Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923

We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlement: identification of the problems that the police believed themselves uniquely well equipped to manage and authorization of the powers necessary to do so. Comparison of identification and authorization yields insights into the role that these police departments played in convergent and divergent constructions of disorder and, in turn, into Progressivism's varying effects in early urban policing.     

Domain Name DRS Policies: from the sublime to the ridiculous

Legal context. Cybersquatting emerged as a major problem fortrade mark owners in the latter part of the 1990s. Litigationhas proved a heavy and expensive method of resolving disputes.Over the past decade, various alternative dispute resolutionpolicies have been introduced, most notably the UDRP and mostrecently the .eu ADR Procedure. Key points. The article tracks the development of dispute resolutionand associated sunrise policies from the UDRP, via the NOMINETDRS Policy to the new .eu ADR Procedure. The UDRP was designedto assist nobody but trade mark owners. The NOMINET DRS Policyis wider and covers other rights owners without being specificas to the nature of the relevant rights. The .eu ADR Procedureon the other hand expressly extends to a wide variety of rightsranging from trade mark rights to rights in respect of familynames and condemns speculative as well as abusive registrations.The article draws attention to some of the shortcomings of the.eu ADR Procedure and laments the fact that the European Commission,which is responsible for the introduction of the .eu domain,did not consult more widely with a view to arriving at a sensibleworkable result. The author predicts a shambles both in relationto the .eu sunrise policy and the ADR procedure. Practical significance. The UDRP, the NOMINET DRS, and the .euADR Procedure all contain very similarly worded provisions,which help to conceal the significant differences between them.Practitioners formulating and/or responding to complaints underthese policies and procedures need to be aware of the differences.