Money,Mortgages, and the Conquest of America

In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists’ and native communities’ conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.     

Bewilligung der Adoption: Zustimmung der Mutter erforderlich, deren Aufenthalt bei Beschlussfassung erster Instanz bekannt ist

Die Voraussetzungen für die Bewilligung der Adoption sind nach der Sach- und Rechtslage im Zeitpunkt der Beschlussfassung erster Instanz zu beurteilen. Auch der Kreis der Zustimmungsberechtigten bestimmt sich nach diesem Zeitpunkt; es ist kein Grund erkennbar, die Voraussetzungen für den Entfall des Zustimmungserfordernisses nach § 181 Abs 2 ABGB nach einem anderen Zeitpunkt zu beurteilen. Bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt kann sich auch eine Mutter, die keine ausdrückliche Zustimmung zur Adoption erteilt hat und mehr als sechs Monate unbekannten Aufenthaltes war, gegen diese aussprechen. Vor Bewilligung der Adoption besteht kein rechtlich geschütztes Vertrauen auf deren Zustandekommen. Der mit dem Bewilligungsverfahren notwendigerweise verbundene Schwebezustand muss von den Wahleltern wegen der grundrechtlich geschützten Rechtsstellung der leiblichen Eltern hingenommen werden. Trotz Fehlens einer ausdrücklichen Rsp des OGH zu einer konkreten Fallgestaltung liegt dann keine erhebliche Rechtsfrage vor, wenn das Gesetz selbst eine eindeutige Regelung trifft oder ein Streitfall trotz neuer Sachverhaltselemente bereits mit Hilfe vorhandener Leitlinien h?chstgerichtlicher Rsp gel?st werden kann.     

Discovering the Dark Side of Power: The Principal’s Moral Hazard in Political-Bureaucratic Relations

Principal agent (PA) is among the most prominent concepts for analyzing the relationship between politics and bureaucracy. Nonethelesss, the inherent bias of PA scholars to attribute moral hazard almost exclusively to the agent, usually referred to as “bureaucratic drift”, requires re-examination. Building on the spare literature in which moral hazard of the principal is considered, this paper provides empirical evidence for a neglected aspect of the PA concept. Three cases of German regulatory agencies responsible for drug control, financial services and rail safety are analyzed in critical situations which were largely perceived as bureaucratic failures. The analysis reveals that a good deal of these failures, ranging from negligence to suppressing crucial information, has to be attributed to the political principal. This is called the dark side of power because the intention is to shift blame or to dodge political responsibility. Turning conventional PA reasoning upside down, the conclusion is that the principal’s moral hazard should be considered more routinely as a potential explanation for political-bureaucratic interactions.     

Rehumanizing Birth and Death in America

THESIS: Despite spending more on medical care than any other country in the world, the United States still boasts some of the worst patient outcomes of any developed nation. This disparity is especially true of how Americans give birth and die.  These natural human transitions have become catastrophically expensive and leave patients and their families traumatized from unnecessary interventions. This article examines the costs and outcomes associated with the medicalization of birth and death and argues that alternatives exist that improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. Access to these alternatives will require changing current regulatory and reimbursement structures and providing trained support staff to help families navigate beginning- and end-of life decisions.