Search

In the abundance of studies in law and society, the need for determination of the direction and nature of the relationship between law and social change continues. Studies tackling this need, generally focus on the effect of legal change on social relationships. Approaches regarding law as an important tool for social change and studies claims that legal change reflects the social change can be considered in this regard. Such studies, while contributing to the relationship between social change and legal institutions, have certain limitations when it comes to establishing a comprehensive and holistic approach. These limitations stem from treating the relationship between law and society from a one- sided viewpoint. Departing from these limitations, the studies which also consider the effect of social change on law are especially gathered under Marxist approaches. However, in these approaches, there are areas open to criticism in dealing with the phenomenon of legal change in order not to fall into legal fetishism. In this fashion, touching upon Karl Renner, who provides an unique contribution to the field of law and society relations, can offer a fruitful discussion opportunity. Since Renner examines the impact of social and economic changes on law while reconciling his positivist approach with Marxism. His contribution to the relationship between law and society by focusing on the "change of function" of legal institutions shows that law can adapt to changing social conditions without changing its form. However, the fact that Renner was an actor in Austrian politics caused his works on the law to remain in the background and could not draw the attention it deserves, especially in Turkish literature. In this paper the possibilities offered by Renner’s approach, which is stuck between Marxism and positivism, to the debates on law and social relations are analyzed with a critical perspective, while consider his political life and the conditions he is in., Hukuk ve toplum başlığı altındaki çalışmaların çoğulluğu içerisinde toplumsal değişim ve hukuk ilişkisinin yönünün ve niteliğinin belirlenmesi ihtiyacı devam etmektedir. Bu ihtiyaca yönelen çalışmalarda genellikle hukuksal değişimin toplumsal ilişkilere etkisi dikkate alınmaktadır. Hukukun toplumsal değişimin önemli bir aracı olarak görüldüğü yaklaşımlar ve hukuksal değişimin toplumsal değişimi yansıttığına ilişkin çalışmalar bu kapsamda değerlendirilebilir. Söz konusu çalışmalar, hukuk kurumları ve toplumsal değişim ilişkisine dair önemli katkı sunsa da kapsamlı ve bütünlüklü bir yaklaşım oluşturmada belirli sınırlılıklara sahiptirler. Söz konusu sınırlılık ise hukuk ve toplum ilişkisini tek yönlü ele almaktan kaynaklanır. Bu sınırlılıklardan yola çıkıp toplumsal değişimin hukuk üzerindeki etkisinin de incelendiği çalışmalar ise özellikle Marksist yaklaşımlar altında toplanmıştır. Ancak bu yaklaşımlarda da hukuk fetişizmine düşmemek adına hukuksal değişim olgusunu ele almada eleştiriye açık alanlar söz konusudur. Bu noktada hukuk toplum ilişkisi alanına özgün bir katkı sağlayan Karl Renner’a değinmek verimli bir tartışma fırsatı sunabilir. Zira Renner, pozitivist yaklaşımını Marksizm’le uzlaştırarak toplumsal ve ekonomik değişimlerin hukuka etkisini incelemektedir. Hukuk ve toplum ilişkisine hukuk kurumlarının “işlev değişimine” odaklanarak sağladığı katkı, hukukun değişen toplumsal koşullar içinde biçimini değiştirmeden uyum sağlayabileceğini gösterir. Ancak Renner’in Avusturya siyaseti içerisinde bir aktör olması, hukuk çalışmalarının geri planda kalmasına neden olmuş ve özellikle Türkçe yazında gereken dikkati çekememiştir. Bu çalışmada Renner’in Marksizm ve pozitivizm arasında kalmış yaklaşımının, siyasal yaşamı ve içinde bulunduğu koşullar dikkate alınarak, hukuk ve toplum tartışmalarına sunduğu imkanlar eleştirel bir perspektifle analiz edilmektedir.

