The last word on the Iran-Contra affair?

The article reviews the Final Report of the Independent Counsel on Iran-Contra and analyses the political and legal factors which shaped its character. It discusses the structure, methods and conclusions of the Report, as well as reactions to it. It argues that the failure to prosecute successfully the leading participants served to undermine the Report's authority and helps to explain why there was no significant political response to the concerns it addresses.     

Structural sources of international crime: Policy lessons from the BCCI Affair

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was established in 1972 to provide help for poor people and poor countries. However, its scandalous closure, as the centre of a huge fraud, indicated that the main beneficiaries of the services of BCCI were the Colombian drug barons, the CIA, and several prominent Third World dictators. The BCCI collapse provides an opportunity to look into these global networks of criminality. It demonstrates that the lines between legitimate and illegitimate enterprises can be very thin; that illicit enterprises can themselves collaborate; and that the bank was itself involved in covert operations and the foreign policies of several states. The BCCI scandal presents a number of lessons in regulatory failure.     

The University and the Start-Up:Lessons from the Past Two Decades

This paper explores one of Edwin Mansfield's enduring interests: the interface between academia and industry. It highlights some key lessons regarding the management of university-based spin-outs, drawing on a variety of sources. I highlight the challenges that the spin-off process poses, the impracticality of directly financing firms through internal venture funds, and the ways in which universities can add value to faculty ventures.     

关于“诺顿”杀毒软件“误杀”操作系统一事的法律分析

据相关媒体报道，从2007年5月18日开始，国内大量诺顿杀毒软件的用户集体出现开机后自动重启、蓝屏以及安全模式下也无法正常进入系统等问题。事后赛门铁克公司承认，“诺顿”在升级病毒库时，由于误把Windows XP的几个关键系统文件当成病毒并加以删除，因而导致电脑系统全面瘫痪（以下简称“误杀”事件）。     

电子警察法律问题研究

电子警察的使用对维护道路交通秩序、保障交通安全功不可没,然而,由于不规范执法因素的存在,导致电子警察获取的资料在作为证据使用时遇到了法律的挑战,这就需要尽快制定有关电子警察的立法.     

机构投资者投票顾问的法律规制——美国与欧盟的探索及借鉴

投票顾问是20世纪80年代以来资本市场兴起的新型咨询服务机构,其向机构投资者提供所持股公司股东大会投票建议、治理状况评级等服务以营利,部分投票顾问还同时向上市公司提供公司治理咨询服务。投票顾问的影响力随着机构投资者的壮大及相应监管的完善与日俱增,但来自上市公司管理层等利益相关方的批评也从未停止,近10年来更引起立法者与监管者的关注和介入。美国与欧盟的探索实践表明,以适度信息披露和利益冲突防控为导向的公共监管相较于私人执法而言是规制此类机构的更优路径,表现可衡量性弱、诉讼效果不彰影响了民事诉讼的应用,相关经验亦可为我国所借鉴。     

Banishment and the Post-Industrial City: Lessons from Seattle

Seattle deploys several mechanisms by which individuals’ presence in particular spaces can constitute a crime. Through a range of means, police in Seattle are given wide authority to question and arrest those who appear as human manifestations of the “disorder” that is of concern to many. Importantly, these programs accentuate the power of criminal law by mobilizing other forms of law, most notably civil law and administrative law. This legally-hybrid structure works to accentuate the police’s power notably. Yet increased police power does not actually work to reduce “disorder” to any appreciable extent. For this reason, and others, we suggest that different approaches to addressing social marginality represent more promising avenues for cities like Seattle to explore.     

Parliamentary Democracy Online: Lessons from Europe

The relationship between parliament and new information and communications technologies (ICTs), in particular the Internet, is becoming ever more complicated. By means of conclusion, we highlight the key findings from our comparative study of four parliaments, the British, European, Portuguese and Swedish Parliaments, which have all adopted the Internet as an essential element of their parliamentary communication strategy. It is clear from our research that the Internet is already having a significant impact upon the operation of parliamentary institutions. Parliamentary and parliamentarians' use of the Internet has also raised important issues that ought to be considered cautiously by policy makers, and further academic study is important to the search for solutions.     

School exclusions: Lessons from Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland there are many fewer permanent exclusion from school than in England and Wales. It has been suggested that this may be linked to differences in the statutory schemes which regulate exclusion. This article compares the legal framework for school exclusions in Northern Ireland and England and Wales; provides a comparative analysis of the statistical data in relation to school exclusions; assesses whether the differences in the legal framework may have an impact on the propensity to permanently exclude; and considers whether there are any other non-legal factors which may explain lower rates of school exclusions. The overall objective is to see whether the legal differences which exist have a meaningful effect on the overall rate of school exclusion and to extrapolate best practice. In particular, the analysis focuses on experience of the statutory pre-expulsion consultation procedure in Northern Ireland, which has no equivalent in England and Wales.