How Large Should the Strike Zone Be in “Three Strikes and You're Out” Sentencing Laws?

So-called three strikes and you're out sentencing laws for criminal offenders have proliferated in the United States. The laws vary considerably in their definitions of what constitutes a strike. This paper adapts the classic Poisson process model of criminal offending to investigate how varying sentence lengths and definitions of what constitutes a strike affect the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these sentencing laws. In particular, it asks whether, by using different definitions for the first, second, and third strikes or different sentence lengths, one can make the resulting incarceration more efficient in the sense of incapacitating more crimes per cell-year served.     

Holding Back the Tide— a Review of Recent Developments in Copyright Law in the United Kingdom

This article surveys recent developments in UK copyright law. It sets these developments in the context of broader trends in copyright law and policy. Significant decisions concerning subsistence of copyright, authorship, infringement, defences, remedies and collective licensing are analysed. The author notes that copyright, and other intellectual property rights, have been given extra force as a result of recent legislative developments. He argues that, against this background, it is possible to discern increasing judicial concern to ensure that such an expansion in monopoly power does not operate against the public interest.     

The Fate of an Orphan: The Hawley Board and the Debates over the Postwar Organization of Medical Intelligence

The US Army's medical intelligence program developed during World War II to meet the requirements for information on the medical threat facing soldiers deployed in the first truly global military conflict. The war served as a proving ground for the application of medical intelligence on a strategic, operational and tactical level. However, hasty postwar demobilization decimated many wartime intelligence programs, including medical intelligence. The US intelligence community recognized the utility of medical intelligence as part of the overall strategic scientific and technical intelligence program and sought ways to rebuild the program. During the post-World War II debates over the unification of the military services and the responsibilities of the nascent CIA, the ‘Hawley Board’ was one of several committees which studied the problems facing the medical intelligence program. Although there was broad consensus on the need for better coordination of medical intelligence, the intelligence community ultimately failed to adopt the recommendations of the Hawley Board. The principal reasons behind the failure of the Hawley plan were the re-emergence of prewar interservice rivalries, the dominant role of the Army medical intelligence program, and the lack of a joint military–CIA vision of a centralized medical intelligence service.     

Choice of Law in Tort—Blending in with the Landscape of the Conflict of Laws?

The reformed choice of law in tort rules contained in the Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 have proved a source of great controversy. This piece attempts to show that there are wider concerns fuelled by the Act. It seeks to demonstrate that one can not reform one area of the Conflict of Laws (such as choice of law in tort) in isolation from other areas (such as jurisdiction in tortious matters and choice of law in contract) and to illustrate the unsatisfactory state that the statutory reforms have had on these other areas. The analysis of the problems generated by the Act may be used as a model for a far more fundamental proposition: namely that the tendency to regard choice of law and jurisdiction as separate areas throughout the Conflict of Laws, rather than as combining to form a coherent law of international litigation, is a critical shortcoming of the study of the subject.