German Constitutional Law: The Protection of Civil Liberties

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Dilution in the United States and European Union (and beyond) Part II: testing for blurring

Legal context. Dilution by blurring has often been accused ofbeing a vague concept which is difficult to understand and whichhas no sensible limits. Mindful of the need for certainty inthis area, the US Senate and House of Representatives have passedthe Trademark Dilution Revision Act 2006. This Bill (which isdiscussed more generally in Part I) includes a definition ofblurring and a six-point test for blurring. Meanwhile, the EuropeanUnion has been steadily building up jurisprudence in this area. Key points. This part of the article focuses on dilution byblurring, considering how blurring is defined, how it is testedfor and whether US and EU blurring protection is in compliancewith the jurisdictions’ international obligations in thisarea (discussed in Part I). In particular, it considers thenew definition of, and test for, blurring under the US TrademarkDilution Revision Act 2006, and compares the position underthat Bill to the situation in the EU. Practical significance. Assuming that it enters into law, theRevision Act 2006 has serious implications for the proprietorsof famous marks doing business in the US. This article willinform the owners of such marks what protection they will benefitfrom and how this will differ from the protection they willget in the EU.     

Partisanship as information

Intuitively, we associate different political parties with different types of policy. In contrast, this paper shows that in the absence of differential costs of membership among parties (that is, if party membership ischeap talk), party labels cannot perfectly signal the ideologies of candidates. However, under certain conditions parties can signal candidate types imperfectly. The paper therefore also provides an example of how costless communication can be effective in games of partial conflict.     

PROFESSIONAL INTERDEPENDENCE IN DIVORCE PRACTICES

Divorce mediation is one area of the new and growing field of interpersonal mediation. Differences and similarities between divorce mediation and divorce psychotherapy are discussed in this article, and a method for teamwork between the two professions is proposed. The authors take the approach that the separate but overlapping practices of mediation and psychotherapy can be interdependent and that specific benefits to divorcing clients can result when divorce mediation and divorce psychotherapy are practiced collaboratively.     

Market failure and stagflation: Some aspects of privatisation in Poland

The paper investigates causes of the stagflation phenomena which appeared in Poland in the period after the ‘shortageflation’, i.e. after February 1990. It is conjectured that one of the primary reasons for the appearance of the stagflation was substantial market uncertainty, which led to a market failure. The theoretical analysis is based on the Newbery-Stiglitz model of futures trading. This reveals that, in the presence of huge price variations a market is likely to fail if a substantial backwardation accompanies negative correlation between prices and quantities. The empirical evidence consists of testing market efficiency (weak and semi-strong forms) and the rational expectations hypothesis for the Polish consumption market and inflation in the period of shortageflation. It is found that the market survives the tests for weak efficiency but fails the test for semi-strong efficiency and rational expectations.     

Measuring Government in the Early Twentieth Century

This article discusses the early history of performance and productivity measurement. It finds sophisticated development of these tools beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, primarily at the New York Bureau of Municipal Research. These practices grew out of accounting, the social survey, work records, and municipal statistics. The bureau built government's capacity to measure. They advocated such basic empirical practices as making observations at all, doing so systematically and routinely, and recording data at the time of observation. By 1912, performance measurement exhibited many of the features associated with the modern practice: measuring of input, output, and results; attempting to make government more productive; making reports comparable among communities; and focusing on allocation and accountability. Performance measurement was developed in the context of shifting power between the elected executive and the legislature.     

BARS,BLOCKS, AND CRIMES REVISITED: LINKING THE THEORY OF ROUTINE ACTIVITIES TO THE EMPIRICISM OF “HOT SPOTS”*

Anticipating recent developments in routine activities theory, Roncek and Bell (1981) found that bars and taverns had detrimental effects on crime on residential city blocks in Cleveland for 1970. We replicate and extend their work by examining the effects of recreational liquor establishments (i.e., taverns and cocktail lounges) on crime from 1979 to 1981 on Cleveland's residential city blocks. The number of such businesses on residential city blocks has positive and statistically significant effects on the amount of crime. The effects on crime are compounded when the businesses are located in areas with physical characteristics that are associated with more anonymity and lower guardianship. Our results reaffirm the value of new developments in routine activities theory that now stress the importance of facilities. They also extend recent work attempting to identify and analyze “hot spots” of crime.