Could the Presumption of Innocence Protect the Guilty?

At criminal trial, we demand that those accused of criminal wrongdoing be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. What are the moral and/or political grounds of this demand? One popular and natural answer to this question focuses on the moral badness or wrongness of convicting and punishing innocent persons, which I call the direct moral grounding. In this essay, I suggest that this direct moral grounding, if accepted, may well have important ramifications for other areas of the criminal justice process, and in particular those parts in which we (through our legislatures and judges) decide how much punishment to distribute to guilty persons. If, as the direct moral grounding suggests, we should prefer under-punishment to over-punishment under conditions of uncertainty, due to the moral seriousness of errors which inappropriately punish persons, then we should also prefer erring on the side of under-punishment when considering how much to punish those who may justly be punished. Some objections to this line of thinking are considered.     

What drives the university use of technology transfer offices? Evidence from Italy

Over the last 20 years, universities have made steady progress in their efforts to foster the process of technology transfer through collaboration with industry. The establishment of technology transfer offices (TTO) has become routine for supporting the commercialization of academic research. However, the literature shows that there are many factors that affect the efficiency and effectiveness of these offices. Based on original data from interviews with 197 university departments in Italy, this paper investigates the determinants of universities university use of TTOs. We take account of the effects of universities’ and TTOs characteristics, of research and geographic indicators.     

A New Ethical World of British MPs?

Following a series of financial scandals in the early 1990s, the House of Commons implemented new ethics rules and regulatory procedures, including a Code of Conduct, a ban on paid advocacy, a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and a Select Committee on Standards and Privileges. In the absence of hard data about parliamentary integrity and the prevalence or otherwise of unethical parliamentary conduct, this paper explores the possible effects of the new rules and procedures on MPs' attitudes by comparing data from the 2005 British Representation Study with research conducted in the late 1980s. The evidence suggests that there has been some attitudinal change at the aggregate level, although it remains unclear how much of this change can be attributed directly to the Nolan reforms.     

The Turn to Imagination in Legal Theory: The Re-Enchantment of the World?

Various contemporary legal theorists have turned to ‘imagination’ as a keyword in their accounts of law. This turn is fruitfully considered as a potential response to the modern condition diagnosed by Max Weber as ‘disenchantment’. While disenchantment is often seen as a symptom of a post-metaphysical age, it is best understood as the consummation of metaphysics and not its overcoming. Law’s participation in disenchantment is illustrated by way of Holmes’ parable of the dragon in ‘The Path of the Law’, which illustrates the rationalization and demystification of law. Four ideal–typical turns to ‘imagination’ are identified: the theoretical (turning to imagination as synthesis), the progressive (imagination as empathy), the transformative (imagination as invention) and the nostalgic (imagination as attunement). Most of these turns to imagination remain complicit with disenchantment. ‘Imagination’ often appears only to be harnessed in the service of more conventional keywords of legal thought: theoreticians turn to imagination as synthesis to serve as a form of super-reason; progressives turn to imagination as empathy to make law a more effective instrument; transformatives turn to imagination as invention to serve as a form of super-will. By turning to imagination as attunement, nostalgics come closest to accepting a world that is not masterable, i.e. they come closest to accepting an enchantment that is a gift and not the product of our imaginations. Indeed, modern imaginations are themselves symptoms of disenchantment. If Weber’s diagnostic calls for a human response, it cannot be one of overcoming disenchantment by imaginative re-enchantment: it belongs integrally to enchantment to exceed any and all human capacities.     

Assessing the nature of nanotechnology: can we uncover an emerging general purpose technology?

Attention has increasingly shifted towards the long-run perspective on technological innovation, which suggests that progress comes in waves, each one originating with a major breakthrough or general purpose technology (GPT). This paper seeks to assess whether nanotechnology is likely to be (or become) a GPT, a characteristic that other researchers have sometimes assumed though not necessarily documented. Based on a survey of existing literature, this paper will explore the extent to which nanotechnology addresses three primary characteristics of a GPT: pervasiveness, innovation spawning, and scope for improvement. The paper draws on patent and patent citation databases to highlight the types of quantitative and qualitative information that would be necessary, and in some instances is still lacking, to characterize fully the nature of nanotechnology.

Operationalizing The Law of Jurisdiction: Where in the World Can I Be Sued for Operating a World Wide Web Page?

The concept of personal jurisdiction-the power of a court to decide the rights of a person and issue a binding judgment-is becoming increasingly complex in cases involving the World Wide Web. The two approaches courts currently use to assert personal jurisdiction are inadequate and inconsistently employed, leaving individuals who perform services or conduct business over the Web without clear answers about where they may be haled into court. The "Zippo test" fails to consistently take an accurate account of the complete picture of the contacts generated from Internet use, and the "Calder effects test" is not applicable in all cases. This article outlines a "Web-contacts" approach as a consistent way to operationalize "purposeful availment" for personal jurisdiction based on contacts via the Web.     

Greening Industry Without Enforcement? An Assessment of the World Bank's Pollution Regulation Model for Developing Countries

The best comparative and overview source now available for knowledge about pollution regulation in developing countries is the 2000 World Bank policy research report called Greening Industry . The World Bank finds that there is a new model for pollution regulation in lower- and middle-level income countries that is an alternative to \"traditional\" command and control regulation. The new model stresses flexible norms and nonstate pressures on regulated enterprises coming from communities and markets. This article presents an investigation into this new model. It finds that the prevalence of weak law enforcement may undermine the new model's potential to control pollution in developing countries. It also contends that social and market pressures only occur under certain circumstances often not found in lower- and middle-level income countries. Therefore, the article concludes that developing countries require smart mixes of various regulatory instruments appropriate in the given state and nonstate regulatory capacities, instead of contrasting state and nonstate regulation.     

Is the risk of North–South technology transfer failure an obstacle to a cooperative climate change agreement?

We setup a stylized model with endogenous North–South technology transfer for climate change mitigation. We theoretically identify the driving factors that enhance or hinder cooperation with socially optimal binding targets on emissions and on investment in technology transfer. We find that the risk of technology transfer failure creates an obstacle to the achievement of the cooperative agreement: under cooperation, the South will have to fulfill the emissions target at high costs if technology transfer fails. Under non-cooperation without any binding targets, the North still has an intrinsic motivation to reduce emissions in the South at low costs via technology transfer; and the South does not have the pressure to fulfill an emissions target. As a result, non-cooperation shifts part of the costs of a technology transfer failure from the poor South to the rich North and can thus be preferable for the South. Two policy implications for achieving the cooperative solution are derived: first, the South should be insured against or compensated for a technology transfer failure. Second, an agreement on technology transfer should be formulated in terms of emissions reductions or low-carbon technology capacities that are to be achieved rather than in terms of monetary payments with uncertain effects on emissions. We discuss the model results in the context of empirical facts and current developments.