Lawyers In Countries Research Articles

Nigeria's Adoption of Robotic Lawyers: Legal and Socio-Economic Challenges

<div><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="left" valign="top"><p>Technological advancement has greatly enhanced the global environment, it has improved every facet of the global industry. Currently in Nigeria, the Legal Profession has taken a bold dive by incorporating the use of technology in enhancing the practice of law. However, the current innovation of robotic lawyers in most countries may seem to be consistent with their legal systems. In this regard, it suffices to opine that given the fact that Nigeria is a developing country, there are legal and socio-economic issues that may affect or truncate the adoption of a robotic lawyer in Nigeria. It is in this regard that this study adopted a hybrid method of research in ascertaining the relevance of robotic lawyers, and the legal and socio-economic issues. Questionnaires were distributed to 305 respondent residents in Nigeria. The study found that the current trend of robotic lawyers is quite impressive, however, the nomenclature of law concerning the study and practice of Law in Nigeria does not recognize a robotic lawyer. Furthermore, some socio-economic issues such as internet fraudster, unemployment, insecurity, and poor maintenance culture may pose a challenge to the adoption of a robotic lawyer in Nigeria. In this regard, it was therefore concluded and recommended that for a smooth adoption of robotic lawyers in Nigeria, there is a need for legal approval and streamlining their roles to mere advisory to a client, training of Nigerian lawyers and judges to enhance the legal profession.</p></td></tr></tbody></table></div>

Fayyum Tribesmen and Country Lawyers: A 5th/11th-Century Arabic Sale of Guardianship Rights Concerning Ṭalīt

Fayyum Tribesmen and Country Lawyers: A 5th/11th-Century Arabic Sale of Guardianship Rights Concerning Ṭalīt

Rising from its ruins? The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal

The Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was established to ensure adherence to and the proper interpretation of the provisions of the SADC Treaty and its subsidiary instruments, and to adjudicate upon such disputes as might be referred to it. However, since its establishment, it has had a troubled history. After the rulings it made against the Government of Zimbabwe in the landmark Campbell land seizures case, the Tribunal's operations were unceremoniously suspended. This was followed by a process to revise its mandate, one that ultimately condemned it to paralysis and ruin. The new 2014 Protocol on the Tribunal, meant to revise the mandate of the Tribunal to confine it to hearing disputes involving states only, has been criticised as an attempt to undermine the rule of law and human rights in the region. Since the adoption of this 2014 Protocol by the SADC Summit, stakeholders have mobilised regionally to resist its ratification by member states. In particular, lawyers in SADC countries are embarking on legal petitions to reverse the Protocol and promote the revival of the Tribunal in terms of its old mandate. So far, there have been victories in these cases in two influential SADC member states, South Africa and Tanzania. However, it remains important to assess the significance of these developments. As such, the article raises the question: Is the Tribunal rising from its ruins?

Training of lawyers in Ukraine: problems and prospects of improvement

The article examines the problems and prospects for improving the training of lawyers in Ukraine. It is emphasized that the current state of Ukrainian legal education is close to critical: the number of law graduates is much higher than the market demand, entrants show low results in entrance exams for law and employers are dissatisfied with their level of professional knowledge.
 Training of lawyers in Ukraine is carried out in the "degree" form: the possibility of obtaining legal education in educational degrees "junior specialist", "specialist", "junior bachelor", "professional junior bachelor", "bachelor", "master". In the introductory campaign of 2021, 286 Ukrainian educational institutions opened their doors to lawyers: 245 – "classical", which are subordinated to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; 25 – "departmental", which are subordinated to the central executive bodies; 16 – private. It is departmental educational institutions that received 61.8% of the total state order of bachelors in the specialty 081 "Law", which significantly exceeds the amount received by "classical" educational institutions. The authors believe that this approach is unfair to entrants in law inconsistent with the provisions of Part 4 of Article 53 of the Constitution of Ukraine: "Citizens have the right to receive free higher education in state and municipal educational institutions on a competitive basis". This necessitates the improvement of the provisions of the Conditions of Admission to Legal Specialties to ensure justice as an important component of the rule of law.
 In recent years, Ukraine has been trying to find and implement an effective training model that would optimize and significantly improve the professional level of future lawyers, meet international standards and practices, could ensure the competitiveness of the best graduates and their employment. According to the Concept for the Development of Legal Education, this is seen as a model of "end-to-end master's degree" – a five-year training program for lawyers with a master's degree immediately after completing general secondary education (no bachelor's degree).
 According to the results of the study, the authors emphasize the urgent need to improve national educational legislation, taking into account the positive experience of training lawyers in foreign countries and its adaptation to international standards and practices.

