. As a result, many firearms utilized in youth crimes are obtained through active and pervasive illicit gun markets. There is currently very little being done to address these illicit markets,2 while at the same time the capacity of police departments to design and implement creative new operational strategies (through "community" and "problem-solving" policing) is increasing. Approaches focusing on illicit firearms markets thus seem a logical and potentially productive strategy. Finally, while enforcement and prevention efforts have so far paid relatively small dividends in reducing youth gun violence, attacking illicit gun markets is an idea which at least has not yet failed.3

Ideas, Artifacts, and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource

Abstract: I INTRODUCTION There is an increasing concern about the implications of recent and impending legislation on the future of academic research, open science, traditional knowledge, and the intellectual public domain. The Duke Law School Conference on the Public Domain brought together, for the first time, an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars studying the increasing enclosure (1) of the global information commons. In the past five years, law review articles have described an information arms race from various perspectives, with multiple sides battling for larger shares of the global knowledge pool. (2) Information that used to be "free" is now increasingly being privatized, monitored, encrypted, and restricted. The enclosure is caused by the conflicts and contradictions between intellectual property laws and the expanded capacities of new technologies.(3) It leads to speculation that the records of scholarly communication, the foundations of an informed, democratic society, may be at risk. This "intellectual land-grab"(4) is an outcome of new technologies and global markets. Distributed digital technologies have the dual capacity to increase access to information while in some instances restricting such access. These technologies have generated greater access to important information about history, science, art, literature, and current events, while at the same time enabling profit-oriented firms to extract value from resources previously held in common and to establish property rights.(5) Multiple forces are vying for capture and restriction of traditionally available knowledge: corporations versus indigenous peoples, such as Monsanto owning the patent on the genetic structure of the neem; federal and state governments versus citizens regarding balancing encryption and digital surveillance with individual privacy; universities versus professors as to whether institutions or individuals will own intellectual property; and publishers versus libraries in the ephemeralization of library collection s through licensing, bundling, and withdrawal of information. This competition for ownership of previously shared resources is not unique to the public domain of knowledge. Given the opening of vast markets for commodities of all kinds, many natural as well as human-made resources are under pressure. The world's fisheries, for instance, are fighting depletion because of the capture capabilities of larger trawlers, wider and finer nets, and larger fleets. Local control of forests throughout the world is being increasingly encroached upon by state and private interests, resulting in alarming rates of deforestation. Resultant forest burning is not only rapidly reducing primary growth forests but is also contributing to the degradation of the global atmosphere as well.(6) Commodification and privatization of natural resources is a trend with virtually all types of resources. And radical changes in the structure and process of all natural and human-constructed resources can occur through the development of new technologies. (7) The problems are complex, multilayered, and of crucial importance. To direct attention to this evolving situation, James Boyle has called for the recreation of the public domain, drawing from the intellectual construct of the environment. "Like the environment," he writes, "the public domain must be invented before it can be saved." (8) A greater depth of understanding of the public domain requires the concept to be more deeply analyzed and clarified. It is a logical step, therefore, to draw from the fruitful research and analytical methods applied to the study of common-pool resources ("CPRs") and natural resource management. The goal of this article is to summarize the lessons learned from a large body of international, interdisciplinary research on common-pool resources in the past twenty-five years and consider its usefulness in the analysis of scholarly information as a resource. …