Law of Space Resources and Operations on Celestial Bodies: Implications for Legislation in the United States

The U.S. assertion of a right to own resources harvested from space is consistent with the distinction in international law governing analogous res communis areas between resources harvested from a common area and the common area itself. Under the Outer Space Treaty regime, private entities do not have any more right to appropriate celestial bodies than governments do. However, U.S. law does not give private entities such a right. The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act’s chapter on Space Resource Commercial Exploration and Utilization generally avoids taking a position on exactly how to deal with disputes in the event the activities of entities from the United States and other states interfere with each other. The U.S. law does not assert a right to declare safety zones or otherwise exercise jurisdiction outside space objects, but doing so can, under some circumstances, be consistent with international law. Many of the specifics of what rules will govern the gathering of space resources remain undetermined, yet the act’s basic premise is correct: international law and the treaty obligations of the United States allow for the U.S. government to authorize its citizens to own resources obtained from space.     

Challenging The Mandate Of Heaven: Popular Protest in Modern China

Arguing that popular protest has played an unusual role in bestowing political legitimacy in China, this article traces continuities in state responses to protest movements from imperial days to the present. The author compares the government's recent handling of three different types of protest: economically motivated actions by hard-pressed workers and farmers, nationalistically inspired demonstrations by patriotic students, and (at greater length) religiously rooted resistance by zealous believers. The central authorities' tolerance toward localized strikes and tax riots, and their overt encouragement of protests against the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, contrasts sharply with the harsh and unrelenting campaign of repression that has been directed against Falun Gong adherents. Explanations for these variant state responses are sought in historically grounded assessments of the political implications of different types of popular protest.     

The war over the Israeli settlements

In the last eighteen months, missile defence has emerged as a controversial issue between the United States and its European allies. The administration's plans have provoked a major debate in Europe and the United States. Since the spring of 2007, however, the Bush administration has begun to develop a much more effective public outreach campaign designed to address public concerns. It has also sought to strengthen the link between its bilateral efforts at missile defence and those of NATO and made a number of important proposals designed to reduce Russian concerns.     

How Do Female and Male Faculty Members Construct Job Satisfaction? The Roles of Perceived Institutional Leadership and Mentoring and their Mediating Processes

In this study we examine how a sample of 248 male and female professors at a Midwestern private research university construct their academic job satisfaction. Our findings indicate that both women and men perceive that their job satisfaction is influenced by the institutional leadership and mentoring they receive, but only as mediated by the two key academic processes of access to internal academic resources (including research-supportive workloads) and internal relational supports from a collegial and inclusive immediate work environment. Gender differences emerged in the strengths of the perceived paths leading to satisfaction: women’s job satisfaction derived more from their perceptions of the internal relational supports than the academic resources they received, whereas men’s job satisfaction resulted equally from their perceptions of internal academic resources and internal relational supports received. Implications for leadership and institutional practices are drawn from the findings.     

Nobody trusts them! Under- and over-policing Native American Communities

Interviews with 278 Native Americans from seven states, and representing eight American Indian nations have revealed startling patterns of racial violence against this community. In part, this may be accounted for by the enabling climate created by law enforcement in these communities. Of particular concern in this paper are patterns of police activity, which simultaneously represent both the under-enforcement and over-enforcement of the law with respect to Native American communities. Participants have reported activities ranging from willful blindness toward Native American victimization at one extreme, to police brutality at the other.     

From music tracks to Google maps: Who owns computer-generated works?

Increasingly the digital content used in everyday life has little or no human intervention in its creation. Typically, when such content is delivered to consumers it comes with attached claims of copyright. However, depending on the jurisdiction, approaches to ownership of computer-generated works vary from legislated to uncertain. In this paper we look at the various approaches taken by the common law, such as in Canada, and the legislative approach taken in the United Kingdom. The options for how computer-generated works may be treated and suggestions for their best placement in copyright are discussed.     

Information technology and transitions in the public service: A comparison of scandinavia and the united states

New information technologies have the potential for transforming the ways governments are organized, the activities they perform, how they perform them, and the nature of work itself. Governments in the U.S. and Scandinavia have followed fundamentally different approaches to the introduction of computing and to dealing with its effects. These differences in approach to automation have influenced each country's view of the role of government in anticipating and dealing with the effects of changes in computer technology on the public service workforce.