Формирование профессиональных корпораций юристов в странах Европы

The article analyzes the problem of formation communities of lawyers in European countries. The authors summarized the experience of creating professional legal communities in Great Britain, France and Germany. An analysis of this issue in the direction of the history of law and the state is important for the development of civil society institutions in the modern world.

Could traditional dispute resolution mechanisms be the solution in post-colonial developing countries – particularly in Africa?

This paper deals with the possible role that traditional dispute resolution mechanisms can play in reducing the burden of too much litigation in post-colonial countries – particularly in Africa. The importance of such mechanisms has been recognized by the United Nations and by the constitutions and laws of many African countries. The paper addresses the issue of the effect a paucity of lawyers in African countries might have on the litigation in such countries. The approach and methods of traditional dispute resolution in Africa are discussed and the question raised whether such traditional dispute resolution mechanisms can be integrated into the Western approach to dispute resolution in order to reduce litigation. The challenges facing such integration are also addressed. The article concludes that traditional methods of dispute resolution are already reducing the burden of too much litigation, but further research using statistical and empirical data should be undertaken to substantiate this.

A Texan's Story: The Autobiography of Walter Prescott Webb ed. by Michael L. Collins

Reviewed by: A Texan's Story: The Autobiography of Walter Prescott Webb ed. by Michael L. Collins Richard B. McCaslin A Texan's Story: The Autobiography of Walter Prescott Webb. Edited by Michael L. Collins. ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. 248. Illustrations, select bibliography.) Graphs increasingly define academics today. In one popular format, after a median line connecting a series of important points is established, all other performances are judged in relation to it. Like it or not, Walter Prescott Webb remains that line for those who write Texas history. That centrality makes this manuscript, flawed as it is, important for anyone interested in Texas or in writing and teaching history. It does not cover every aspect of Webb's life because he wrote it in 1943, twenty years before he died. Obviously, it was also never intended for publication. It is poorly written, with many repetitions and inconsistencies. The editor does little to correct its shortcomings—there is no index, the bibliography is scant, and the only footnotes come in his epilogue. But while Michael L. Collins errs in declaring this to be a "masterpiece of literature," he correctly asserts that it is a "surprising treasure trove of folk wisdom," with "many brilliant gems scattered throughout" (3). Those seeking personal insights will find them. Webb makes it clear that what drives him, and any successful person, is "desire" (74). Reflecting on his success, he adds, "I never have been able to work to a pattern furnished by others, a trait which has brought rich prizes and deep humiliations" (113). This belief resurfaces in a declaration concerning his greatest literary prize: "Whatever success has attended the publication [of] The Great Plains may be attributed to the fact that it is based on an independent concept and executed without regard to anything that had been done before" (15). A careful reader will also realize that Webb was a prodigious researcher with an unflagging work ethic. Pondering why he wrote books instead of articles for academic journals, he quips, "I preferred to hit the public with a solid shell rather than bird shot" (134). Webb did write short pieces; however, the amount of work required for them meant he tried to publish more than one at time. Finally, country boy humility and humor explain why he never had this memoir published: "My life has been a succession of deep humiliations and pleasant surprises and just why I should feel an impulse to set some of them down on paper is something I cannot explain" (17). [End Page 113] Webb's perspectives on the events of his life are priceless. Those interested in frontier Texas should read his reflections on being a farm boy in the Cross Timbers, which he believes has "produced more schoolteachers, country lawyers, preachers, and penitentiary inmates in proportion to size and population than any region of West Texas" (60). Beleaguered graduate students must study his advice to both them and faculty on academic relationships, especially during his "tragic year" at the University of Chicago (138). Frustrated writers will gain much from his passages on writing, although those who teach English might well be offended. As to why the movie version of his landmark book on the Texas Rangers bore little resemblance to what he wrote, Webb drily admits, "By the time the Hollywood lawyers get through with an author, he has renounced everything save the fact that he wrote a book, and he may be a little uncertain about that" (182). Readers who want the facts of Webb's life should look elsewhere, perhaps to books with indexes and footnotes. But those who want to know more about Webb's perspective on his life will find it here, and for that Collins is to be commended for letting the man speak for himself. Richard B. McCaslin University of North Texas Copyright © 2021 The Texas State Historical Association

