Copyright and the Death of the Author in Literature and Law

Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi, The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature David Saunders, Authorship and Copyright     

The petit effect of campaign spending on votes: using political financing reforms to measure spending impacts in multiparty elections

Public Choice - This paper explores the relation between campaign spending and votes, in France, relying on political financing reforms as a quasi-natural experiment to assess if and how spending...     

The Confidence Game: Of Ropers and Roping

This is the fourth in a series of five articles on the Bernard Madoff con game. This essay is about the arrangements between some ropers, those that solicited money for Madoff and his investment company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities (BLMIS). Ropers lure victims/marks/clients/investors into a con game. The focus of this essay is on, what began as an accounting firm, Avellino and Bienes (A & B), Madoff’s own roping operation, Cohmad Securities, and Robert M. Jaffe, a well-connected competitive golfer. Madoff’s ropers were generously rewarded for their efforts at bringing in money to keep his con game going.     

The Fairness of Media Coverage in Question: An Analysis of Referendum Campaigns on Welfare State Issues in Switzerland

Abstract: The mass media are assigned an important role in political campaigns on popular votes. This article asks how the press communicates political issues to citizens during referendum campaigns, and whether some minimal criteria for successful public deliberation are met. The press coverage of all 24 ballot votes on welfare state issues from 1995 to 2004 in Switzerland is examined, distinguishing seven criteria to judge how news coverage compares to idealized notions of the media’s role in the democratic process: coverage intensity, time for public deliberation, balance in media coverage, source independence and inclusiveness, substantive coverage, and spatial homogeneity. The results of our quantitative analysis suggest that the press does fulfil these normative requirements to a reasonable extent and that fears about biased or deceitful media treatment of ballot issues are not well‐founded. However, some potential for optimizing the coverage of referendum campaigns by the Swiss press does exist.