Logic,licensing and public relations

This article focuses on the need to move past First Amendment concerns to foster a meaningful debate about the licensing of public relations practitioners. Whether, and to what extent, public relations should be licensed is not the subject of this discussion. Instead, this article uses Aristotelian logic to dispute the spurious conclusion that any licensing scheme for public relations work and / or the individuals who perform it is unconstitutional on its face. Relying on First Amendment jurisprudence, the article demonstrates that some restraints on speech in the form of licensing are allowed, that not all public relations work involves protected speech or press, that there is a similarity to the constitutionally permitted licensing of certain speech‐related professions and that a hypothetical case can be constructed regarding those who could qualify as licensed public relations counsel. The article concludes that the First Amendment does not necessarily prevent licensing certain public relations practitioners.     

Force and fraud: A radically coherent criticism of corrections as industry

As radical criminology continues to gain popularity among a new generation of scholars, there are several troubling developments that ought to be met with caution. First, many emergent writings seem to take a benevolent state for granted. Second, there is a tendency to present radical ideas in a vocabulary that is so abstruse that it is difficult to decipher precisely how social change might be realized. As a remedy to these problems, this article relies on blunt language to analyze the corrections industry; by doing so, it focuses on market principles shaping key mechanisms of social control, namely force and fraud. In terms of force, the US criminal justice apparatus is too often harsh and coercive, particularly for the poor and racial minorities. Compounding matters, citizens rarely challenge such force due in large part to fraudulent governmental insistence that tough on crime initiatives are necessary to maintain public safety. Among the items discussed within this framework are public misperceptions of crime and punishment, the production of prisoners in a capitalist system, and the encouragement of excessive incarceration producing financial and ideological dividends for the state as well as the private sector.     

Public Diplomacy,Smith-Mundt and the American Public

The U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, also known as the Smith-Mundt Act, is a mostly unknown and widely misunderstood piece of legislation. Revised multiple times, the law bans domestic dissemination of Voice of America and other U.S. international broadcast content in the United States. Presenting government-supported international broadcasting as an example of public diplomacy, this article discusses the long-term misrepresentation of Smith-Mundt's original intent and highlights the consequences of the continuing ban. The article considers prospects for ending the ban and emphasizes potential opportunities presented by its elimination, concluding that ending the ban might eliminate incongruity between American foreign policy goals of democracy promotion and the reality of banned domestic content. Repeal of the ban may also result in unexpected remedies for challenges facing the American media industry and the American public's desire for international news.

The United States government may be the largest broadcaster that few Americans know about. Although its networks reach 100 countries in 59 languages, they are banned from distribution in the United States by a 1948 law devised to prevent the government from turning its propaganda machine on its own citizens. ^{1 1}Mark Landler, A New Voice of America for the Age of Twitter, N.Y. Times, June 7, 2011 at 9. The broadcasters comprising the U.S. international broadcasting operation are the Voice of America (VOA), Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Radio and TV Marti. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is “a bipartisan agency … that acts as a ‘firewall’ between the U.S. government and international broadcasting entities it funds.” Kim Andrew Elliott, America Calling: A 21st-Century Model, Foreign Service J., Oct. 2010, at 31. When Smith-Mundt was passed in 1948, USIB authority fell under the Department of State. Later, Congress created the United States Information Agency (USIA) to facilitate American public diplomacy operations. After the end of the cold war, Congress dismantled USIA and returned responsibility for American public diplomacy efforts to the Department of State. For an excellent history of the rise and fall of the USIA, see Nicholas J. Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy 1945–1989 (2008).      

Transferring technology into and within the third world

This article is based on Jordan J. Baruch's talk at the banquet at this year's Technology Transfer Society's annual meeting on the occasion of his being named winner of the society's Thomas Jefferson Award. As recipient of the award, he was cited for outstanding achievements in technology transfer in three categories:1. Exemplary success in managing actual transfer (Baruch invented and managed transfer of many civilian and military technologies in acoustics.).2. Leadership in technology-transfer public policy (He has been a frequent expert in Congressional testimony on such issues as consortia in technology development and commercialization. He also led efforts to develop formal organizations to promote technology transfer between the US and other nations such as Israel, Jordan, India, China, and several African countries.).3. Significant contributions to professional knowledge in technology transfer (Baruch has promoted the use of computer conferencing and was the conceptual and political driving force for the formation of the Center for Utilization of Federal Technology.). Jordan J. Baruch, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is a consultant (Jordan Baruch Associates). He served as assistant secretary for science and technology at the US Department of Commerce in 1977–81. A professor at Dartmouth, The Harvard Business School, and MIT, he also was a founding partner of the engineering firm Bolt Beranek & Newman. Baruch is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.     

