An Economic Analysis of State and Individual Responsibility Under International Law

The international law of state responsibility determines whenstates are liable for international law violations. States aregenerally liable when they have control over the actions ofwrongdoers; thus, the actions of state officials can implicatestate responsibility whereas the acts of private citizens usuallydo not. We argue that the rules of state responsibility havean economic logic similar to that of vicarious liability indomestic law: the law in both cases provides third parties withincentives to control the behavior of wrongdoers whom they canmonitor and influence. We also discuss international legal remediesand individual liability under international criminal law.     

Managing Equality in Social Dilemmas: Emotional and Retributive Implications

The equality rule is an important coordination rule in symmetric public good dilemmas. Although prior research emphasized that people use the equality rule out of efficiency concerns (as it helps to obtain the public good in the most efficient manner among group members), it may also reflect a true preference for fairness. More precisely, research examining emotional and retributive reactions as a result of a violation of the equality rule by a fellow group member showed that equality indeed is related to people’s personal values and what they consider to be fair. The present paper suggests that a violation of the equality rule results in emotional reactions, and these emotional experiences encourage further retributive actions. The different reactions following an equality violation are described as a function of three features: (1) the motives to use equality, (2) attributions for explaining the violation, and (3) the honesty of the given explanation. The write-up of this paper was partly supported by GOA/05/04 from the Research Fund of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The research and write-up was supported by a fellowship of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, Grant No. 016.005.019), awarded to the second author.     

Speed/pure war/power crime: Paul Virilio on the criminogenic accident and the virtual disappearance of the suicidal state

This essay applies the theoretical concepts of pure war and speed-politics developed by the critical theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio to the concept of power crime. The aim of this paper is to present readers unfamiliar with Virilio’s work with a philosophical methodology of great potential significance to critical criminology. It is divided into two major parts. The first part re-considers power crime and the broader criminogenic environment in terms of the Virilian notions of velocity, optics, and pure war: criminogenic phenomena are shown to be the necessary and unavoidable by-products of the wider convergences among political, economic, and military systems governed by speed. The second part consists of an empirical case study illustrating the practical applicability of these abstract Virilian concepts: the federal prosecution of the private security firm Custer Battles for fraud. The systemic corruption of the US military procurement process and the inability of the federal judicial system to provide a remedy for the fraud perpetrated against the American public is read as a key sign of the suspension of the liberal juro-political order and the effective abolition of the rule of law by fast moving, or “high velocity”, criminogenic processes.     

Guarding against Nanotort Liabilities

Recent headlines comparing the health risks of nanotechnology to those of asbestos have appeared in newspapers throughout the country and on the Internet. Governmental agencies and standard-setting organizations have begun considering and actually adopting requirements to protect against such purported risks. The plaintiffs’ bar and potential plaintiffs have surely taken note. There is every reason to believe that the era of mass tort and class actions related to nanotechnology—“nanotorts” for short—is rapidly approaching. This article examines what nanotort claims might look like, the role that regulations and industry practices may play in such lawsuits, potential defenses to those claims, and what nanotech companies can do now to guard against future nanotort liabilities.     

The optimal jury size when jury deliberation follows a random walk

The existing literature does not agree on the optimal jury size. We demonstrate that the probability of type I and type II errors is not sensitive to the number of jurors under the following three conditions: jurors receive independent signals about a defendant’s guilt during the evidence stage of the trial; the jurors truthfully reveal their signals before deliberations begin through their votes on the first ballot; and the jury’s deliberation follows a random walk. Since the opportunity cost of jury service is positive, this implies an optimal jury size of one.     

NOAA's Resurrection of Program Budgeting: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration instituted a Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) in 2002. As supplemented by matrix management, PPBES was appealing as an effort to rationalize the performance of an agency with an especially high degree of functional overlap among its component parts. Although PPBES has had some salutary effects, the agency's experience to date consistent with accounts of the difficulties that led to the abandonment of program budgeting by the civilian bureaucracy almost 40 years ago. As such, it speaks to the limits of performance assessment as a means of reallocating resources and responsibilities across organizational boundaries.     

Mixed-member proportional electoral systems – the best of both worlds?

Mixed electoral systems are often associated with the hope of combining proportional election outcomes with a concentrated party system, and thus achieving the best of both worlds in electoral system design. It is especially the mixed-member proportional (MMP) variant that has retained a good reputation in this regard. Via a comparative analysis, we analyze whether or not the general praise for MMP systems is corroborated empirically. Our results show that the performance of MMP systems is heavily influenced by technical details, and elections conducted under MMP vary broadly with regard to possible proportionality–concentration combinations.     

Adolescents’ Frequency of Alcohol Use and Problems from Alcohol Abuse: Integrating Dating Partners with Parent and Peer Influences

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Despite the centrality of dating relationships for teens, it is unclear whether the influence of romantic partners’ alcohol use on adolescents’...