Law & Society Blog

Cory Doctorow is teaching a course on copyright, DRM, and IP policy at USC. His syllabus contains a wealth of well-chosen links, which make for a great introduction to the subject. The lectures are available for download here (podcast subscription link).Technorati Tags: IP policy, DRM, doctorow

The morality of the market is one of the most significant issues not only in ethics but also, at least since Durkheim and Weber, in sociology. As is often the case, the more pervasive a practice, the harder it is to describe and analyze. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy, in their forthcoming paper Moral Views […]

Like most people interested in social science, I am a social misfit. That is, I have various and sundry habits that upset a certain type of person: I slurp my soup, swear publically, really don’t like ironing my pants, and sometimes I even wear a horrible moustache. These are all forgivable sins, I hope. But […]

Scary that a wholesome law & order show from the 1960s can teach us a thing or two about civil liberties in 2007. So much for progress. (HT: BoingBoing)Technorati Tags: privacy

Matt Wood argues:
After just reading two articles dealing with Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, I think I can take a tentative step towards fleshing out my arguments for the role of dialogue in the definition of law. According to this helpful paper, which summarizes Habermas’s theory of communicative action (and quotes from his book […]

Commercial Aviation reports that:
Advertising in security checkpoints will be coming to an airport near you under a proposed Transportation Security Administration pilot program. … “TSA plans to launch a one-year pilot program where airport operators may enter into an agreement with vendors, who will provide divestiture bins, divestiture and composure tables, and metal-free bin return […]

More good news from New Jersey.
Amid growing unease about capital punishment and a state moratorium on executions, a legislative commission recommended today that New Jersey become the first state in more than 35 years to abolish the death penalty. With just one of its 13 members dissenting, the commission said there was “no compelling evidence” […]

Michael Glennon, one of the most thoughtful commentators on the constitutional war powers, highlights the need for Congressional re-authorization of any US military effort in Iraq in this Washington Post op-ed.
Congress in 2002 authorized imperfect war in approving the use of force in Iraq for specific, limited objectives. As those objectives are achieved, or different […]

I would dispute the claim that law has been tacitly agreed to in anything like a social contract.
To see what I mean, picture in your mind the following scenario. A resident of a small, distant, isolated island of Tikopia is fishing off the coast as he does every year. Tikopia is ecologically self-sufficient, due to […]

It seems that we can’t get enough of this timeless problem.