One-dimensionality and stability in legislative voting

The widespread use in legislative studies of the one-dimensional model and its median-stability consequence raises a question: Do stability and one-dimensionality rest on evidence drawn from observed votes? They do not and cannot. I prove that every possible legislative history is compatible with a transitive majority preference (hence stability), and except in very special circumstances with a cyclic majority preference (hence instability) as well: observed votes can never refute and almost never confirm stability. One-dimensionality fares worse: any legislative history is compatible with the one-dimensional model if it includes no two votes with overlapping pairs of alternatives, but otherwise, I show, it is almost certainly incompatible with the model, even in those rare cases that ensure transitivity. Voting evidence aside, the one-dimensional model is unduly restrictive, and arguments in its defense do not survive scrutiny.     

Contractual Interpretation,Registered Documents and Third Party Effects

This article considers whether extrinsic material should be available in interpreting registered documents when these may be contractual in nature or relate to contractual agreements. Many registers, for example the current scheme for recording land title, are intended to facilitate the reliance of third parties on their content, an objective that suggests that extrinsic material should be excluded. Such an approach, however, could itself cause unfairness and conflicts with the way that contractual documents are normally interpreted. Exploring this question leads us to consider the contextual approach to contractual interpretation generally and whether it should take account of the contemplated effects of contractual language on third parties. After concluding in the affirmative, we then ask whether this is sufficient as an approach to interpreting contractual documents entered into a register.     

Seeds of revolution

Abstract

The most significant technological innovation of the postwar period, from the point of view of the Third World, has been the development of new, high-yield hybrids of food grains such as wheat, corn and rice, which are especially well adapted to tropical climatic patterns. The development and spread of the use of these seeds and their associated agricultural technologies is of such recent date and as yet so incomplete that the above statement may seem premature. Nevertheless, the experience of the last four years and the prospects for the future, as well summarized in Mr. Brown's book. suggest that the rubric “The Green Revolution” may be much more than another typically American confusion of the terms “revolution” and innovation.