Informal Institutional Elements as Both Preconditions and Consequences of Effective Formal Legal Rules: The Failure of Constitutional Institution Building in Hungary

Abstract Institutions are made up of the interplay of three components: (i) formal rules, (ii) actual practices, and (iii) narratives (the last two are referred to jointly as informal institutional elements). However, lawyers in post-socialist countries do not see law through institutionalist lenses, but often nurture a false and simplistic idea of the law: they consider it to be the sum of rules, often disregarding the actual practices of the rules’ addressees and the narratives attached to the law (encompassing everything from the raison d’être and goal of the institution, its symbolism, the public discourse surrounding it, to social attitudes toward the institution). This restricted view makes Hungarian lawyers blind and to a certain extent also defenceless against recent authoritarian tendencies. Institution building has been a moderately successful feat in Hungary. To put it more pessimistically, it has partially failed since the end of socialism, in particular when it comes to actual practices and narratives. In the Hungarian context, consideration of the problems of institution building suggests two general conclusions: on the one hand, the lack of unison among the individual elements (rules, practices, narratives) renders institutions less stable and consequently less capable of inducing compliance with the law; on the other, the institutions that have been established have failed to deliver prosperity to the political community. This Article describes the constitution making of 2010–2011 from the perspective of institution building. This institutionalist view of the law yields two main specific findings: First, historical experience shows that in addition to honest determination, a swift, radical institutional overhaul of a complete legal system can only be sustainable in the presence of an external pressure, the effect of which has unfortunately decreased with Hungary’s accession to the European Union. That is, institution building should go hand in hand with effective international and EU obligations undertaken in more sober political moments to guarantee that the political community will not later enter into a self-destructive mode. Second, if they took more consciously into account elements beyond mere rules, such as actual practices and narratives in the realm of legislation, the application of the law and legal training would ideally result in the gradual reinforcement of substantive cultural elements. This, however, requires political action, more precisely the adjustment of formal rules. Since this is not in the interest of the incumbent decision makers, overcoming the impasse seems unlikely for the time being.

Problems of legal policy implementation in the field of internationalization of higher legal education

««Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Право» — международный научно-теоретический рецензируемый журнал, публикующий материалы в следующих рубриках: Публичное и частное право: прикладные исследования Криминология Криминалистика Судебная экспертиза Исследования права с позиций социальных и гуманитарных (неюридических) наук Правовая жизнь: научно-практические заключения, комментарии и обзоры Сравнительное право Зарубежное право