Knowledge diffusion from university and public research. A comparison between US,Japan and Europe using patent citations

This paper estimates the process of diffusion and decay of knowledge from university, public laboratories and corporate patents in six countries and tests the differences across countries and across technological fields using data from the European Patent Office. It finds that university and public research patents are more cited relatively to companies’ patents. However these results are mainly driven by the Chemical, Drugs & Medical, and Mechanical fields and US universities. In Europe and Japan, where the great majority of patents from public research come from national agencies, there is no evidence of a superior fertility of university and public laboratory patents vis à vis corporate patents. The distribution of the citation lags shows that knowledge embedded in university and public research patents tends to diffuse more rapidly relative to corporate ones in particular in the US, Germany, France and Japan.

The Central Park Jogger Case-Police Coercion and Secrecy in Interrogation

Abstract

The prosecution and recent legal reversals in the New York “Central Park Jogger” case are discussed with a focus on the preoccupation with crime in US society and concerns regarding racial discrimination in the legal system. It is argued that the inherently coercive nature of interrogation, and the secrecy that surrounds custodial interrogation, create conditions that are ripe for abusive treatment. The phenomenon of false confession is presented and discussed with regard to the Central Park Jogger and other cases. The author advocates the recording and preservation of the entire period of custodial questioning so that there is an objective record of the interrogation methods that lead to “confession” statements.     

Legal aid services in Spain within the migration industry debate. Public policy,business or social compromise?

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to examine the unexplored role of public defenders who provide legal aid services to immigrants within the debate on the migration control and rescue industries. Although these services are provided by bar associations, public organizations that group private professionals, they are paid for with government funds due to regulations guaranteeing the right to legal defence. The main argument and conclusion of this article is that although lawyers working in these services receive public compensation for the legal aid they provide, they generally become public defenders due to personal beliefs, such as a commitment to protecting the rights of foreigners.     

Transparency as a Core Public Value and Mechanism of Compliance

Abstract

Private security contractors are just the tip of an outsourcing iceberg. Across the three Ds of defense, diplomacy, and development, American foreign policy has been privatized. The Obama administration inherited a government that had been hollowed out to an unprecedented extent, and in many realms it had and has no choice but to depend on contractors to conduct what used to be state business. This essay examines the reasons for and unintended negative consequences of this outsourcing of American power. It argues that turning the clock back and returning everything to in-house assignments is both undesirable and impossible. Instead, government must pursue contracting in ways that do not undermine the public interest. It can do this by identifying the things that should never be outsourced and ensuring that the letter and spirit of the Federal Funding Transparency and Accountability Act is upheld. Greater transparency in contractor–government relations will foster private security contractor compliance with ethical norms while bolstering our capacity for self-government. Transparency is thus both an end in itself and a means to sustainable democratic deliberation. While tension can exist between national security and open government, that tension is often overestimated.     

Clashing conceptions of press duties: Public journalists and the courts

This article bridges the growing, but controversial, public journalism movement with First Amendment jurisprudence and libel law. It examines whether the movement finds support in laws that affect the press and, in particular, in court‐created defenses and privileges that protect journalists in modern defamation law. Do defenses that safeguard journalists in their traditional routines as fact gatherers and reporters also protect them in the kinds of roles and duties envisioned by public journalism advocates? Furthermore, has the United States Supreme Court, in non‐defamation cases involving the First Amendment, expressed concern for protecting what might be called the “public journalism functions” of the press? Does the Court create a different image for the press than the one envisioned by public journalism advocates? This article addresses these questions. It ultimately concludes that public journalists and courts have two very different conceptions about the role that journalists play in a democracy.     

