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Legal Regime (legal + regime)
Selected AbstractsCODE IS SPEECH: Legal Tinkering, Expertise, and Protest among Free and Open Source Software DevelopersCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009GABRIELLA COLEMAN ABSTRACT In this essay, I examine the channels through which Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) developers reconfigure central tenets of the liberal tradition,and the meanings of both freedom and speech,to defend against efforts to constrain their productive autonomy. I demonstrate how F/OSS developers contest and specify the meaning of liberal freedom,especially free speech,through the development of legal tools and discourses within the context of the F/OSS project. I highlight how developers concurrently tinker with technology and the law using similar skills, which transform and consolidate ethical precepts among developers. I contrast this legal pedagogy with more extraordinary legal battles over intellectual property, speech, and software. I concentrate on the arrests of two programmers, Jon Johansen and Dmitry Sklyarov, and on the protests they provoked, which unfolded between 1999 and 2003. These events are analytically significant because they dramatized and thus made visible tacit social processes. They publicized the challenge that F/OSS represents to the dominant regime of intellectual property (and clarified the democratic stakes involved) and also stabilized a rival liberal legal regime intimately connecting source code to speech. [source] The Dilemma of the Criminal Defendant with a Prior Record,Lessons from the Wrongfully ConvictedJOURNAL OF EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2008John H. Blume This article examines the conventional wisdom that innocent defendants will testify on their own behalf at trial. Data gathered from the cases of persons subsequently exonerated due to DNA evidence demonstrate that factually innocent defendants with criminal records do not testify on their own behalf at substantially higher rates than criminal defendants generally. Why? Ninety-one percent of factually innocent defendants with prior records declined to testify compared to the 55 percent rate at which defendants with prior criminal records declined to testify in a four-county sample of criminal cases. Why the difference? In the innocence cases, the primary reason counsel give for not taking the stand is that many of these individuals had been previously convicted of a crime, and they did not testify at trial because of the risk that their credibility would be impeached with evidence of the prior record, and that, despite any limiting instruction the court might give, the jury would infer that they were guilty based on their prior misdeeds. If one assumes that the defendants in a four-county sample are guilty, and that both the innocence sample and the four-county sample are reasonably representative, then there is a statistically significant association between defendants with criminal records failing to testify and innocence. Because the current legal regime appears to disproportionately discourage defendants, even factually innocent defendants, from telling their story at trial, the law should be changed. Only prior convictions for perjury should be potentially available for impeachment purposes. [source] The Legal Status of MercenariesPOLITICS & POLICY, Issue 4 2002Jeffrey S. Morton Mercenaries date to antiquity and have played important roles in conflict. While the regulation of mercenaries has long been discussed, efforts to codify laws pertaining to mercenarism are more contemporary. This paper examines the existing international regime on mercenaries from a critical perspective and offers suggestions for a rearticulation of the legal regime on mercenaries. [source] Recent Developments in India's Plant Variety Protection, Seed Regulation and Linkages with UPOV's Proposed MembershipTHE JOURNAL OF WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Issue 3 2009Prabhash Ranjan The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the World Trade Organization imposes an obligation on all member countries to protect plant varieties either by patents or by a sui generis regime or by a combination of both. India explored the sui generis option to provide protection to plant varieties. This legal regime recognizes the rights of commercial breeders and also grants a positive right to farmers and goes beyond the widely recognized international sui generis regime represented by the International Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties (UPOV). Notwithstanding this, India has made an application to join UPOV. However, with the present plant variety law, India's membership application to join UPOV may not be successful. The recent development of bringing the Seeds Bill, which dilutes farmers' rights provisions in the plant variety law, is important in this regard. The article argues that if the Seeds Bill is passed in its present form, it will dilute the beneficial provisions of the plant variety law and pave the way for India to join UPOV. [source] Parallel trade, price discrimination, investment and price capsECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 44 2005Stefan Szymanski SUMMARY Parallel trade Parallel trade is the resale of a product by a wholesaler in a market other than that intended by the manufacturer. One of its consequences is that manufacturers may be prevented from price discriminating between markets that have different willingness to pay for the product in question. Some legal regimes give the manufacturer the right to prohibit parallel trade, but others do not. We examine the policy implications of parallel trade in a world in which manufacturers invest in product quality, and have the possibility to develop different quality variants of their goods. We also consider the possibility that the authorities may impose price caps and compulsory licensing (as commonly occurs for some pharmaceutical products). We find that taking investment incentives into account makes parallel trade much less likely to enhance overall welfare, which implies that parallel trade in products intensive in R&D, such as pharmaceuticals, is less desirable than in fields such as branded consumer products. We also find that, somewhat surprisingly, the threat of parallel trade does not induce firms to market inferior versions of their products in poor countries. However, parallel trade is less likely to be detrimental to welfare when there are price caps, since compulsory licensing can mitigate the major cost of parallel trade (namely a refusal to supply a poor country market). , Stefan Szymanski and Tommaso Valletti [source] Legal Liabilities, Audit Accuracy and the Market for Audit ServicesJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 3-4 2002Sankar De In quality-differentiated audit markets with client-firms of unknown types, insider-managers of client firms strategically select auditors who respond to legal liabilities to decide their care level. In this signaling game, uninformed-investors use the audit report and the auditors' identity for firm valuation. The analysis shows that increased legal liability increases the auditor's effort and audit accuracy but reduces the demand for high quality auditing because, apart from the increased audit costs, the adverse selection benefit of the worse type reduces with increased accuracy. Furthermore, alternative legal regimes and damage allocation rules alter informational efficiency of the financial market. [source] Legal dilemmas for clinicians involved in the care and treatment of children and young people with mental disorderCHILD: CARE, HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2010M. Bowers Abstract Background The 2008 revised Mental Health Act Code of Practice describes the legal framework governing the admission to hospital and treatment of children and young people for mental disorders as complex. Clinicians are required to be conversant with common law principles as well as the Mental Health Act (MHA), Children Act, Mental Capacity Act (MCA), Family Law Reform Act, Human Rights Act, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Professionals working with the MHA and the MCA have a legal duty to have regard to the respective Codes of Practice (MHA Code and MCA Code). In addition there is a need to keep up-to-date with developments in case law. The recent guidance from the National Institute for Mental Health in England, ,The Legal Aspects of the Care and Treatment of Children and Young People with Mental Disorder' draws all of the legal regimes together and suggests pointers on the most appropriate course of action when the regimes overlap. Discussion This paper will aim to highlight legal dilemmas relating to the care and treatment of under 18-year-olds for mental disorder and to discuss the impact of these on clinical practice. The new legal framework will be discussed with reference to hypothetical cases. Key issues include age and maturity, capacity, deprivation of liberty and the zone of parental control (ZPC). Conclusions It is essential that clinicians are aware of their responsibilities within the new legal framework in order to avoid becoming a target for litigation. This paper is aimed at meeting the recommendation for clinicians to be aware of their responsibilities and engage in appropriate training. 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