What is Wrong with the Hungarian Legal System and How to Fix it

Institutions are made up of the interplay of three components: (1) formal rules, (2) actual practices and (3) narratives. However, lawyers in post-socialist countries do not see law through institutionalist lenses, but often nurture a false and simplistic idea of the law: they consider it to be the sum of rules, disregarding often the actual practices of the rules’ addressees and narratives attached to the law (encompassing everything from the raison d’etre and goal of the institution, its symbolism, the public discourse surrounding it, and social attitudes towards the institution). This restricted view makes Hungarian lawyers blind and to a certain extent also defenceless against recent authoritarian tendencies. Institution-building has been a moderately successful feat in Hungary. To put it more pessimistically, it has partially failed since the end of socialism, in particular when it comes to actual practices and narratives. In the Hungarian context, consideration of the problems of institution-building suggests two general conclusions: on the one hand, the lack of unison among the individual elements (rules, practices, narratives) renders institutions less stable and consequently less capable of inducing compliance with the law; on the other, the institutions that have been established have failed to deliver prosperity to the political community. This paper describes the constitution-making of 2010/11 from the perspective of institution-building. This institutionalist view of the law yields two main specific findings: (1) Historical experience shows that besides honest determination, the radical institutional overhaul of a complete legal system can only be successful in the presence of external pressure, the effect of which has unfortunately decreased with Hungary’s accession to the EU. That is, institution-building should go hand-in-hand with effective international and EU obligations undertaken in more sober political moments to guarantee that the political community will not later enter into a self-destructive mode. (2) Taking elements beyond mere rules more consciously into account, such as actual practices and narratives in the realm of legislation, the application of the law and legal training would ideally result in the gradual reinforcement of substantive cultural elements. This, however, requires political action, more precisely the adjustment of formal rules. Since this is not in the interest of the incumbent decision-makers, overcoming the impasse seems unlikely for the time being.

IHL and Human Rights Law: Relationship

We need to start by asking ourselves why the relationship between International Humanitarian (IHL) and Human Rights (HR) law matters. Partly this is because these two areas of law overlap and deal with the same subject matter to some extent and partly it is because issues of human rights in times of conflict are being dealt with by human rights bodies. Although many reasons have been suggested for this development, from people becoming more litigious, to encouragement from lawyers in countries at war, Henkaerts suggests that this “trend is largely due to victim’s search for a forum in order to obtain remedies for violations of their rights during armed conflict”. This is essentially because of a lack of individual petition in IHL. Therefore, as a result of the overlapping subject matter and the fact that human rights bodies are having to deal with this issue it is important to deal with the relationship between the two areas of international law. First, the article will look at the similarities between IHL and HR, demonstrating the similarities of subject matter, then the differences between the two, which starts to explain the tension between the two areas of international law, despite the impact that the two areas have had on each other. Secondly, the influence that the two fields have had on each other despite their differences will be considered. Thirdly, the lex specialis doctrine of international law will be discussed, including the approach of the ICJ and whether this is really a simple way to deal with the tension between the two areas of law. The article will conclude by considering that the nature of the conflict may make a difference between which of the two areas of law has the greatest influence. Finally, some of the benefits and problems of applying IHL and HR in the same situation will be discussed.

Transformative Constitutionalism: Not Only in the Global South

Originally a South African “brand,” transformative constitutionalism is increasingly presented as a new, distinctively Southern paradigm of constitutionalism. Yet, it remains unclear what transformative constitutionalism entails. This Article argues that transformative constitutions differ from traditional liberal constitutions by conceptualizing the constitution as a comprehensive order for a more just and equal society and a tool to prompt state action to that purpose as much as restrain it. So understood, the constitutional law of a number of Northern systems such as Germany’s should also be understood as transformative in important aspects. An advantage of opening up our understanding of transformative constitutionalism in this way is the comparative perspective it offers. Unsurprisingly, courts and lawyers in different countries have approached transformative constitutionalism differently: while some have taken a more “traditional” law-focused approach, others have opted for a more collaborative one. Within the traditional legal model, exemplified by the German case, courts seek to preserve those features typically associated with judicial rather than political processes, for example the individualized nature of proceedings. In contrast, the Indian collaborative approach often involves negotiation between different stakeholders and emphasizes legal flexibility. Each model comes with a different approach to judicial legitimacy and its own downsides and advantages. This Article sketches out some first thoughts how we might go about taking the best of both worlds, once we recognize how global the transformative project truly is. To do so, I suggest we should seek to avoid the overly hierarchical German approach with its problematic consequences for democratic empowerment, while at the same time attempting to preserve the key role of individual rights and law as a specialized discipline of its own—thus providing the foundation for an independent source of professional judicial legitimacy.

