Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"Do reputations affect world politics? Crescenzi develops a theory of reputation dynamics to identify when reputations form and how they affect world politics. He identifies patterns of reputation's influence in cooperation and conflict. Reputations for conflict exacerbate crises while reputations for cooperation and reliability make future cooperation more likely\"-- Provided by publisher.

The Internet has been romanticized as a zone of freedom. The alluring combination of sophisticated technology with low barriers to entry and instantaneous outreach to millions of users has mesmerized libertarians and communitarians alike. Lawmakers have joined the celebration, passing the Communications Decency Act, which enables Internet Service Providers to allow unregulated discourse without danger of liability, all in the name of enhancing freedom of speech. But an unregulated Internet is a breeding ground for offensive conduct. At last we have a book that begins to focus on abuses made possible by anonymity, freedom from liability, and lack of oversight. The distinguished scholars assembled in this volume, drawn from law and philosophy, connect the absence of legal oversight with harassment and discrimination. Questioning the simplistic notion that abusive speech and mobocracy are the inevitable outcomes of new technology, they argue that current misuse is the outgrowth of social, technological, and legal choices. Seeing this clearly will help us to be better informed about our options. In a field still dominated by a frontier perspective, this book has the potential to be a real game changer. Armed with example after example of harassment in Internet chat rooms and forums, the authors detail some of the vile and hateful speech that the current combination of law and technology has bred. The facts are then treated to analysis and policy prescriptions. Read this book and you will never again see the Internet through rose-colored glasses.

The negligence-versus–strict liability debate is over in tort law, and negligence has clearly won. Yet the fact that our accident-compensation system is fault based continues to attract much opposition in popular sentiment and academic circles. Standard economic analysis views strict liability as preferable to negligence because it is easier to administer and leads to better risk reduction: strict liability induces injurers not only to optimally invest in precaution but also to optimally adjust their activity levels. Standard analysis thus views the prevalence of negligence as unjustifiable on efficiency grounds. This Article challenges the conventional wisdom and clarifies an efficiency rationale for negligence by spotlighting the informationproduction function of tort law. Tort litigation affects behavior not just directly through imposing sanctions but also indirectly through producing information on how the disputants behaved. Third parties can then use information from litigation to decide whether to avoid the defendant or not. And the choice of liability rules dictates the magnitude and scope of these informational effects: negligence produces more valuable information on the behavior of market actors than strict liability does. Litigation under negligence produces granular information on whether the defendant could have reasonably avoided the harm, how she fares relative to others in her profession, and so on. Such information, to the extent it becomes public, allows outside observers to infer whether the past accident is indicative of the defendant's future behavior or not, which in turn affects their willingness to do business with her going forward. A physician found negligent may lose future patients, a seller failing the consumer-expectations test in products liability may lose future consumers, and so on. Litigation under strict liability produces much coarser information—namely, that a harm occurred as a result of the defendant's activity. It rarely provides outside observers with information on the competence or integrity of the defendant vis-à-vis her peers. The efficiency rationale for negligence thus stems from facilitating more robust market discipline. In contrast to what influential accounts in economic analysis suggest, negligence does affect the activity levels of potential injurers, albeit from the demand side: by warning third parties, it reduces market demand for the services of risky actors. This Article explains how information from litigation translates to reputation, identifies the circumstances under which these reputational effects are more (or less) pronounced, and uses the reputational perspective to reevaluate timely debates such as the desirability of secret settlements or how to set the liability standard for autonomous-vehicle accidents.

