Google Image Search: the Ninth Circuit weighs in

On appeal from the Central District of California, the NinthCircuit reversed and vacated the district court's finding ofcopyright infringement and preliminary injunction order againstGoogle's use of thumbnail images for an image-based search engine.The Ninth Circuit also reversed the District Court's rejectionof Perfect 10’s secondary liability claim against Googlefor contributory copyright infringement.     

Dying Quietly: English Suburbs and the Stiff Upper Lip

The English suburbs are dying. Years of austerity have slowly changed the landscape. Poverty is now common in the suburbs. Since 2014, life expectancy has been falling across most of England, especially in the suburbs. Now infant mortality rates are also rising year on year (unlike anywhere else in Europe). In hindsight it is not surprising that the majority of suburban English people voted Brexit, most noticeably in the Home Counties. Middle England is understandably angry. No more fortitude in the face of adversity and the hiding of emotions. The stiff up lip has slipped. Change is in the air.     

The effect of a curfew law on juvenile crime in Washington,D.C.

Juvenile curfew laws were a popular intervention to combat juvenile crime during the 1980s and 1990s. An experimental replication design was used to examine the impact of the Washington, D.C. “Juvenile Curfew Act of 1995.” Juvenile arrest data were analyzed using a two-standard-deviation-band approach, t-test, and trend analysis. The results, consistent with previous studies, revealed that the curfew law did not reduce total juvenile arrests. Several flaws inherent in curfew laws, as well as implications for research and policy, are discussed.     

The civilian target in Sierra Leone and Liberia: Political power, military strategy, and humanitarian intervention

This article traces one of the logics of the ongoing war inthe Mano River region of West Africa. It argues that, in thewake of humanitarian interventions in Sierra Leone, combatantswho moved on to fight in Liberia were more likely to use attacksagainst civilians in their military strategy. It suggests, however,that such tactical military choices are to be understood interms of local contexts of meaning, most notably about the natureof political power. The author's own ethnographic work withthe kamajor militia in Sierra Leone and with Liberians Unitedfor Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) in Liberia serves asthe basis for this analysis, and he advocates a participant-observationfield methodology for the study of contemporary conflict.     

Candidate Qualities through a Partisan Lens: A Theory of Trait Ownership

Using Petrocik's (1996) theory of issue ownership as a point of departure, I develop and test a theory of "trait ownership" that provides an explanation for the origins of candidate trait perceptions and illustrates an important way that candidates affect voters. Specifically, I argue for a direct connection between the issues owned by a political party and evaluations of the personal attributes of its candidates. As a result, the American public views Republicans as stronger leaders and more moral, while Democrats hold advantages on compassion and empathy. I also draw on "expectations gap" arguments from psychology and political science to demonstrate how a candidate may gain an electoral advantage by successfully "trespassing" on his opponent's trait territory. National Election Studies data from the 1980–2004 presidential elections are used to demonstrate the existence, durability, and effects of trait ownership in contemporary American political campaigns.     

Uprooted cosmopolitans? The post-war exile of Spanish anarchists in Venezuela, 1945-1965

This article considers the activity of anarchist refugees in exile after the Spanish civil war in the light of their professed cosmopolitan and internationalist outlook. It first examines the trajectory of anarchist internationalism in Spain and its perceived shortcomings in the period up to and including the civil war. It then provides a brief survey of the post-war re-organisation of Spanish anarchists in exile, before proceeding to the case study of Venezuela. Anarchist activity in this country is analysed through the lenses of internationalism and cosmopolitanism in the ambivalent context of exile.     

The Participatory Effects of Redistricting

While the effects of legal and institutional arrangements on political participation are well documented, little attention has been given to the potential participatory effects of one of the United States' most important electoral laws: constitutionally mandated reapportionment. By severing the ties between constituents and their incumbents, we argue, redistricting raises information costs, leading to increased levels of nonvoting in U.S. House contests. Survey data from the 1992 American National Election Studies show that redrawn citizens are half as likely to know their incumbent's name as citizens who remain in a familiar incumbent's district and, consequently, significantly more likely to roll off, or abstain from voting in the House election after having cast a presidential vote. We also show that participation rates in the 2002–2006 House elections in Texas—each of which followed a redistricting—match these patterns, with roll-off increasing 3% to 8% in portions of the state that were redrawn, controlling for other factors. The findings demonstrate that scholars and policy makers ought to be concerned with the extent to which the redrawing of congressional lines affects citizens' exercise of political voice.