International Media and Conflict Resolution

Photojournalists_bwI’ve just received my new copy of the Marquette Law Review, which includes a fascinating collection of papers on the role of the media in international conflict resolution.  This symposium issue emerged from the Law School’s conference on this topic last spring, which was organized by Professors Andrea Schneider and Natalie Fleury.  In her introductory essay to the symposium, Andrea explains the genesis of the conference this way:

For conflict resolution scholars, the idea of focusing on the media is a logical one. After all, the media is the primary method through which the public and political leadership perceive and understand conflicts at home and abroad. If we are working to better handle these conflicts, the way that these conflicts are explained and understood is a crucial part of that process. Do the media have a responsibility to report all sides, even if one side is “wrong”? Do the media share in responsibility for escalation of a conflict if the reporting is incendiary? (The conviction of certain media figures involved in the Rwandan genocide and the use of “Tokyo Rose” during World War II are only two stark examples of how media can be directly involved in conflict.) And what of the responsibility of conflict specialists — are those of us in the conflict resolution field ignoring the media at our peril?

The symposium issue includes not only general, theoretical articles, but also case studies of specific conflicts from Iraq to Tibet to Peru.  All of the articles can be downloaded from the Law Review’s website, as can video from the conference.  The full list of articles and authors is after the jump.  Congratulations to the editors of Volume 93 for a great first issue! 

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Milwaukee Sick Leave Ordinance May Be Headed to State Supreme Court

Milwaukee Hat tip to CCH Technical Answer group for an update on the status of the Milwaukee Sick Pay Ordinance that was passed by referendum in November 2008, only to be invalidated by a state trial court judge.  According to the posting, the Milwaukee paid sick leave case has now been referred to the state supreme court:

On February 18, 2010, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take up the constitutionality of Milwaukee’s paid sick leave mandate.

In June 2009, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper ruled that the city’s paid sick leave ordinance, which provided up to nine paid sick days per year based on the number of hours worked and the size of the business, was “invalidly enacted and unconstitutional.” (Metropolitan Milwaukee Assoc. of Comm. v. City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County Circuit Court, No. 08cv018220, June 12, 2009). 9to5, the National Association of Working Women, appealed Cooper’s ruling. The supreme court has been asked to decide whether the ballot question put before the voters of the City of Milwaukee complied with the statutory requirement that it contain “a concise statement of [the ordinance’s] nature” — whether voters were informed of the contents of the ordinance . . . .

Nearly 70 percent of . . . voters approved the referendum for paid sick leave in the November 2008 election.

Marcia McCormick (St. Louis) has written before on the ordinance. I personally think the law was properly enacted and constitutional.  It will be interesting to see whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court takes the case.

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A Broadening of Diversity Jurisdiction

Students of civil procedure—which should mean just about everybody interested in using the formal processes of the law to vindicate rights—will be interested in a decision today by the United States Supreme Court. The opinion concerned the provision in the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction that deems a corporation “to be a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business.” 28 U. S. C. §1332(c)(1) (emphasis added). There has been a longstanding imprecision—a lack of unanimity—within the lower federal courts as to whether a corporation’s “principal place of business” is its “nerve center,” “locus of operations,” “center of corporate activities,” “muscle center” (none of these latter four terms being statutory), or some otherwise determined place. In Hertz Corp. v. Friend, the Court resolved the matter.

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