The Hired Gun as Facilitator: Lawyers and the Suppression of Business Disputes in Silicon Valley

This article draws on interview data from California's Silicon Valley to explore the role of local business attorneys in shaping the market for high-technology start-up financing. Far from exerting a disruptive or disputatious influence on business relations, Silicon Valley lawyers actively facilitate the functioning of the region's venture capital sector. In particular, attorneys intervene in the start-up process to absorb, suppress, and avert crucial uncertainties that might otherwise elevate transaction costs, imperil economic activity, and foster interorganizational discord. Local law firms moderate the hazards of new-company financing in at least three distinct ways: (1) by directly absorbing economic uncertainties in individual transactions; (2) by constructing, preserving, and reproducing normative and cognitive understandings within the community as a whole; and (3) by incorporating these local practices into the external legal regime.     

The influence of the right to refuse treatment on precommitment patients

The unplanned extension of the right to refuse treatment to the precommitment period is described in this paper. This extension of the right to refuse treatment has important public policy implications for the civil commitment process. These implications, as well as the pros and cons of the extension of the right to refuse treatment, are discussed.     

Oregon's Psychiatric Security Review Board: a comprehensive system for managing insanity acquittees

The insanity defense is a particularly controversial aspect of the interaction between law and mental health. During the past decade, many states have revised or abolished their insanity defenses. Oregon, however, chose in 1974 to retain its existing defense and create a new, unique system for the post-adjudication management of insanity acquitees. Oregon's legislature established the Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB), which is composed of five part-time members drawn from different disciplines, to conduct periodic hearings to determine the placement and supervision of defendants who successfully raise the insanity defense and remain mentally ill and dangerous. The PSRB has received national attention as a promising approach to managing mentally ill offenders. The authors first describe the structure and operation of the Oregon system. Then they summarize the empirical studies they have conducted of the PSRB in action.     

‘Not without the Consent and Goodwill of the Common People’: The Community as a Legal Authority in Medieval Sweden

The article investigates the legal authority of the people in later medieval Sweden. Three features are especially focused on. The first aspect of communal legal authority is the representation and participation of the local laity in the judicial process as co-judges, members of the nämnd, the Swedish equivalent of the jury, or town councillors. They also acted as surveyors, compurgators and inspectors in legal disputes. The second aspect is the role of the community, the people of the province, as lawmakers. Finally, the article looks at the role of medieval Swedish communities in choosing judges, juries and parish priests as well as electing kings. The article argues that the legal authority of the people in medieval Sweden was influenced by and reformulated through the church by learned doctrines on majority decisions and the quod omnes tangit maxim. After the Middle Ages, the nämnd and the representation of the peasant estate at parliament became some of the constituents of the national legal identity of Sweden vis-à-vis other countries.     

Lessons from New York City's Small Schools of Choice about High School Features that Promote Graduation for Disadvantaged Students

The present paper uses a rich dataset based on naturally-occurring lotteries for 68 new small non-selective high schools in New York City, which we refer to as small schools of choice (SSCs), to address two related questions: (1) What high school features are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students? and (2) What high school features helped to produce SSCs’ positive impacts on graduation rates? Our findings provide suggestive evidence that school leadership quality, teacher empowerment, teacher mutual support, teacher evaluation and feedback, teacher professional development, data-driven instruction, teacher/parent communication, academic rigor, personalized learning, and teacher/student respect are promising levers for increasing graduation rates for disadvantaged students. Our findings also provide suggestive evidence that many of these school features explain part of the total average SSC effect on graduation rates, although most of this average effect remains unexplained. Lastly, our findings indicate that SSCs are clearly distinguishable from their counterfactual counterparts in terms of school features that were emphasized by SSC funders.