Government and education news

Abstract

FOR EIGHT years Cornell's Legal Information Institute has offered online law courses to students at other US law schools. Using a paced asynchronous approach, with streaming audio linked to referenced Web materials, interactive problems, online discussion/ and a series of written exercises, the courses offer a successful model of how law schools can pool teaching resources and students to enrich curricula. This article reports on and explains the choices, challenges, student response, and educational outcomes of this ongoing experiment, organised around ten frequently asked questions. It also ventures some cautious conclusions about the near‐term prospects for distance learning in US legal education, noting both inhibiting forces, including importantly constraints imposed by accreditation rules, and recent grounds for optimism.     

Can the Public Trust Doctrine Save the High Seas?

Abstract

The high seas is one of the last remaining commons on the planet, but comprehensive efforts to save this area beyond national jurisdiction have not been successful. This article examines the feasibility of applying the public trust doctrine to the high seas by first evaluating tools that are currently in place to protect biodiversity then analyzing the public trust doctrine in its traditional application in the United States and other countries. With this foundation, the article examines the possibility and methodology of applying the public trust concept to protect the high seas.     

The construction of community understandings of sexual violence: rethinking public,practitioner and policy discourses

Abstract

This article explores current societal framings and understandings of sexual violence, particularly child sexual abuse. The article starts by explaining how societal perceptions of child sexual abuse are formed through implicit and explicit theories, followed by a brief examination of media, professional and public understandings of child sexual abuse. This is then compared to research-based knowledge on sexual violence and child sexual abuse in particular. A public health approach is presented as a critical way of engaging communities, publics and society in an informed discourse about child sexual abuse, with a view to increasing both understanding and engagement. Finally, the article will posit the hypothesis that with recent news stories, such as the Jimmy Savile case in the UK and the Penn State case in the USA, organisations and individuals are beginning to ask for more information, trying to ask harder questions and this presents a unique opportunity to fully engage with the emerging public health approach of change.     

Exclusion payments in patent settlements: a legal and economic perspective

Legal context. The application of antitrust law to assess settlementsof patent litigation raises difficult issues concerning theappropriate balance of patent law and competition policy. Recentprivate and public invocations of US antitrust law to challengesettlement agreements covering pharmaceutical patents have broughtthese issues to the forefront. The agreements share the commonfeature of an ‘exclusion payment’ from a brand-namedrug manufacturer (the patentee) to a generic drug manufacturer(the accused infringer) in exchange for a promise by the genericcompany to refrain from marketing its product for some time.US federal courts that have examined these agreements have variedin their approach and conclusions regarding the appropriateantitrust analysis to be applied to these settlements. Key points. This article argues that informed antitrust analysisof such agreements must take due note of the ‘probabilistic’nature of patent property rights. Practical significance. The article concludes that exclusionpayments fall outside the scope of a patent's exclusionary scopeand thus are subject to antitrust scrutiny. It demonstratesthat barring anticompetitive exclusion payments in settlementnegotiation prevents collusive bargains that harm consumer welfarewithout discouraging efficient settlements.     

Use the Purpose by Which All May Benefit: The Semiotics of ‘Public Use’

This paper applies semiotic analysis to issues arising from the recent Supreme Court decision of Kelo v. City of New London [545 U.S.469] (2005). The author uses the tools of semiotics to explore the evolution of language and speech and their relationship to the terms, “private property” and “public use” as used by the Supreme Court and the general public in the years leading up to the Kelo decision. This paper will first provide an overview of the field of semiotics, describing the prevailing thought and the methods utilized by semioticians to find meaning. Second, the tools of semiotics will be applied to Supreme Court cases, beginning with Bauman v. Ross [167 U.S. 548] (1897) and continuing to Kelo v. City of New London. Utilizing these tools, the author will show how, within the span of approximately 100 years, the speech of the court has affected the language of legal discourse. The signs to which both Bauman and Kelo seek to attach meaning are found in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides, in relevant part, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”(emphasis added) (U.S. Const. Amendment 5). This dialectic activity resulted in the development of two different languages. One was used by the layperson, whereas the other was found in relevant legal/political institutions such as the US Supreme Court. This paper will focus on the fundamental change in the meaning of the sign/expression “public use.”     