Comparative law and legal history show us that law is dynamic, always in continuous development, change, or mutation. This dynamic dimension has become a central concern for the comparative law scholars. The circulation of legal models in the world (e.g. legal transplant, legal transfer, legal borrowing, legal migration) is an evergreen issue. This phenomenon has provoked numerous doctrinal disputes, which have been encapsulated in complex theories on its possibilities and impossibilities. In the present article, we will not explore the many modern theories regarding legal transplantation (or under other metaphors). Instead, we will go back in time, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to explore an interesting Romanian theory that seems to have anticipated a series of modern ideas regarding the purpose, possibilities, and impossibilities of the circulation of legal models in the world. Following this approach, the main conclusion will be resumed to the idea that the Romanian theory of forms without substance can be integrated within the modern theories of legal transplant.

Over the past decades, legal historians have become more cautious when it comes to rules that in the Middle Ages and the early modern period were defined as ‘(old) customs’. Earlier optimistic appraisals as to the age of such rules have been challenged. This article argues that efforts of debunking should be combined with a more thorough analysis of the legal consciousness of past societies. It proposes to look at old municipal private law, not as a set of rules fixed by tradition, but rather as a malleable body of norms. The symbolic qualities of law were such that renewal and rephrasal could be combined with an ideology of conservation. It was perfectly possible for administrators to promote new rules as being a part of an ‘age-old law’ of the city or the land, without breaching the implicit conventions as to the qualities of law. However, as will be demonstrated further, there were limits to the agency of administrators in this regard. The codes as to the features of law marked boundaries that had to be taken seriously.

In developing countries, one in four girls is married before turning 18, with adverse consequences for their own and their children's human capital. In this paper, we investigate whether laws can affect attitudes and behaviour towards child marriage - in a context in which the laws are not strictly enforced. We do so using a randomised video-based information intervention that aimed to accelerate knowledge transmission about a new child marriage law in Bangladesh that introduced harsher punishments for facilitating early marriage. Follow-up surveys documented an increase in early marriage among treated households if the father or family elders received the information. The findings allow us to distinguish between two competing theoretical channels underlying the effect of legal change and highlight the risk of backlash against laws that contradict traditional norms and practices.

In political liberalism there is, generally speaking, a deep distrust of utopian thought. It is conceived as a blueprint for a radical reordering of the existing legal and political order. At the same time, liberal politics appears to be a rather dull affair. Compared with utopia, it seems to have less inspirational and motivational force. This chapter addresses the question of how to conceive of the relation between utopia and the rule of law. Does the rule of law completely rule out utopian thought? According to Van Klink, the rule of law depends for its survival on its ideological as well as its utopian dimension. To prevent that the rule of law is taken too much for granted as a self-evident and fixed idea, it is important to stress its utopian dimension. Conversely, its ideological stabilisation has to secure that the rule of law does not become a flee-floating fantasy.

Rather than to critique the substance of Joel Colón-Ríos’s indisputably important contribution to the scholarship on constituent power, the aim of this essay is to put in question the historiographical mode of theoretical engagement which prevails in the contemporary debates about this important concept, as well as to question its ostensible present-day significance—especially to the politically engaged projects such as Colón-Ríos’s—which, at the very least, deserves to be discussed more directly, explicitly, and systematically.

