RICHARD LAVOIE, University of Akron - School of Law
Email: rll21@uakron.edu

These days it really does seem like "only the little people pay taxes." Whether they are from the world of politics, sports or entertainment, the elites of this country are demonstrating a penchant for not paying their taxes. Nevertheless, Americans in general continue to exhibit a high degree of tax compliance. Why do most people pay their taxes? What distinguishes them from those who cheat? What can we learn from these differences that could promote greater compliance amoung noncompliant segments of the populace?

This article examines these questions in light of the relevant social science literature. As a general matter, empirical research regarding tax compliance finds that the conventional analysis of compliance in terms of penalties and enforcement activity only represents a piece of the overall compliance dynamic. Beyond such deterrence mechanisms an individual‘s taxpaying behavior is shaped by a wide variety of cultural, institutional, and individual factors. When a confluence of such factors exists within a society they create a cultural norm in favor of honoring one‘s tax obligations that is persistent and self-reinforcing, a "taxpaying ethos." This article hightlights the most relevant factors contributing to the creation of a taxpaying ethos and utilizes them to create a framework for promoting increased tax compliance among historically reticent groups of taxpayers. Part II of this article reviews the inadequacy of the traditional deterrence approach to tax compliance and contrasts it with the taxpaying ethos explanation. Part III examines the empirically identified factors influencing a society's taxpaying commitment. Part IV translates these factors into general policy prescriptions aimed a cultivating a taxpaying ethos in a society.

ELLY TEMAN, affiliation not provided to SSRN
Email: mslua@gmail.com

This article presents a critical appraisal of the psychosocial empirical research on surrogate mothers, their motivations for entering into surrogacy agreements and the outcome of their participation. I apply a social constructionist approach toward analyzing the scholarship, arguing that the cultural assumption that ‘‘normal’’ women do not voluntarily become pregnant with the premeditated intention of relinquishing the child for money, together with the assumption that ‘‘normal’’ women ‘‘naturally’’ bond with the children they bear, frames much of this research. I argue that this scholarship reveals how Western assumptions about motherhood and family impact upon scientific research. In their attempt to research the anomalous phenomenon of surrogacy, these researchers respond to the cultural anxieties that the practice provokes by framing their research methodologies and questions in a manner that upholds essentialist gendered assumptions about the naturalness and normalness of motherhood and childbearing. This leads the researchers to overlook the intrinsic value of the women’s personal experiences and has implications for social policy.

DAVID PIERCE, affiliation not provided to SSRN
LAWRENCE FIELDING, affiliation not provided to SSRN
ANASTASIOS KABURAKIS, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Email: tassos.kaburakis@gmail.com

This research examined all 430 amateurism student-athlete reinstatement (SAR) cases between 2004 and 2006. This paper reports on the trends in the SAR staff decision making process, including the benchmark results of cases on the basis of the bylaw violated by the athlete and the mitigating factors considered by the SAR staff. Results indicated athletes violating professional teams and agent legislation face the most significant penalties, and the SAR staff permits mitigating factors such as unique personal circumstances and the actions of the athlete to influence the penalty issued. These findings lead to practical recommendations and prudent practices for compliance officers, coaches, athletes, and other stakeholders in intercollegiate athletics. Further, this research may serve academicians who wish to be of service and provide meaningful contributions to contemporary intercollegiate athletics policy. The implemented research method that examines the written case analysis of the SAR staff may serve as a useful paradigm for future research addressing the policy concerns of academics and practitioners in the field.

P. G. MONATERI, University of Torino, School of Law
Email: pgmonateri1@tin.it

My standpoint in this paper is that in affording the subject of Law and Language we face a mass of “local issues�, and “local puzzles�, but that we still lack a theory to grasp with the bulk of the matter. Al this becomes peculiarly embarrassing in the age of development of “English-only� movements, and facing the rise of a rather new and framed field of studies like “traductology� that would of course, but do not actually, interplay with comparaison especially in the field of Law. In my paper I just try to look around the package of some received ideas, in order to clean the blackboard before trying to build up something newer. Thus in the first section I cope with two prevailing theories: 1.) the theory of the language as a “social glue�, which is dominant and emerging from the present American political debate; 2.) the theory of the “analogy� between Law and Language as spontaneously ordered complex phenomena; then in a second section I try to trace back these ideas in the time of the “Birth of Comparativism� in the early 19th century. In so doing i deal with: 1.) the birth of Indo-European Family in Comparative Linguistics, and, 2.) the birth of Legal Comparativism within the context of the German Legal Historicism, in the same span of time. Finally I try to show how all these conceptions are nested details of a more general consciousness with broad political implications in terms of projects of governance. Then according to my views neither language studies nor traductology can be treated as pure subject deprived of a strong political commitment. Both are field where “choices for candor� are not at hand.

ROBERT LECKEY, McGill University - Faculty of Law
Email: robert.leckey@mcgill.ca

This is a review essay on The Limitation of Charter Rights: Critical Essays on R. v. Oakes (Luc Tremblay and Grégoire Webber eds., 2009), a collection celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada's leading judgment on proportionality and limits on rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The essay reflects on language in Canadian constitutional law, both the importance of the words used in talk about rights and the challenges of bilingualism. Sustaining scholarly reflection and dialogue in English and French, based on the equally authentic English and French versions of constitutional sources, remains difficult. The essay also reflects on the disjuncture between the legislative judgment in Oakes - the Court set out, prospectively, a test of general application for constitutional proportionality analysis - and the traditional conception of the judge's role in the common law tradition. Fidelity to that tradition would have inclined the judges, more modestly, to allow rules to emerge from the resolution of concrete disputes over time. Peculiarly, the question as to how judges, formed in the common law tradition, might interpret and apply a written constitution seems not to figure among the concerns of those who declare themselves the standard bearers of the so-called common law constitution.

CHAD G. MARZEN, Engles, Ketcham, Olson & Keith, P.C.
Email: marzen@alumni.grinnell.edu

The Holy See has been actively involved in international relations since its very beginnings. Today, its role in the formation of international human rights instruments is seen by many as “symbolic,� based largely on its concerns as a universal moral witness to humanity.

In this paper, I contend that the Holy See’s role in promoting human rights in international affairs is not solely symbolic; rather, its diplomacy is based more on pragmatic considerations of promoting its conceptions of the universal common good and the fundamental right to life than is currently recognized. By examining the Beijing and Cairo Conferences, and especially the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it is clear that the Holy See makes important distinctions between “hard� and “soft� law and is willing to engage in compromise, not merely acting in a symbolic role.

JOCHEN VON BERNSTORFF, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
Email: jvbernst@mpil.de
INGO VENZKE, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
Email: ivenzke@mpil.de

This contribution focuses on the role of morality in international legal discourse. International lawyers endorse distinct methods and embrace particular concerns. Their arguments are oftentimes closely intertwined with the analysis and assessment of the practical consequences of the actual use of political leverage that builds on moral convictions or appeal. We distinguish three broad approaches: 1) Skepticism - morality is disguise and domination. 2) Foundation - universal morality provides the foundation of international law. 3) Process - law and morality stand in a constitutive relationship - morality is viewed as a possibility. The contribution argues that diverging conceptions, approaches and methods respond to distinct sensibilities and priorities of concerns that arise from diverging views on the existence and accessibility of a morality as well as on the reality of international law. Under the surface of distinct theoretical approaches to morality and international law loom diverging political judgments of the status quo of the current international legal order, of its history, its achievements and of its future.