Prisoners as Living Organ Donors

This chapter considers the special case in which a prisoner seeks to serve as a living donor and what lessons can be learned from human subjects protections for research participants given that both activities are done with the primary goal to benefit third parties. In the federal regulations that codify human subjects protections in the US (45 CFR 46), there are additional protections enumerated for research on prisoners. Current Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons policy allows prisoners to serve as living donors but only for first-degree relatives. This chapter describes what special considerations should be assessed for prisoners to ethically serve as potential living donors using a vulnerabilities approach adapted from the human research subjects protection literature. The donor transplant team (living donor advocacy team) needs both a living donor advocate and a prisoner liaison to ensure that the potential prisoner-donor satisfactorily addresses the vulnerabilities faced by prisoners.

A critical analysis of the inefficacy of Court-Annexed Mediation (CAM) in South Africa – lessons from Nigeria

As a result of defects in the South African civil justice system, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development introduced voluntary court-annexed mediation (CAM) in the magistrates’ courts in 2014. CAM was chosen under the broader need for greater access to justice because it has the potential to make dispute resolution efficient, amicable, and affordable. It can, therefore, contribute to access to justice for all members of society. Since the amendment of the Magistrates’ Court Rules to provide for CAM, the uptake of mediation in terms of the CAM system has unfortunately been inadequate. The aim of this article is to identify reasons for the inefficacy of CAM since its implementation. We use normative research to critically analyse existing court rules and authority. We conclude that there are several reasons for CAM’s inefficacy which are elucidated in the main text. It is important to understand these reasons, as the legislature presents CAM as a mechanism to improve access to justice. From this platform, we evaluate the mechanisms for court-connected alternative dispute resolutions provided by the Nigerian Multi-Door Courthouse (MDC) system. This reveals policies and practices that could potentially improve the efficacy of CAM in South Africa, as these relate to the factors identified as impediments to the optimal functioning of CAM in our civil justice system. As such, we identify valuable lessons that can be learned from this comparison. Building hereon, and on the conclusions reached elsewhere in the article, we postulate that the mediation scheme, as contemplated by Rule 41A of the Uniform Rules of Court (as applied in the superior courts), should also be implemented in the magistrates’ courts. The article concludes that improving CAM in South Africa is of critical importance to advancing access to justice and departing from a culture of conventional adversarial dispute resolution.

Federal Responses, 1984–2014

The chapter analyzes significant federal attempts to challenge pornography production and distribution in 1984–2014. The empirical, harm-based legal argument of the 1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography and its endorsement of the MacKinnon-Dworkin civil rights ordinance are assessed. The million-dollar P.R. campaign to discredit the Commission’s work is discussed. Congressional civil rights bills introduced in 1984–1992 are examined, including amendments by Senators Heflin, Specter, and Biden that watered down the bills’ potential. Renewed Department of Justice efforts in 2002–2014 to indict high-profile producers/distributors of violent and degrading pornography under obscenity statutes are studied. Their legal concepts of obscenity and contemporary community standards, and the documented desensitization to women’s subordination fueled by pornography, are shown to exclude from legal action all but the most extreme materials. The strategy’s underlying frailty is exposed through an analysis of its constitutional litigation. The chapter concludes by comparing the obscenity approach with the civil rights approach and presenting alternative combinations.

The Presidency During the Trump Era and Beyond

This chapter explores the many ways in which Trump abused the powers of his office to create what it calls a Madisonian nightmare. Trump’s abuses of power included his efforts (1) to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election; (2) to gain personal, political advantages from Ukraine and other countries while carrying out his official duties as president; (3) to obstruct the exercise of Congress’s impeachment and other investigatory powers; (4) to push the Department of Justice to investigate his political enemies and to protect his political allies from the enforcement of federal law; (5) to punish sanctuary jurisdictions for refusing to help implement the administration’s harsh immigration policies; and (6) to defy Congress by reallocating funds to pay for a border wall despite congressional disapproval of such action. These abuses of power show why it is crucial for progressives going forward to prioritize the reining in of presidential power in domestic affairs as a political issue, adding it to traditional liberal concerns such as economic justice and civil rights protections. The chapter ends with specific suggestions on how Congress and the courts can constitutionally limit the powers of the presidency in domestic affairs in ways that can help deter the types of repeated and dangerous presidential abuses of power that the nation experienced during the Trump era.