The last quarter of a century has featured a surge in interest and studies on the commons, spearheaded, of course, by the efforts of Elinor Ostrom. These efforts have problematized the once well-established paradigm of the tragedy of the commons most clearly described by Garrett Hardin in 1968. One could say that the commons, thus, have become a fundamental field of study in most social sciences. This is not the case in the field of legal scholarship (with one noticeable exception that I will discuss later), which leads me to the overarching issue of this essay, namely the difficult relationship between jurists and the commons. The phrase “difficult relationship” does not refer to an explicit antagonism, but to something even worse: complete indifference and a scandalous lack of knowledge. While my main purpose is to try to explain this sorry state of affairs, I also hope to make a more general point on the nature of law and legal change. In this sense, the commons can be considered a case-study in legal theory. The main issue of this paper is to tackle following subquestions. What is the status of commons in the Western European legal discourse? Why do most legal scholars pay such a poor attention to the growing literature on the commons in other disciplines? What factors contribute to this peculiar case of cultural deafness? What promise of improvement does the future hold? U poslednjih četvrt veka bili smo svedoci rasta interesovanja i istraživanja zajedničkih dobara koje je predvodila Elinor Ostrom. Ovi napori su doveli u pitanje prethodno ustanovljenu paradigmu tragedije zajedničkih dobara koja je najbolje izražena u radu Gareta Hardina iz 1968. godine. Moglo bi se reći da su u međuvremenu zajednička dobra postala sfera istraživanja od fundamentalne važnosti u društvenim naukama. To nije bio slučaj kada je reč o pravnoj misli (uzimajući u obzir da postoji jedan izuzetak koji će biti analiziran kasnije) i to je tema ovog eseja, naime, složeni odnos između zajedničkih dobara i pravnika. Izraz „složeni odnos“ ne treba da upućuje na otvoren antagonizam, već na nešto još gore: potpunu ravnodušnost i skandalozan nedostatak znanja. Iako je moj glavni cilj da ovde objasnim dato stanje stvari, namera mi je da takođe iznesem opštiju tvrdnju o prirodi prava i pravne promene. U tom smislu zajednička dobra se mogu uzeti kao studija slučaja u pravnoj teoriji. Ovaj članak će razmotriti sledeća potpitanja. Koji status zajednička dobra imaju u zapadno-evropskom pravnom diskursu? Zbog čega većina pravnih mislilaca obraća tako malo pažnje na rastuću literaturu o zajedničkim dobrima? Koji faktori su na delu u ovom čudnom slučaju kulturnog slepila? Da li postoje razlozi da u budućnosti dođe do promene u tom pogledu?

The practice of child marriage is ubiquitous in developing countries, where one in three girls is married before the age of 18. Although most developing countries have a legal minimum age of marriage, in practice marriage age is determined by social norms rather than the law. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that formal laws can influence social norms and marriage behaviour in a setting with weak law enforcement. We do this by administering a randomised video-based information treatment that accelerates knowledge transmission about a new child marriage law in Bangladesh. Our information treatments led to a change in participants' own attitudes and behaviour (including reported attitudes regarding appropriate marriage age and willingness to contribute to a charity that campaigns against child marriage), but did not substantially influence their beliefs about attitudes or practices prevalent in their community. Follow-up surveys conducted 5 and 10 months after the intervention show an increase in early marriage among adolescent girls within treatment households. These perverse effects are driven by households where the father and family elders were informed about the new law but are absent in households where only the mother is informed. The findings highlight a) the existence of informational frictions within housholds and b) the risk of a backlash effect against a law that contradicts traditional norms and practices.

Submitted by Maria Helena Ribeiro (helena.ribeiro@lisboa.ucp.pt) on 2021-03-16T10:55:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Teresa Ribeiro_Tese.pdf: 2364851 bytes, checksum: d5218d0efebeb343eff0309d1f6f72a3 (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Maria Helena Ribeiro (helena.ribeiro@lisboa.ucp.pt) on 2021-03-16T10:55:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Teresa Ribeiro_Tese.pdf: 2364851 bytes, checksum: d5218d0efebeb343eff0309d1f6f72a3 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2021-03-16T10:55:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Teresa Ribeiro_Tese.pdf: 2364851 bytes, checksum: d5218d0efebeb343eff0309d1f6f72a3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2020-04-30

This study investigates the optimal nature of law making under uncertainty. I focus on a case in which a harmful activity will be subjected to some regulatory measures (a standard, exposure to liability, or a corrective tax). The benefits and costs of precaution are ex-ante uncertain, and this places a risk burden on both injurers and victims. The optimal policy should, at the same time, strike a balance between benefits and costs of the measures, and attenuate the ex-ante risk. Whether measures should be made stronger or softer depends on the size and the sign of the shocks affecting the parties (positive or negative) and their disposition towards risk. With corrective taxes, it also depends on the elasticity of precautions with respect to the tax rate.

