1,720,956 research outputs found
Democracy is Fragile: Extreme Partisan Polarization Has Become Rampant in the World
Full text linkThe status of democracy once seemed irrelevant in discussions of government in the United States and other long-established democracies. However, with the rise of extreme partisan polarization and the contempt that each party shows for the other, maintaining constitutional democracy is now a major concern for people in America. There is no longer any ideological overlap between the most conservative Democrats and the most liberal Republicans. In the words of Professor Daryl J. Levinson and Professor Richard H. Pildes of NYU School of Law, the “separation of powers” has been replaced by a “separation of parties.” The actions of the Trump administration have only added fuel to the fire, with the former President popularizing the term “fake news” to berate the media, tip toeing the line of violating the right to freedom of the press. Added with the recent attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol, people have been uneasy about the status of a true democratic government. While a democracy-ending emergency has not happened in America, Trump’s repeated attacks on the media, the judiciary, and Congress have left Americans concerned about a constitutional crisis. The future of constitutional democracy is also at serious risk in many other parts of the world
Unstoppable GameStop: The Legislature’s Gap in Regulating Open Market Manipulations
Full text linkWhen imagining a modern David and Goliath story, one would not normally think of a group of Wall Street hedge funds versus individuals on a forum on Reddit.com. In January of 2021 though, many headlines made this comparison, as online traders frantically purchased GameStop stock (“GME”) and drove the prices sky-high, while large hedge funds faced up to 1.3 billion to a multi-billion dollar corporation valued at $21 billion.
This paper argues that there is a deficiency in the legislation in terms of what constitutes “open market manipulation.” Open market manipulation refers to the act of manipulating the market for intentional price-movement and profit through facially legal means. Contrary to traditional manipulation that is regulated by Section 10b, open market manipulators largely falls through the cracks of SEC enforcement, as it is difficult to prove that the manipulator did “bad acts”, such as nondisclosure or fraud. This is kind of manipulation that the GameStop saga brought to light, with both small-scale and institutional investors partaking in the scheme. Although the GameStop instance is perhaps the first of its kind, without legislative consequences, it is likely that investors will repeat this process of artificial inflation and cause significant economic and social harm
The Bill That Disrupted the Gig Economy: AB-5 and Uber’s Troubling Response
Full text linkTaken effect on January 1st, California’s Assembly Bill 5 (“AB-5”) has created a great deal of controversy. Supporters of the law praise it for its attack on inequality in the workplace, while gig-based companies, like Uber and Postmates, have filed complaints, alleging that it is unconstitutional. Signed into law in September 2019, the statute codifies the ruling of Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a decision by the California Supreme Court that restricts employers from labeling its workers as independent contractors. In Dynamex, the court created a new standard of presumption that all workers are employees, ensuring gig economy workers are entitled to benefits such as workers’ compensation and minimum wage. AB-5 places the burden on the employer to adhere to the newly adopted “ABC test” before a worker may be labeled as an independent contractor
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Privity vs. Proximity: The Supreme Court’s Erroneous Reading of the Illinois Brick Doctrine in Apple Inc. v. Pepper
Full text linkThe rapid development of the digital marketplace led the United States Supreme Court to revisit the forty-two year old antitrust precedent set in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois. In Illinois Brick, the Supreme Court decided that under Section 4 of the Clayton Act, direct purchasers have standing to sue for treble damages due to unfair business practices, while indirect purchasers do not. Over four decades later, in Apple Inc. v. Pepper, the Court reevaluated this doctrine. This time, the Court had to determine which party received the “direct purchaser” status in a situation where plaintiffs bought apps from third-party developers in Apple’s App store at prices set by the developers.
iPhone users argued that Apple unlawfully monopolized the retail market for the sale of apps, setting higher-than-competitive prices and locking consumers into buying apps only from Apple. Apple asserted a statutory standing defense under Illinois Brick, arguing that the plaintiffs did not have standing because they were not direct purchasers from Apple. The Court found that iPhone users who purchased apps from the App Store were direct purchasers because they purchased apps directly from Apple and thus have standing under Illinois Brick to sue for damages due to alleged antitrust violations under Section 4 of the Clayton Act.
This Comment proposes that the Apple majority should have read the Illinois Brick Doctrine through the traditional proximate cause analysis of the Clayton Act. In its primary context, antitrust law was considered a codification of the common law, and any conduct that restrained trade was considered on par with other harmful torts. Accordingly, under the tort concept of proximate cause, the correct plaintiff with standing to bring suit for damages is the one most proximately harmed by the antitrust conduct. iPhone users have a causal link between Apple and themselves due to purchasing apps directly from the App Store and are thus directly harmed by Apple’s alleged monopolistic conduct. Moreover, by declaring that iPhone users were direct purchasers under the Illinois Brick Doctrine because they contracted with Apple, the majority confirmed a pass-on theory that was rejected by both Illinois Brick and Hanover Shoe. The Illinois Brick opinion was concerned with tracing complex economic adjustments and stated that pass-on cases would allow for apportionment of the recovery throughout the distribution chain and increase the overall costs of recovery. Under a proximate cause analysis, this complexity would be eliminated, as the Court may compute damages through a comparison of markets, rather than estimating the amounts passed on at each stage of the distribution chain
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