Consider a type of argument that is familiar in legal scholarship, such a commonplace in fact that its structure may lurk unnoticed in the background by the reader. The argument proceeds like this: (1) Here is some legal doctrine or rule; (2) courts and scholars (or at least my rivals) tend to think that its point, rationale, purpose, or function is X—that is, the doctrine is “all about” X; (3)...

We can observe and measure how legal decision makers use formal legal authorities, but there is no way to empirically test the determinative capacity of legal doctrine itself. Yet discussions of empirical studies of judicial behavior sometimes conflate judges’ attention to legal rules with legal rules determining outcomes. Doctrinal determinacy is not the same thing as legal predictability. The...

A recent consensus has emerged within peace operations doctrine validating “robust” or “assertive” peacekeeping as an effective mechanism to intervene in complex and volatile intrastate conflicts. The assertion of the validity of “robust peacekeeping” is problematic due to a lack of empirical evidence supporting the application of this management tool. Yet the similarity between the context and...

The state action doctrine receives relatively little attention in the Federal Trade Commission/Department of Justice 2004 report on competition in the health care sector. Not surprisingly, the report focuses primarily on urging states to reconsider specific laws that tend to restrict competition in health care markets but that are clearly shielded by the state action doctrine. Relatively little...

Since the beginning of nineteenth century combat simulations are used in military training. It’s necessary to involve lots of military to these trainings occur reliably. In the late 1940s the idea of computational agents was developed in artificial intelligence and showed as an excellent tool to reduce the amount of personnel involved in combat simulations. Agents perceive the environment where...

social conditions. Indeed, growing nationalist activities in the twentieth century led the government of India to operate its medical policies with and through this plural structure up to independence. Others might wish to paint a different picture in which Western medicine and the European model was both more dominant and more contested, yet Bala offers considerable food for thought and new id...

geopolitical imagination, by definition, is the competition between powers in forming individuals’, institutions’ and political factors’ perception of the characteristics and contents of geographical space, on the basis of their intended interests. in this article, as a case study, the us perception of the :union: of soviet socialist republics during the cold war era is analysed. the authors ar...