Resumo O artigo discute a importância de teorias ideais e não ideais da justiça para avaliar propostas de mudança pontual da legislação. Concordando, a esse respeito, com Sen (2006; 2009), defendo que teorias ideais (no sentido de teorias de “estado final”) não são nem necessárias nem suficientes para comparações entre sociedades imperfeitas. Isso, contudo, não significa que teorias ideais não possam ser úteis para essas comparações e, em consequência, para a avaliação de propostas de alteração do status quo. No entanto, à medida que uma teoria ideal se mostre um ponto de partida digno de consideração para as comparações relativas a alterações legislativas em circunstâncias não ideais, é preferível que a teoria em questão seja uma teoria total, isto é, que abranja a totalidade do objeto da justiça (no caso de teorias institucionalistas, como a de Rawls, a totalidade da estrutura básica da sociedade) em vez de se restringir a uma área do direito em particular. Abstract The article discusses the importance of ideal and non-ideal theories of justice for the assessment of proposals of legal reform. Agreeing, on this respect, with Sen (2006; 2009), I argue that ideal theory (in the sense of “end-state” theory) is neither necessary nor sufficient for comparisons between imperfect societies. This, however, does not mean that ideal theory may not be useful to those comparisons and, by extension, to the analysis of proposals of change. But to the extent that an ideal theory proves to be a point of departure worth considering on evaluating proposals of law amendment, it is preferable that such theory encompasses the entire scope of justice (in the case of institutionalist theories like Rawls’s, this means the basic structure of society as a whole) instead of being circumscribed to just one of the several legal areas.

From the earliest stages, the Greeks understood the distinction between legislation and day-to-day administration. They gave laws a special status and often created specific, separate procedures to enact them. In the Archaic period, specially appointed lawgivers were normally in charge of giving laws to the polis; these laws were intended to be immutable, and their stability secured through entrenchment clauses. Making laws was not considered to be among the normal tasks of the government of the polis, and there were no standard procedures to change the laws once these had been given. Assemblies in Greek city-states often enacted rules that had the force of law, but the legislative changes were not institutionally acknowledged, and the laws enacted by the lawgivers could not be changed. This gave rise to significant problems of legitimacy, and it introduced inconsistencies in the legal system of the polis, a problem that we can observe in 5th-century bce Athens. At the end of the 5th century, the Athenians introduced judicial review to vet new legislation and avoid the introduction of inconsistencies, performed a revision of the laws of the city, and finally institutionalised a distinction between nomoi (“laws,” general permanent norms) and psephismata (“decrees,” ad hoc enactments). They also created a complex new procedure, involving a board of nomothetai, to allow the demos to make new laws and change the existing ones. Similar yet not identical procedures are attested also outside Athens: Hellenistic kings often ordered the appointment of nomothetai or nomographoi to enact rules about political institutions, and nomographoi or nomothetic lawcourts are attested in various cities, with the task of “upgrading” decrees of the demos into laws, and entering them among the laws of the city.

Exploring the insight of the butterfly effect from chaos theory, this article shows how technological transformation influences legal change. The argument is developed from a sociological and a historical perspective, comparing and contrasting social customs since the seventeenth century until today and showing the transformation of criminal offenses. In societies with a strict moral code, adultery, fornication, and sodomy were sexual crimes, even if victimless. After the sexual revolution, these conducts are no longer criminal. Explaining this phenomenon, the article identifies the change of attitude towards human nudity as an important factor and considers this change of legal culture to be a consequence of technological innovations related to personal hygiene, public health, and cleanliness. The taboo against nudity persisted because bathing was not considered healthy and there were no separate bathrooms in residences until the end of the nineteenth century. Examining nudism, the possibility of divorce and human rights protection, the article emphasizes the role of technology for the cultural revolution, and of culture for legal change. Another interesting example of the relationship between law and technology comes from the development of the automobile industry and the emergence of a series of laws to regulate exhaustively individual transportation. Moreover, the invention of antibiotics altered the expectation of the sick individuals who expect to be cured and, as a consequence, affected also the practice of torts and civil liability. The flap of wings of various butterflies led to the current setting. Tendo como ponto de partida o efeito borboleta desenvolvido através da teoria do caos, este artigo evidencia como a transformação tecnológica influencia a mudança do direito. O argumento é desenvolvido a partir de uma perspectiva sociológica e histórica, comparando e contrastando os costumes sociais desde o século XVII até os dias de hoje e como os tipos criminais foram sendo transformados. Em sociedades com código moral rígido, adultério, fornicação e sodomia eram crimes sexuais, ainda que não houvesse uma vítima. Após a revolução sexual, tais condutas não são criminosas. Explicando tal fenômeno, o artigo identifica a mudança de atitude com relação à nudez humana como fator importante e atribui essa mudança na cultura jurídica como sendo uma consequência de inovações tecnológicas relacionadas a higiene pessoal, saúde pública e limpeza. O tabu da nudez persistiu porque tomar banho não era considerado saudável e inexistiam banheiros separados nas residências até meados do século XIX. Examinado o nudismo, a possibilidade de divórcio e a defesa dos direitos humanos, o artigo enfatiza o papel da tecnologia na revolução cultural e da cultura para a mudança jurídica. Outro exemplo interessante da relação entre tecnologia e direito provem do desenvolvimento da indústria automobilística e do surgimento de uma série de leis para regular exaustivamente o transporte individual. Além disso, o advento dos antibióticos alterou a expectativa de doentes que esperam ser curados e, por consequência, afetou também a prática da responsabilidade civil. O bater de asas de diversas borboletas conduziram ao cenário atual.

