Sovereignty and the Foreign Fighter Problem

Sovereignty is the bedrock of international law. If security requires that the United States transgress sovereign borders to attack foreign fighters and their support networks hiding in third countries, then the U.S. should adopt a strategy to amend international law accordingly. One should not be too quick, however, to disregard a robust notion of sovereignty, a concept that has helped avert conflict among the world's major powers. The United States needs a strategy for sovereignty's future that is based in the emerging security context and a prioritization of American interests. Instead, the United States and the rest of the world are meandering toward a less robust sovereignty with weaker and more ambiguous international law. The U.S. and its global interests would be better served by strong and clear international rules that increase predictability and that confer legitimacy to action against dangerous enemies.     

VORSPRUNG DURCH TECHNIK ineligible for CTM registration

OHIM refused registration as a Community trade mark of the wordsVORSPRUNG DURCH TECHNIK in the name of Audi AG for goods andservices in Classes 9, 14, 25, 28, 37–40, and 42 on thegrounds that the mark was devoid of any distinctive character.Audi's action for annulment of this decision was dismissed bythe CFI.     

The probative character of Forensic Handwriting Examiners' identification and elimination opinions on questioned signatures

This 5-year study investigated the character of Forensic Handwriting Examiners' (FHEs) authorship opinions on questioned signatures through the medium of blind validation trials. Twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and eleven authorship opinions were expressed by FHEs on trial kits comprising randomized questioned genuine signatures (written by the specimen writer), disguised signatures (written by the specimen writer) and simulated signatures (not written by the specimen writer). Results showed that, as a group, FHEs were significantly more confident at identifying writers' genuine signatures than identifying writers' disguised signatures or eliminating specimen writers from having authored simulated signatures. It is proposed that the difference in FHE confidence arises from the difficulty they have in deciding which alternative authorship explanation accounts for perceived combinations of similar and dissimilar features between specimen and questioned signatures.     

Governance and community benefit: are nonprofit hospitals good candidates for Sarbanes-Oxley type reforms?

Recent investigations into the activities of nonprofit hospitals have pointed to weak or lax governance on the part of some of these organizations. As a result of these events, various federal and state initiatives are now either under way or under discussion to strengthen the governance of hospitals and other nonprofit corporations through mandatory board structures and practices. However, despite policy makers' growing interest in these types of governance reforms, there is in fact little empirical evidence to support their contribution to the effectiveness of hospital boards. The purpose of this article is to report the results of a study examining the relationship between the structure and practices of nonprofit hospital boards relative to the hospital's provision of community benefits. Our results point to modest relationships between these sets of variables, suggesting considerable limitations to what federal and state policy makers can accomplish through legislative initiatives to improve the governance of nonprofit hospitals.     

Behavioral economics and public choice: introduction to a special issue

We provide an introduction to a special issue on behavioral economics and public choice.