When contemporary commentators decry what they describe as growing threats to “judicial independence,” they typically invoke “judicial independence” as a normative ideal—an institutional virtue. That virtue is the capacity of courts to protect individual rights, to police structural limits on governmental power, and to decide individual disputes based solely on the applicable law and the factua...

At least since the time of Popper, scientists have understood that science provides falsification, but not “proof.” In the world of environmental and technological controversies, however, many observers continue to call precisely for “proof,” often under the guise of “scientific certainty.” Closer examination of real-world disputes suggests that such calls may reflect not just a fundamental mis...

Periods in which the costs of personal injury litigation and liability insurance have risen dramatically have often provoked calls for reform of the tort system, and medical malpractice is no exception. One proposal for fundamental reform made during several of these volatile periods has been to relocate personal injury disputes from the tort system to an alternative, administrative forum. In t...

End-of-life decision-making is a complex process that can be extremely challenging. We describe a 42-year-old woman in an irreversible coma without an advance directive. The case serves to illustrate the complications that can occur in end-of-life decision-making and challenges in resolving difficult futility disputes. We review the role of advance directives in planning end-of-life care, the r...

Assuming a position as broker between disconnected interests is one way for an interest group to influence the making of federal health policy. This study demonstrates how groups use their connections with political parties and lobbying coalitions to augment their brokerage positions and enhance their influence over policy making. Evidence is drawn from statistical analysis of 263 interviews wi...

Conventional wisdom suggests that, as the value of a natural resource rises, private property will emerge. The Ngwa and other Igbo groups of Nigeria, however, curtailed private rights over palm trees in response to the palm produce trade of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I present a game between property owners and potential thieves in which an increase in the price of a natural ...

This article explores how online multiplayer digital games are used as a venue for the negotiation of intellectual property rights. Recent disputes between players and creators are contributing to both a shift in contemporary notions about the nature and limits of copyright and a growing relationship between virtual leisure and real-world economics. A brief overview of the debate as it has been...

The emerging Information Highways offer a huge potential for carrying public information services thanks to their pervasive and immediate accessibility. The Internet is currently seen as the most promising vehicle for the implementation of these new services. Most of the basic security problems inhibiting the safe use of the network are close to being solved as discussed in the previous issue o...

Straw men play a major role in the debate over racial disparity in American medicine. Most have been deployed by the disparities-denying right, but progressives intent on "outing" racism have sent forth their share. This essay flushes out the straw men while attempting to understand the competing moral premises that drive the politics of health care disparity. At bottom, arguments about the sco...

Recently developed models of fairness can explain a wide variety of seemingly contradictory facts. One of the most controversial and yet unresolved issues in the modeling of fairness preferences concerns the behavioral relevance of fairness intentions. Intuitively, fairness intentions seem to play an important role in economic relations, political struggles, and legal disputes but there is surp...