Do the interests of academic lawyers and practising lawyers ever overlap?

‘A book may be good for nothing; or there may be onlyone thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?’(Samuel Johnson) This section is dedicated to the review of ideas, articles,books, films and other media. It will include replies (and rejoinders)to articles, the evaluation of new ideas or proposals, and reviewsof books and articles both directly and indirectly related tointellectual property law. The book-reading habits of practising lawyers can be very differentto those of academic lawyers. A well-known publisher of lawbooks for academics and practitioners provides its authors witha style guide, which includes the following, helpful advicefor writing     

Strengthening the Intergovernmental Grant System: Long-Term Lessons for the Federal–Local Relationship

This study investigates the longitudinal political and administrative problems associated with federal–local government relations. The findings demonstrate four primary challenges of the system of federal grants-in-aid that hinder the relationship of policy design at the federal level and policy implementation in local communities: the politics of decentralization, subnational capacity, program accountability and program adaptability. A case study of the Community Development Block Grant, as assessed by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and the General Accounting Office between 1974 and the present, is included to demonstrate the application of these problems within the system. Although the "evolution of devolution" can greatly benefit the recipients of public services at the local level, it often operates within an unorganized and ineffective system that public managers at all levels of government must continue to develop.     

Non‐Governmental Monitoring of Local Governments Increases Compliance with Central Mandates: A National‐Scale Field Experiment in China

Central governments face compliance problems when they rely on local governments to implement policy. In authoritarian political systems, these challenges are pronounced because local governments do not face citizens at the polls. In a national‐scale, randomized field experiment in China, we test whether a public, non‐governmental rating of municipal governments' compliance with central mandates to disclose information about the management of pollution increased compliance. We find significant and positive treatment effects on compliance after only one year that persist with reinforcement into a second post‐treatment year. The public rating appears to decrease the costs of monitoring compliance for the central government without increasing public and media attention to pollution, highlighting when this mode of governance is likely to emerge. These results reveal important roles that nonstate actors can play in enhancing the accountability of local governments in authoritarian political systems.     

Jelly’s Place: An Ethnographic Memoir

This is a report of a field experience in retrospect. An ethnographic study of black streetcorner men, it was conducted in the early 1970s among the patrons of Jelly’s Place, a bar and liquor store on the South Side of Chicago. The 55 men came repeatedly to Jelly’s corner and created a local social stratification system. The focus of the study was the way in which they made and remade their local status system in everyday life. This document describes the field work experience which led me to focus on this particular sociological issue and to represent the social dynamics of the group.