An American Law Institute project on the conflict of laws is preparing to bring forth a new Restatement on the subject. The issues most hotly debated behind the scenes are those involving choice of law, a somewhat technical legal specialty with a well-earned reputation for impenetrability. Despite the theoretical difficulty of the topic, the drafting of the new Restatement (Third) has been the cause of intense interest on the part of the bench and bar. Selection of the applicable law—while deeply influenced by theoretical considerations—has immense practical consequences because of the recurrence of the issue in contemporary litigation. The leading modern school of thought on choice of law is an approach known as \"interest analysis.\" Interest analysis was the product of the legal realist movement, a fact that was partially responsible for its widespread influence. In modern choice-of-law theory, the selection of the applicable law is structured upon the assumption that choice of law is not significantly different from the ordinary processes used in interpreting domestic substantive law. In reality, however, questions of jurisdiction are different from questions of substance because of the presence of two or more independent voices. The presence of independent voices creates problems because modern choice-of-law theory purports to respect the different \"interests\" of the states whose law might be applied. But what interests do states really have? Are these subjectively determined (the interests that states think that they have) or are they objective (conceptual constructs devised by others, on behalf of and paternalistically imposed upon the state)? This is a conundrum for realists. But if the realist foundations of modern choice-of-law theory are to be respected, objective interests do not exist; jurisdictional realism must be reconfigured to avoid imposing contentious theoretical assumptions on those state decision-makers who create the law.

A long-standing issue as regards admissibility of evidence of an accused's bad character has been the need to distinguish situations where the prosecution seeks to use it to establish a propensity in them towards conduct of the kind in question in the case at hand from those where it seeks to use it for some other purpose. Indeed, for many years, the leading case, 'Makin v Attorney General for New South Wales' [1894] A.C. 57 at 65 established that reasoning via propensity - also described as disposition - was 'forbidden'. However, it was later decided in 'D.P.P. v P' [1991] 2 A.C. 447 at 460 that that mode of reasoning was permissible as long as the 'general' test for admissibility, namely that the probative value of the evidence exceeded its prejudicial effect, was satisfied.

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there's a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives-often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false-will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy. Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cybermobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Long-standing notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance between privacy and free speech, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

This book restores Aaron Burr to his place as a central figure in the founding of the American Republic. Abolitionist, proto-feminist, friend to such Indian leaders as Joseph Brant, Burr was personally acquainted with a wider range of Americans, and of the American continent, than any other Founder except George Washington. He contested for power with Alexander Hamilton and then with Thomas Jefferson on a continental scale. The book does not sentimentalize any of its three protagonists, neither does it derogate their extraordinary qualities. They were all great men, all flawed, and all three failed to achieve their full aspirations. But their struggles make for an epic tale. Written from the perspective of a historian and administrator who, over nearly fifty years in public life, has served six presidents, this book penetrates into the personal qualities of its three central figures. In telling the tale of their shifting power relationships and their antipathies, it reassesses their policies and the consequences of their successes and failures. Fresh information about the careers of Hamilton and Burr is derived from newly-discovered sources, and a supporting cast of secondary figures emerges to give depth and irony to the principal narrative.

Common private-ordering theories predict that merchants have an incentive to act honestly because if they do not, they will get a bad reputation and their future businesses will suffer. In these theories, cheating is cheating whether the cheat is big or small. But while reputation-based private ordering may constrain the big cheat, it does not necessarily constrain the small cheat because of the difficulty in discovering certain types of low-level cheating and the consequent failure of the disciplining power of reputation. Yet the small cheat presents a significant challenge to modern contracting, both between businesses and in the contracts of adhesion imposed on consumers. To encourage private law scholars to address the unique governance challenges posed by low-level cheating, this Essay describes the conditions under which low-level cheating can flourish and become widespread. It demonstrates this so-called “Cheating Pays” scenario using a historical case study in which a seventeenth-century London grocer, trading under precisely those conditions that private-ordering theories predict will incentivize honesty, not only cheated extensively but also successfully remained in business after having been caught and publicly punished. Identifying the scenarios in which cheating pays has implications for how firms use contracts and how consumers might use the courts to try to reduce opportunistic behavior.

Early modern Spain has long been viewed as having a culture obsessed with honor, where a man resorted to violence when his or his wife's honor was threatened, especially through sexual disgrace. This book-the first to closely examine honor and interpersonal violence in the era-overturns this idea, arguing that the way Spanish men and women actually behaved was very different from the behavior depicted in dueling manuals, law books, and \"honor plays\" of the period. Drawing on criminal and other records to assess the character of violence among non-elite Spaniards, historian Scott K. Taylor finds that appealing to honor was a rhetorical strategy, and that insults, gestures, and violence were all part of a varied repertoire that allowed both men and women to decide how to dispute issues of truth and reputation.