Contested Terrains and Regime Politics: Thinking about America's Trial Courts and Institutional Change

Institutional change in America's trial courts is poorly understood. Herbert Jacob in his 1982 presidential address to the Law and Society Association recommended that future research might consider intensive studies of single courts over time to trace the causal links between the courts and sociopolitical events outside the courtrooms. This essay explores Jacob's recommendation but ultimately takes a different tack. Instead of conducting natural histories of particular trial courts, this essay speculates that trial courts can be viewed as contested terrains made up of various sites. Proponents of particular ideas, interests, and institutions struggle to impose their policy preferences on these sites. These disputes, which wax and wane over time, constitute the regime politics that shape the probabilities of who wins in America's trial courts. The outlines of this perspective are sketched using the political science literature on agenda politics and on how policy ideas become institutionalized. Illustrations of this perspective are drawn from studies of civil and criminal court reforms.     

What is ethically appropriate in Negotiations: An empirical examination of bargaining tactics

Negotiation is an interesting context in which to study ethical judgment. Effective negotiators cannot be completely candid about their preferences, yet some honesty is required for parties to effectively agree. Is there general agreement among negotiators as to which tactics are ethically appropriate and inappropriate? This paper reports analyses of the ratings of 18 marginally ethical tactics by a sample of 320 respondents. Tactic ratings suggest generally strong consensus on those tactics that are appropriate and inappropriate; factor analyses of these ratings suggest tactic groupings that offer partial support for earlier conceptual models. A research agenda is also proposed.     

Legal protection of software—a global view from Japan

An investigation of legal measures for the protection of software reveals a number of important insights into the scope and nature of copyright. Rather than something unique for legal purposes, software and recorded media is actually familiar information. Hence, it is protectible by regular copyright. Regular copyright has two relatively distinct branches, in published and unpublished works. Despite the notion that copyright covers only mode of expression, it is actually applied to protect certain types of information content. As it is so applied, copyright in unpublished works transferred subject to restrictions on the use and disclosure of their information content is equivalent to trade secrecy in the American sense. The nature and scope of copyright is intrinsic and universal wherever it applies. It provides an ideal basis for a much needed international consensus on legal measures for protecting software program interests. It would be needlessly provocative for the USA to attempt to induce Japan or any other country to adopt trade secrecy in the American sense. Japanese support for a new program right as an alternative to copyright probably arose largely out of a lack of understanding of the scope and nature of copyright, especially in unpublished works. As it is applied, copyright generally is unfair competition law in the American sense. Applying it in that light, rather than as traditional copyright, provides wiser treatment of new phenomena that involve software programs, such as copying the structure and format of software programs.     

A systematic approach to technology transfer

Pouring millions into R&;D with insufficient innovation and paltry returns? One solution: Revamp the process of bringing a product to market by integrating the efforts of technology and marketing personnel.     

Public choice, technology and industrialization in Tanzania: Some paradoxes resolved

No less than in agriculture, industrialization in Africa is difficult to explain on purely economic grounds. This paper applies public choice theory to some of the most paradoxical aspects of technology and industrialization in one African country, Tanzania. Our analysis turns on two assumptions about bureaucratic behavior in that country: The first is that bureaucrats have preferences defined over projects rather than technologies and the second is that, in their capacity as managers of state-owned enterprises, these agents of the state have sought to initiate as many new projects as possible, mainly on the basis of foreign aid. These propositions are shown to be consistent with evidence regarding the growth of the public sector in Tanzania during the 1970s and 1980s.