Indian Sovereignty, General Federal Laws, and the Canons of Construction: An Overview and Update

This article focuses on the application within Indian country of federal regulatory typically dealing with labor relations, employment, health, the environment, and other social and economic issues (i.e., general federal laws or GFLs), and their impact on Indian Nation governments and tribal enterprises. This article takes the position that a GFL, just like specialized Indian legislation and all potentially affecting the ancient rights and sovereignty of Indian Nations, should be subjected to the rules of interpretation known as the Indian law of construction. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Donovan v. Coeur d'Alene Tribal Farm (1985) (Coeur d'Alene) adopted a troubling and contrary rule of interpretation. The article also touches on a range of deeper issues concerning the relative power of Congress as compared to administrative agencies and the U.S. Supreme Court as compared to lower federal courts (including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit). These issues raise concerns going well beyond the field of American Indian law. They touch on constitutional law, the separation of powers, administrative law, and labor law. The article updates the author's 2007 Oregon Law Review and 2008 Michigan State Law Review articles, which criticized various aspects of the Coeur d'Alene doctrine. It reviews some key points about the Ninth Circuit's remarkable three-judge panel opinion in Coeur d'Alene, which (for more than thirty years now) has frustrated Indian country lawyers and out-muscled the Supreme Court itself in influencing other lower-court rulings on how to interpret GFLs in relation to Indian country. Coeur d'Alene has effectively overruled (in many federal circuits and for many GFLs) the weight of more than a century of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Indian law canons of construction. The article also reviews some aspects of the notorious San Manuel cases. In that litigation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), in 2004, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in 2007, deployed the Coeur d'Alene doctrine to extend the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to on-reservation employment by tribal government-owned gaming enterprises, even though that has never been authorized or intended by Congress. That specific issue of federal labor law, and the broader dispute over Coeur d'Alene, emerged again in 2015 with appeals to the Sixth and Tenth Circuits over application of the NLRA to tribal casinos. Those appeals were resolved by three important decisions discussed in Part V of this article: one by the NLRB (effectively mooting the Tenth Circuit appeal) and two by the Sixth Circuit. Following the Introduction (Part I), Part II of the article discusses the classical canons of construction governing Indian law, and contrasts them with the Coeur d'Alene doctrine which has flourished in the lower federal courts. Part III highlights the stunning degree of irony (not to mention outright defiance of the Supreme Court) in the lower courts' treatment of the Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation. Part IV discusses continuing struggles over the Coeur d'Alene doctrine in the lower federal courts. Part V discusses the 2015 decisions, and where things have gone from there. Part VI concludes the article.

Globalisation of Commodification: Legal Process Outsourcing and Indian Lawyers

ABSTRACTLegal process outsourcing (LPO) refers to the contracting of legal work from regions where it is costly to perform, such as the US to areas where it can be performed at a significantly decreased cost. LPO has been made possible by the disaggregation of the legal processes into discrete units, each of which can then outsourced to cheaper service providers. Anecdotal evidence suggests a variety of benefits such as financial gains, opportunities to perform “global” work in a corporate atmosphere and acquisition of important skills and training that enhances the prestige of the host country lawyers. In India, which has played a significant role, LPO firms are viewed as important catalysts in the transformation of the country’s highly stratified legal profession based on social identities. This qualitative study, based on 38 interviews, concludes that the corporate culture was an attractive proposition for lawyers from non-elite backgrounds; however, the commodification of offshored work led to a deprofessionalisation of lawyers, reducing them to “glorified clerks.” As a result, LPO firms only provided parallel avenues for career mobility but did not destabilise the local legal market which at its core remains socially networked.

