The Supreme Court's recent Eighth Amendment death penalty case law is in disarray, and the confusion is symptomatic of a larger problem in constitutional doctrine. In Baze v. Rees and Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court approached the challenged state policies with vastly different levels of deference. Though the Court purported to apply longstanding Eighth Amendment tests in both cases, Baze was h...

This paper develops a theory of the firm in which a firm’s centralized asset ownership and low-powered incentives give a manager ‘interpersonal authority’ over employees (in a world with differing priors). The paper derives such interpersonal authority as an equilibrium phenomenon. One key result is that a manager’s control over critical assets – through its effect on the level of outside optio...

The principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN)—the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—adjudicates interstate disputes and issues advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies. The Court has contributed to the peaceful resolution of disputes by delivering justice in a variety of issue areas including territorial sovereignty, marit...

Digital signatures are only enjoying a gradual and reluctant acceptance, despite the long existence of the relevant legal and technical frameworks. One of the major drawbacks of client-generated digital signatures is the requirement for effective and secure management of the signing keys and the complexity of the cryptographic operations that must be performed by the signer. Outsourcing digital...

NOTE: This position paper has been coordinated among the software specialists of certification authorities from the United States, Europe, and Canada. However, it does not constitute official policy or guidance from any of the authorities. This document is provided for educational and informational purposes only and should be discussed with the appropriate certification authority when consideri...

Certificate transparency (CT) is an elegant mechanism designed to detect when a certificate authority (CA) has issued a certificate incorrectly. Many CAs now support CT and it is being actively deployed in browsers. However, a number of privacy-related challenges remain. In this paper we propose practical solutions to two issues. First, we develop a mechanism that enables web browsers to audit ...

BACKGROUND Licensed physicians in Alberta are required to participate in the Physician Achievement Review (PAR) program every 5 years, comprising multi-source feedback questionnaires with confidential feedback, and practice visits for a minority of physicians. We wished to identify and classify issues requiring change or improvement from the family practice visits, and the responses to advice. ...

If an antitrust authority chooses policies to maximize the number of successfully prosecuted cartels, when do those policies also serve to minimize the number of cartels that form? When the detection and prosecution of cartels is inherently difficult, we find that an antitrust authority’s policies minimize the number of cartels, as is socially desirable. But when the detection and prosecution o...