The aim of this dissertation is to illuminate the interplay between female agency and legal regulation in Sweden during the period 1760-1860. The material chosen for the study relates to matters concerning women that were brought before the Judiciary Inspection, the highest legal authority in Sweden. From its central position in the state hierarchy, this court was an arena in which the central power could identify and find solutions to problems important for the stability and development of society. The study identifies issues that encouraged women to bring proceedings before the court, or prompted other parties to bring women to court. The dissertation has analysed the actions taken and arguments made in these cases by women, their counterparts, and court representatives, in relation to the regulations or the absence of regulations in each particular situation. This has shown the room for manoeuvre that could be achieved, and how the women could achieve it – in terms of right to manage property, economic agency and debt responsibility, finding ways to support themselves and their families, or affirming their positions as mothers and mistresses of households. In this way, the dissertation illuminates the freedom of agency in practice that has often been seen as contradictory in a strictly patriarchal society like early modern Sweden. The dissertation also traces some important changes over time, including the increasingly diverse class background of litigants over the period in question, shifts in understandings of property, work, family, and the meaning of legal majority. The central diachronic claims are firstly that the legal system shifted over time from one primarily based upon status, circumstance, and local opinion to one based on formalized understanding of the law founded upon contract and clear legal definitions, and that this had important implications for women’s room for manoeuvre in the courts and in society. Secondly, that the negotiation process contributed to historical change by forcing solutions to contradictions and specifying terms of property ownership and legal majority.

Tegengren, Gunilla, 2015: Sverige och Nordlanden. Förvaltning och nordlig expansion, 1250-1550. (Sweden and the Northern Provinces. Central and provincial governance, administration and territorial expansion in the north, 1250-1550). Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Written in Swedish, with an English summary. Since the nineteenth century Sweden has been described in research as a kingdom on the European periphery whose development during the Middle Ages was determined by specifically national characteristics and placed it with in its European context. More recent international scholarship emphasises the common characteristics of the history of the European states. An entire system of cultural events, through the dominance of the papacy, was copied and permeated throughout kingdoms and principalities. This thesis utilizes a systemic perspective and applies the over-arching hypothesis that social developments in Sweden during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries followed the same patterns that underpinned social change and territorial expansion in other peripheries of Europe. The thesis aims to explain the state formation process through the Swedish position as a realm within the papacy. This thesis examines the hypothesis that the Swedish state formation process can be understood from the territorial management and the administrative systems used. General results are linked to Max Weber’s definition of the territorial state in which the state has a legal system with well-planned and rationally established rules for administration and taxation both in the core area, and as a method of territorial expansion. Such systems have been distinguished in the medieval sources, analyzed and explained in this study. This thesis shows that the systems for mark planning and assessment were not only used in the core area of the realm, but also as the means when the Swedish Crown annexed the northern parts of Sweden and Finland in the fourteenth century. The study is conducted on two chronological levels. The first part examines the period between 1250 and 1297 when a new legal system was prepared and finally enshrined by the king. The source material primarily consists of the Law of Uppland and diplomas. The second part examines the period between 1297 and 1550 in which the source material consists of the Laws of Uppland and Hälsingland, diplomas, land registers, and taxation documents. Based on data from the land registry, the medieval taxation in the northern provinces has been reconstructed and followed over 250 years. This thesis brings to the fore valuable knowledge of the state formation in Sweden and gives the provinces of Nordlanden a chronological history that has been unknown until now. Den svenska statsbildningen är ett omdiskuterat historiskt problem. Man har länge hävdat att förutsättningar för en svensk statsförvaltning saknades under medeltiden och blev möjlig först på Gustav Vasas tid. I den här avhandlingen undersöks statsbildningen från ett förvaltningsperspektiv och visar helt nya resultat. Folkungatiden 1250 – 1389 var en period av stark förnyelse då en centraliserad statsförvaltning byggdes upp och staten införde ett system för individuell beskattning av böndernas jord. Under denna period expanderade Sverige också mot norr och de hälsingska och bottniska landskapen anslöts till det svenska riket. Från ett förvaltningshistoriskt perspektiv var det Upplandslagen och dess administrativa ordningar som kom att ligga till grund för all senare förvaltningsutveckling i vårt land. Upplandslagen var höjdpunkten i den omvälvande politiska utvecklingsprocess som påbörjades av Birger jarl och gjorde Sverige till en territoriell monarki bland andra i medeltidens europeiska samhälle.