The Role Of Ethics In Legal Education Of Post-Soviet Countries

Abstract The neglect of lawyer ethics in legal education, including in continuing legal education for lawyers and judges, is an enduring Soviet legacy in post-Soviet countries. Partially because of this neglect, many people in post-soviet countries do not trust lawyers. Their mistrust often is for good reason—too many lawyers are unethical. Yet, unethical lawyers do more than alienate others and cast the legal profession in disrepute. Unethical lawyers waste resources by unnecessarily prolonging disputes and inflaming antagonisms by provoking unjustifiable confrontations. Worse, they corrupt the legal system by bribing judges, suborning perjury, and using other illegal means to achieve their ends. Thus, they contribute to an all-too-common failure in post-Soviet countries—the failure to achieve the rule of law. The academic literature is replete with commentary about the place of ethics in legal education. Some argue that ethics instruction is unnecessary. They claim that allusions to ethics in other courses, the law school culture, and the ethics learned earlier in life is sufficient. Others posit that ethics are too important to omit from the law school curriculum. They often add, however, that legal ethics instruction in law school commonly involves little more than demanding that law students memorize rules or codes of conduct. This article discusses whether the ethics education of future lawyers in post-Soviet countries is adequate. Concluding that it is not, this article proposes suggestions for the content of an Eastern European legal ethics course and methods for teaching law students to internalize ethical norms as a part of their legal education.

The art and science of forensic meteorology

When weather factors into a legal dispute, meteorologists use eyewitness accounts, troves of atmospheric data, and simulated reenactments to figure out what went awry.

Influences and Inferences

I am deeply honored to receive the ACL’s Lifetime Achievement Award. I’m especially honored when I look back at the list of previous winners—Chuck Fillmore, Eugene Charniak, Eva Hajicova, Fred Jelinek, Martin Kay, Aravind Joshi, and the others— they’re all my heroes. I was of course delighted to learn of this award. The most we can hope for in life is to take part in the conversation, and an award like this means that you’ve taken part in the conversation. It seems to be a tradition to begin with a few formative anecdotes from childhood. For me, it all begins before I was born. My grandfather, a crusty old country lawyer in southern Indiana, told my father not to bother trying to go to law school. “You don’t know English grammar,” he said. “You’ll flunk out.” My dad accepted the challenge, bought a book entitled English Grammar, by Smith, Magee, and Seward (1928), and mastered it. He went on to become a very successful lawyer. Fast-forward to when I was in junior high school. My dad was distressed that my English classes looked to him more like social studies, and barely touched on grammar. So he persuaded me—actually, he probably bribed me, but I can’t remember what with—to master that same book, English Grammar by Smith, Magee, and Seward. This was a concession, because I was a math nerd, reading only textbooks on trigonometry and calculus, as my way of avoiding the humiliation of playing baseball. But I read the book, and I was amazed. English grammar was just like math! It had the same sorts of rules, the same kinds of abstractions, the same types of puzzles. It was actually fun! In my junior or senior year of high school we had to take something called the Kuder Preference Test, which would help us decide what career to choose. I scored high in math and in language. So my high school counselor told me I should write math books. In fact, she got it exactly backwards. It wasn’t that I should do language about math. It was that I should do math about language. I’ve met any number of computational linguists with a similar story. They grew up not knowing whether they wanted to be a physicist or a poet. They just knew both sounded fascinating. Then they discovered our field. My last near miss happened the week I was drafted into the Army. They gave us a battery of aptitude tests to see what specialties we’d be best for. One of the tests was to see if we should be sent to the Monterey Language School. Looking back on it, I realize now it was testing how well you could understand formal language theory. They’d give

Deceiver, joker or innocent? Teilhard de Chardin and Piltdown Man

Arthur SmithWoodward, an expert on fossil fish and Keeper of Palaeontology at the British Museum (Natural History), made the official announcement of the discovery of Piltdown Man’ (Eoanthropus dawsoni) on 18 December 1912 at Burlington House in London. The announcement was sensational at the time and attracted interest in a purported new hominid species with a large cranium, apparently associated with an ape-like jaw. It was not until some 40 years later that Eoanthropus (Dawn man’) was discredited (Weiner et al. 1953; Weiner 1955), with Charles Dawson (a country lawyer’, as well as amateur archaeologist and palaeontologist) being identified as the probable perpetrator of a hoax in which human cranial fragments were combined artificially with the modified jaw of an ape (considered to be that of an orangutan), at Piltdown in Sussex. Despite extensive investigations and a plethora of publications, the exact circumstances surrounding the Piltdown hoax remain uncertain (Weiner et al. 1953; Weiner 1955; Spencer 1990a&b; Thomas 2002).