Book Reviews

In this article the author explores the gender‐bias question with respect to the female death penalty debate in the English‐Speaking Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago by presenting a case study of Indravani Pamela Ramjattan. The British Privy Council recently remanded her case to the Trinidad Court of Appeal. A decision in her favor could set a regional precedent which would, for the time, allow women in the English‐Speaking Caribbean to present evidence akin to Battered Spouse Syndrome. Of the almost twenty nations of the English‐Speaking Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago is the only nation to have any women on death row. Ms. Ramjattan was convicted for the murder of her husband. Her case gained international attention and support from women's groups who speak out on behalf of battered women. Although there is popular support, in general, throughout the Caribbean for the imposition of the death penalty, public sentiment in Trinidad and Tobago regarding the hanging of a female may prove to be very unpopular for the present government of Basedo Panday.     

Public policy and criminology: An historical and philosophical reassessment

This article briefly reviews the history of the relationship between criminological research and public policy in order to explore more fully the nature of the links between social science and policy. A postpostivist critique leads to the conclusion that the distinction between science and policy, fact and value has been overdrawn. This article presents a methodology for accommodating postpostivist thought, thereby linking policy with criminology more effectively. Viewing criminology as part of a policy hermeneutic provides a way of managing the tension involved in a science/policy link that moves beyond the debate among policy pragmatists (Wilson), scientific purists (Cressey), and methodological incrementalists (Gottfredson).     

Jerome Gilson

Distinguished US lawyer Jerome Gilson has practised trade markand unfair competition law for more than 40 years. He is bestknown in the US and internationally as the original author ofTrademark Protection and Practice (LexisNexis/Matthew Bender),which was renamed Gilson on Trademarks in 2007. How did you first become interested in IP? Five years into general practice, I sent a Time article about     

A comparison of Chinese judges' and US judges' knowledge and beliefs about eyewitness testimony

Abstract

We surveyed 170 Chinese judges about their knowledge and beliefs about eyewitness testimony, and compared their answers to a prior survey of 160 US judges. Although the Chinese judges were less knowledgeable than the US judges, both groups had limited knowledge of eyewitness testimony, including for such important issues as whether lay people can distinguish between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses. Unlike the US judges, greater knowledge of eyewitness factors for the Chinese judges was not related to beliefs that may be necessary to reduce eyewitness error. Compared to the US judges, the Chinese judges were much less likely to believe that they needed additional eyewitness training and that they knew more about eyewitness testimony than lay persons. We also discuss the impact of culture, legal systems, investigative procedures, and judges' function on the Chinese judges' responses, and the legal reforms that China may need to implement to reduce eyewitness error.     

Assessing the public's demand for hate crime penalties

In this article, we analyze responses from a nationally representative sample of American adults to determine public attitudes toward punishment for hate crimes. While attitudinal polls find strong support for hate crime laws, criminological research provides reasons to believe that this support may be weaker than assumed. Our findings suggest that, while there is minimal public support for harsher penalties for offenders who commit hate crimes, attitudes toward punishment, treatment, and minority rights are predictive of preferences for differential treatment of hate crime offenders. We discuss possible implications of these results in our conclusion.     

Explaining the cultural and symbolic resonance of zero tolerance in contemporary criminal justice

Zero tolerance has been described as a "popular slogan for politicians talking tough." It is also a slogan with international advocates. In addition to the US, politicians from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and South Africa have praised this aggressive policing strategy. While this is a testament to the ease with which ideas diffuse between nations in the contemporary world, it does not explain why this particular idea is so popular. Nor does it explain why zero tolerance animated so many in the mid- to late-1990s. In order to answer these questions adequately, it is important to place zero tolerance in a wider social, political, and economic context. As this article argues, zero tolerance resonates in contemporary culture because it symbolizes a variety of tensions and anxieties found in late modern society. These anxieties are revealed through the often volatile and contradictory politics of law and order; through the routine scrutiny of marginal populations in society; and through the high degree of public tolerance for both of these developments. Recent research suggests that the rise of free market neoliberalism and social conservatism in western industrialized democracies provides an important backdrop against which these anxieties emerge. Imbued with meaning and populist appeal, it is the idea of zero tolerance, along with its cultural and symbolic resonance in contemporary criminal justice, which requires explanation.