This chapter explores the development of ideas about legislation and legislative procedures in ancient Athens. It isolates in Solon and in the Archaic lawgivers an ideology of legislation that mistrusted legal change. This ideology of legislation was still dominant throughout the fifth century BCE, but progressively came into conflict with democratic ideas and practices. The chapter examines how this conflict played out in the oligarchic revolutions and the democratic restorations at the end of the fifth century, and then discusses the creation of nomothesia procedures that reconciled the need for legal change with that for consistent and stable laws. The last part of the chapter follows the workings of these procedures throughout the fourth century BCE, and their progressive disintegration after the Lamian War.

Google News is an unusual case where the dominant firm of the market for searches allegedly abuses its position by using news which publishers consider as subject to their copyright. Publishers claim that there is an antitrust violation and Google’s service diverts users on its sites, reducing traffic for competitors. All such allegations hinge on the issue of snippets as really works of authorship, as such protected. Several interpretations of copyright laws are possible to provide an answer. Some states have responded by enacting new legislation and introducing neighboring rights on fragments of news, thus preventing Google from freely using headlines and excerpts for it purposes. Where protection was reinforced, Google’s reaction was to discontinue the service, while in other situations it entered into private arrangements with online publishers, thus confirming that in an evolutionary perspective copyright laws only set the stage for efficient solutions that are found by market players in the shadow of the law.

In 2010, Portugal became the eighth country worldwide to approve same-sex civil marriage. Such legal change is a recent addition to the achievements that have put Portugal at the forefront of sexual citizenship rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Europe. This article investigates the political path of LGBT rights in this Southern European, majority Catholic, and post-dictatorship country, exploring the role of the Portuguese LGBT movement in contributing to change. This research highlights how the state is willing to compensate – via legal recognition – queer sexual encounters to the extent that they willingly embrace the dominant values of respectability and normalcy. In this respect, the approval of same-sex marriage offers the opportunity to discuss issues of agency, citizenship, recognition, and normativity. The paper begins by contextualizing sexual citizenship in democratic Portugal, providing an analytical account of the LGBT movement. In the second section, I suggest that a ‘politics of containment’ has characterized much of recent public discussion about sexual and reproductive rights, and I provide some examples. In the last section, I discuss the political and cultural implications of same-sex marriage law, with a particular focus on issues of normalization and homonationalism – that is how the state can actively contribute to the creation of the acceptable ‘normal gay’ with the compliance of LGBT activism.