The wonderful world of patent drafting

To anyone involved in patent litigation, it is clear that the task of drafting is not for the faint-hearted. Those who draft patents are acutely aware of the pitfalls which await their clients following even a mere slip of the pen. This commentator, who is daily involved in the pre-filing review and prosecution of patents and, alongside clients, assisting lawyers in many countries with patent litigation, believes that the patent drafter must surely apply art and science in at least equal measures. To learn and maintain these skills is quite a task indeed. Two recent books have done patent attorneys and their trainees a great favour by making substantial contributions to the body of recorded knowledge on the subject of patent drafting. Paul Cole's Fundamentals of Patent Drafting, published by CIPA, will surely go down in history as one of those legendary works and a ‘must-have’ for every patent attorney's library. Similarly, Gwilym Roberts’ A Practical Guide to Drafting Patents, published in Sweet & Maxwell's EIPR Practice Series, is an extremely practical guide for those wishing to learn more about this black art.

Field notes

Field notes James Lindemann Nelson This distracted globe. The last Fellows meeting is scarcely a month past as I write these words, though it seems rather longer. Pace of life, perhaps, or maybe it's related to our having gathered in Washington, a city that for me carries a touch of the unreal. The heart of the meeting—a panel presentation with the title "Are We Ready for the Flu Pandemic?"—was certainly substantial enough, the sort of theme fully able to concentrate the mind (there being nothing for doing so like a personal prospect of death, as we're told). A hot topic coupled with extremely effective presenters—savvy, highly placed Beltway insiders, all knowledgeable about and sympathetic to bioethics, with varied close-up sight lines on congressional and administration responses to H5N1 and company—and an arresting take-home message ("Decidedly Not"), generated a keen audience, who asked intense, probing questions. Here's what struck me hardest in the picture the panel sketched out: our national tardiness reflects, in part, ongoing dickering between pharmaceutical companies and the government over the size of subsidies and indemnities to be guaranteed before the corporations are willing to knock out job-sized lots of vaccines and antivirals. One way of luring corporations into this business, according to one of our Beltway insiders, would be to give corporations an extra year of market exclusivity for their ten top selling drugs, by means of a wild card patent extension. The price tag: around $30 billion. A Fellow adopting the pose of a simple country lawyer (in actuality one Alan Meisel) had the temerity to pose an "Emperor's New Clothes" sort of question: why are we even talking about massive subsidies to private industry, when a "Manhattan Project" style public program could likely do the job for about $2 billion, a mere fifteenth of the cost? Asking a question like this of those who for one reason or another are more or less locked in to the current dispensation tends to get the same kind of reaction as asking why we don't take advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars in economies that would be afforded by shifting to a single payer universal coverage health care system. Some folks have the grace to look rueful. Others look at the questioner as if bringing the matter up is rather rude. Ruefulness was the order of the day among our superb and very graceful panelists. Yet in the absence of better answers to questions like Meisel's, the worry is that we pay hefty premiums, in human lives and human suffering, as well as in dollars, not for the market's pragmatic benefits, the efficiency and quality for which the private sector is so celebrated, but for something else. Spoils for a triumphant ideology, perhaps? Good ethics, as Tom Murray reminded us in concluding the session, depends on good facts. As I walked out into the streets of the nation's capitol reflecting on this sage advice, I was grateful to have had important facts about the possible pandemic so thoughtfully laid out. Yet it hit me harder than usual that good ethics can depend, too, on noting which facts make up states of affairs that are tolerably independent of anyone's desires or schemes, and which reflect fantasies someone has been able to make real. [End Page c1] James Lindemann Nelson Michigan State University Fellow of The Hastings Center Copyright © 2006 The Hastings Center