Political choice and the child labor statute of 1938: Public interest or interest group legislation?

Federal regulation of child labor (unlike that passed in early nineteenth century England) did not materialize until the New Deal of the 1930s. The present paper examines, using anecdotal and empirical evidence, the motives underlying the passage of depression-based child labor legislation embodied in the Senate vote on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Our study, which utilizes both dichotomous and trichotomous probit models of the vote, finds evidence that there were critical and dominantprivate as opposed to public interests behind the restrictions that the FLSA placed on child labor and the exemptions that it established.     

The Production of Culprits: From Deportability to Detainability in the Aftermath of “Homeland Security”

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, the virtually instantaneous hegemony of a metaphysics of antiterrorism has radically reconfigured the politics of race, immigration, and citizenship in the United States. In the extended historical moment beginning with the United States' proclamation of a planetary “War on Terrorism” and encompassing our (global) political present, the US sociopolitical order has been racked by several interlocking crises—convulsively careening between heightened demands on citizenship and the erosion of civil liberties, imperial ambition and nativist parochialism, extravagant domestic law enforcement and global lawlessness. In relation to the parallel but contradictory hegemonic projects of “American” national identity and attachment, on the one hand, and the expansion or refortification of US empire, on the other, the cumulative crisis-as-opportunity for US nationalism that has ensued is replete with unpredictable dilemmas and unresolved possibilities for both citizens and denizens alike. This essay examines significant new deployments of migrant “illegality” as this sociopolitical condition has been significantly reconfigured in the United States in the aftermath of the proclamation of a purported War on Terrorism, and the concomitant implementation of draconian police powers domestically that the author calls the Homeland Security State.     

Book reviews

Ennio Di Nolfo (ed.), Power in Europe?II. Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy and the Origins of the EEC, 1952-1957. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), DM238.

Simon J. Nuttall, European Political Cooperation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 343pp. £30, ISBN 0 19 827318 5.

Michael Smith and Stephen Woolcock, The United States and the European Community in a Transformed World (London: Pinter publishers for Royal Institute for International Affairs, 1993), 120 pp., £22.50 hb, £9.95 pb. ISBN 086187 0972/086187 0980.

Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe (London: Adamantine Press, 1991), 175pp., £12.95. ISBN 0 7449 0036 0.

Cornelia Navari (ed.), The Condition of States: A Study in International Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 238pp.

Francine Friedman, (comp. and ed.) Yugoslavia: A Comprehensive English-Language Bibliography (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1993), xv + 547 pp., indices, US$ 120.

Richard Dean Burns (ed.), Encyclopedia of Arms Control and Disarmament (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993), three vols., 1692 pp. inch index, US$280, ISBN 0 684 19281 0.     

Patents holders are not protected from US Government infringement by the Fifth Amendment

In a patent infringement action against the government, theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit interpreted28 USC section 1498 as rendering the government liable for theinfringement of a method patent only when every step of theclaimed method is practised in the United States and furtherheld that a plaintiff cannot allege patent infringement againstthe government as a Fifth Amendment taking.     

will the real sex slave please stand up?

This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organized criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and ‘trafficking’, and that between prostitution policy and forced labour in the sex sector. Focusing on the UK, it argues that far from representing a step forward in terms of securing rights and protections for those who are subject to exploitative employment relations and poor working conditions in the sex trade, the current policy emphasis on sex slaves and ‘victims of trafficking’ limits the state's obligations towards them.     

Strategic Coordination and the Law

We re-examine the relationship between coordination, legal sanctions, and free-riding in light of the recent controversy regarding the applicability of the coordination problem paradigm of law-making. We argue that legal sanctions can help solve coordination problems by eliminating socially suboptimal equilibrium outcomes. Once coordination has taken place, however, free-riding can not lead to the breakdown of coordination outcomes, even if sanctions may still be effective at increasing the equity of such outcomes. Finally, we argue that it is the choice of a legal or constitutional system rather than the choice of law that is paradigmatic of the coordination problem. This view requires a re-assessment of the normative status of sanctions attached to individual laws. We thank Catherine Hafer and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Wide Awake With Anxiety

The Poetry of Petrarch, translated by David Young
Petrarch's Guide to the Holy Land: Itinerary to the Sepulcher of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with an introductory essay, translation, and notes by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr
My Secret Book, by Francis Petrarch, translated by J. G. Nichols, foreword by Germaine Greer