Mi tesis utiliza la noción de contrato relacional para explicar pautas aparentemente contraintuitivas de organización vertical. El primer capitulo muestra que, cuando existen externalidades entre empresas, la integración vertical reduce la tentación de sus ejecutivos de bajar el esfuerzo, haciendo sus promisas de cooperar más creibles. El segundo capitulo muestra que, cuando una regulación europea prohibió los territorios exclusivos en la distribución de automóviles, los fabricantes impusieron estándares de servicio y precios maximos, estos últimos para reducir la tentación de los concesionarios de romper pactos informales para no competir. El tercer capitulo muestra que, pese a la asignación simétrica de derechos de decisión en sus contratos de franquicia, los fabricantes de coches dictan estándares a los concesionarios, remunerandolos con descuentos discrecionales. Eso sugiere que los fabricantes son delegados informalmente para tomar decisiones, y usan sus podéres contractuales como recurso extremo contra la tentación de los concesionarios de rechazarlas., My thesis applies the notion of relational contracts to explain seemingly counterintuitive vertical arrangements. The first chapter shows that, in the presence of spillovers between an upstream and a downstream firm, vertical integration reduces the downstream manager's present gains from shirking, making her promise to cooperate with the upstream firm credible. The second chapter shows that, after a European regulation prohibited exclusive territories, car dealership contracts switched to a mix of service standards and price ceilings, and argues that price ceilings were introduced to reduce the dealers' short-run profits from reneging on an informal "no-compete" agreement. The third chapter shows that, despite the even allocation of decision rights in dealership contracts, car manufacturers dictate performance standards ex post, and reward dealers through discretionary discounts. This suggests manufacturers are informally delegated to set standards, and use formal decision rights as a last resort against the dealers' temptation to overturn their decisions.

This report analyzes the main reasons or interests that have prevented some recent judicial and legal reforms in Honduras and Bolivia from becoming effective. It focuses on the reasons why criminal justice reforms were unable to put an end to the misuse of pre-trial detention. The report also includes a study of some of the reasons that have prevented criminal procedure code reforms from reducing the perception of impunity prevailing in both countries. With respect to the reforms of judicial selection mechanisms, it focuses on the interests that have prevented the public perception of judicial independence from improving in spite of the implementation of those reforms. The report includes an annex to Section 1, consultations with civil society in Honduras. Section 2 discusses civil and commercial justice in Paraguay. Section 3 discusses vested interests in legal and judicial reform projects in Guyana.

Network, organizational, and policy learning literatures indicate that when interest groups face failure they will seek out alternative ideas and strategies that will enhance their potential for future success. Research with regard to interest groups and legal change has found that interest groups, using arguments that were once accepted as the legal standard for Supreme Court decisions, were unwilling or unable to alter their arguments when the Court reversed its position on these legal standards. This research project examined the conflicting findings of these literatures. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework as a guide, this project studied the separationist advocacy coalition in cases regarding state aid to elementary and secondary sectarian schools from 1971 to 2002. The legal briefs filed by members of the separationist advocacy coalition with the Court were examined using content analysis to track changes in their legal arguments. Elite interviews were then conducted to gain an understanding of the rationale for results found in the content analysis. The research expectation was that the separationist advocacy coalition would seek out and incorporate into their briefs new and innovative legal arguments to promote their policy goals. The research results demonstrated that prior to legal change interest groups did seek out and incorporate new legal arguments borrowed from other fora and sought to expand or reinterpret established legal arguments to better aid their policy goals. The changes that seemed to have the potential for adoption by the Court were quickly incorporated into the briefs of the other members of the coalition. Following legal change interest groups continued to analyze the decisions of the Court in order to seek out the best possible legal arguments to use in their briefs; however, the main focus of legal arguments examined and used by the coalition narrowed to those cited by the swing justice in the funding cases. Two innovative arguments were developed, but were either ignored or considered unsuitable, and were not used by the other members of the coalition. Counter to this project's research expectations new and innovative legal arguments were not adopted by the coalition. As the Court discontinued the use of various legal arguments the coalition quickly responded to these changes and dropped those obsolete legal arguments. Therefore, contrary to prior research, the interest groups and the coalition altered their arguments following legal change. Only those interest groups who no longer participated in coalition discussions reverted back to using pre-legal change arguments. Learning continued to occur in the coalition following legal change; however, the focus of analysis and the pool of arguments deemed worthy of use narrowed considerably. Ph. D.