The New Vertical Merger Guidelines: Muddying the Waters

The new U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Vertical Merger Guidelines focus on how vertical mergers are likely to affect static pricing incentives. While vertical mergers can create incentives to increase prices, they can also provide incentives to decrease prices. Which of the possible outcomes is likely to occur depends on details that are generally difficult to measure. Potential competition between dominant firms, the theory of potential harm to competition that the 1984 Department of Justice Merger Guidelines stressed, remains a more compelling rationale for blocking vertical mergers than the likely effect on static pricing incentives.

Accounting-Based Brand Scandals and the Implications for Firm-Level Advertising Spending

This study examines strategic firm-level advertising behavior around accounting-based brand scandal events. This analysis is guided by propositions presented in the brand scandal and marketing-finance literatures regarding firm response to brand scandal events. While, recent findings from the marketing-finance literature show that managers tend to reduce advertising when anticipating the release of negative information, this response is contrary to the established support and recommendation from the extant brand scandal literature. This inconsistency suggests that firms treat product-based brand scandal events different from accounting-based brand scandal events. A sample of firms accused of financial misreporting by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and US Department of Justice between 1977 and 2010 is used to examine the central research question and hypotheses regarding the relationship between accounting-based brand scandals and firm-level advertising spending. The results of this analysis provide empirical support for the relevance of advertising expenditures to firm’s approach to reputation management strategies in the wake of accounting-based brand scandals.

6. Who enforces the law?

‘Who enforces the law?’ identifies who enforces competition and antitrust laws. In most countries, competition and antitrust laws can be utilized by the public enforcer (the competition agency) that is tasked with maintaining a competitive environment, or by private entities that use the competition provisions to protect their commercial interests, or to claim damages for loss caused by violation of competition law. In the US, at the federal level, two agencies share responsibility for competition enforcement. These are the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition (FTC) and The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). Meanwhile, EU law grants the European Commission primary responsibility for enforcing EU competition laws.

Vertical Mergers and Input Foreclosure Lessons from the AT&T/Time Warner Case

This article offers a practical guide to analyzing vertical mergers using the general approach to input foreclosure and raising rivals’ costs that is described in the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines that were issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The step-by-step analysis described here draws lessons from how that theory of harm played out in the lone vertical merger case that has been litigated by the antitrust agencies in recent decades: the 2018 challenge by the Department of Justice to the merger between AT&T and Time Warner. I testified in court as the DOJ’s economic expert in that case. I explain here how to quantify the increase in rivals’ costs and the elimination of double marginalization that are caused by a vertical merger and how to evaluate their net effect on downstream customers. I also explain how this economic analysis fits into the three-step burden-shifting approach that the courts apply to mergers under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. Based on my experience in the AT&T/Time Warner case, I identify a number of shortcomings of the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines.

A perfect storm: how high levels of risk and weak internal controls resulted in violations of the foreign corrupt practices act

Theoretical basis This case is based on Weatherford International’s settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Both the SEC and the DOJ were critical of Weatherford for its violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and for its “inadequate internal controls.” This case explores the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations and issues related to internal controls. Research methodology Case study. Case overview/synopsis This case is based on Weatherford International’s settlement with the SEC and the Department of Justice. Weatherford provided equipment and services in the oil and gas industry. Because international markets were growing faster than domestic markets, Weatherford made a strategic decision to pursue growth in international markets. The oil and gas industry has high levels of operating risk as did the countries that Weatherford decided to pursue operations in. However, despite the decision to take on additional risk, Weatherford failed to implement adequate systems of internal controls. The title of the case “A Perfect Storm” refers to Weatherford’s trifecta of operating in an industry with high levels of corruption risk, countries with high levels of corruption risk and failing to implement adequate internal controls despite those high operating risks (Department of Justice, 2013). Weatherford was ultimately assessed a $152m penalty for its violations of the FCPA that included bribery, volume discounts, improper payments and kickbacks. Complexity academic level Undergraduate and graduate auditing classes.