What do judges say on the protection of intelligence secrets?

This article discusses the role of the discourse of law in legitimizing the protection of intelligence secrets. It draws on examples from the United Kingdom and the United States to illustrate rhetorical regularities with respect to the need to protect intelligence officers, agents, sources and methods, the effectiveness of intelligence agencies, international intelligence relationships and the effects of a mosaic of disclosed information. It concludes that judges produce specialized knowledge on state secrecy that plays a part in shaping the understanding of state secrecy in society.     

Le Pouvoir Sémiologique du mot `souveraineté' dans L'oeuvre de Bodin

Le mot `souveraineté' procure un exemple fort del'effet sémiologique du langage,c'est-à-dire de son pouvoir social dans leprocessus continu et continuel de créationde la réalité humaine. Le textepropose d'examiner ce signe linguistique àl'époque de son introduction par Bodin, au16ième siècle, mettant en lumièreson impact social sur la conscience commune del'humanité, et ce, en adoptant une approchequi s'inspire de la déconstruction deDerrida. Ainsi, tout en considérantl'oeuvre dans son contexte immédiat etélargi, une analyse déconstructionistede Six Livres de la Republiquedémontre que, au moyen du mot`souveraineté,' Bodin voulait placer le Roide France au sommet d'une structurehiérarchique de pouvoir unique. Cetteidée de pyramide d'autorité ressortclairement du discours dans lequel se trouve lesigne linguistique, qui met en jeu l'opposition``plus-haut-pouvoir-unifié' versus``pouvoir-décentralisé-subordonné.' Depuis ce temps, le mot `souveraineté' n'acessé d'avoir un pouvoir sémiologiqueconsidérable sur la conscience commune dessociétés, incluant évidemment cellede la société internationale.     

For fear of popular politics? Public attention and the delegation of authority to the United States executive branch

Legislators are thought to delegate policymaking authority to administrative actors either to avoid blame for controversial policy or to secure policy outcomes. This study tests these competing perspectives and establishes that public attention to policymaking is a powerful predictor of the extent to which significant United States statutes delegate authority to the executive branch. Consistent with the policy‐concerns perspective, by one calculation statutes dealing with high‐attention issues entail 48 percent fewer delegating provisions than statutes dealing with low‐attention issues – a far stronger relationship than is typically found in the delegation literature. As per the blame‐avoidance perspective, a number of additional analyses yield results consistent with the notion that fears about future public attention motivate statutory delegation if legislative conflict is sufficiently great. Overall, however, the results suggest that conflict typically is not sufficiently great and that legislators are generally more inclined to limit statutory delegation when the public is paying attention.     

Cognitive Biases in Governing: Technology Preferences in Election Administration

Cognitive biases are heuristics that shape individual preferences and decisions in a way that is at odds with means‐end rationality. The effects of cognitive biases on governing are underexplored. The authors study how election administrators’ cognitive biases shape their preferences for e‐voting technology using data from a national survey of local election officials. The technology acceptance model, which employs a rational, means‐end perspective, suggests that the perceived benefits of e‐voting machines explain their popularity. But findings indicate that cognitive biases also play a role, even after controlling for the perceived benefits and costs of the technology. The findings point to a novel cognitive bias that is of particular interest to research on e‐government: officials who have a general faith in technology are attracted to more innovative alternatives. The authors also find that local election officials who prefer e‐voting machines do so in part because they overvalue the technology they already possess and because they are overly confident in their own judgment.