Phil Weiser

Civic Awakening in the Jury Room: A Test of the Connection between Jury Deliberation and Political Participation

Deliberative democratic theory posits that civic discussion leads to increased involvement in public affairs. To test this claim, this study explored the link between jury deliberation and electoral participation. It was hypothesized that empanelled jurors who reach verdicts are more likely to vote in subsequent elections than empanelled jurors who fail to reach a verdict or even begin deliberations. Data collected in Thurston County, Washington, supported this hypothesis. Controlling for other trial features and past voting frequency, citizens who served on a criminal jury that reached a verdict were more likely to vote in subsequent elections than were those jurors who deadlocked, were dismissed during trial, or merely served as alternates.

Toward Property Rights in Spectrum: The Difficult Policy Choices Ahead

As described in Ronald Coases seminal 1959 paper, property-like rights in electromagnetic spectrum and a secondary market for spectrum licenses will allocate spectrum to its highest and best uses, to the benefit of telecommunications consumers. However, defining rights to use spectrum is far more difficult than ordinarily suggested. More careful analysis is needed to determine what type of property regime will operate effectively to govern rights in spectrum. A number of questions must be answered for a transition to a property rights regime to be successful.

Unlocking Spectrum Value Through Improved Allocation, Assignment and Adjudication of Spectrum Rights

Technological developments have continued to increase the importance of radio spectrum, with citizens, companies and government users increasing their use of wireless-enabled services of all kinds, from smartphone apps to aerial surveillance. Since technology places limits on the coexistence of multiple radio systems, usage rights must be allocated among various competing uses. Currently, the management of the wireless spectrum in the United States (and elsewhere) is heavily constrained by government regulation. That makes it difficult for spectrum players — whether wireless service providers, citizens using unlicensed devices, or government users — to reach mutually agreeable, efficiency-enhancing agreements through direct negotiation with one another. This Hamilton Project discussion paper describes the importance of moving towards a more economically efficient system for managing the use of wireless spectrum and proposes concrete policy steps to move us closer to such a model. In particular, it sets forth three pillars of a reformed policy regime: (1) reduce ambiguity about the responsibilities of receivers to tolerate interference by defining harm claim thresholds that state the signal levels that must be exceeded before one operator can claim harmful interference from another; (2) reduce the drawbacks of excessive band fragmentation by introducing band agents that could represent large groups of licensees in negotiating changes in operating rights with neighbors; and (3) move adjudication from the current ad hoc and politically charged process to a more fact-based procedure that can resolve spectrum-related disputes in a timely fashion using judges with expertise in spectrum policy, either in the FCC and/or a newly created Court of Spectrum Claims. All three proposals reform the legacy spectrum policy framework by empowering individual spectrum licensees to develop win-win solutions without having to invoke time-consuming regulatory processes. Taken together, these reforms promise to move more spectrum management from one model more closely controlled by regulators to one authorizing end users to make more flexible, win-win uses of spectrum. Based on our rough estimates, we conclude that these reforms could bring a total of a

Making the World Safe for Standard Setting

10 billion per year in additional consumer surplus.

First Principles for an Effective Rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996

The stance of antitrust oversight of standard setting activities remains a work-in-progress. Over time, antitrust authorities have grown increasingly hospitable to cooperative standard setting efforts whereby jointly developed standards will facilitate the development of new products or services. In the information industries, such standards are ubiquitous and, moreover, are set by international standard setting organizations (SSOs) like the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). To be successful, SSOs must develop strategies to prevent firms from patenting technologies used in official standards and charging exorbitant royalties once a standard is adopted. In particular, SSOs face a range of options in terms of policies that govern the use of patents in official standards - even within the popular strategy of mandating reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) access to patents necessary to practice a standard. With multi-jurisdictional oversight of SSOs, the role of antitrust law - if inconsistent and overly aggressive - could be counterproductive. This paper argues that international antitrust authorities should be humble about second guessing policies of standard setting bodies related to patent policies or playing an aggressive enforcement role. By so doing, antitrust authorities will signal to standard setting bodies that they must rely fundamentally on their own strategies for ensuring compliance with their own policies. Such policies, for example, could include a mandate that firms disclose the relevant licensing terms and conditions before the body decides to endorse a particular technology as part of a standard. To be sure, there is still a role for antitrust authorities to sanction egregious abuses of the standard setting process, such as the Federal Trade Commissions action in Rambus, but such actions should be exceptional and not viewed as an alternative to a standard setting bodys safeguards against abuses by firms that obtain patents on technologies necessary to practice the standard.

Jury Service and Electoral Participation: A Test of the Participation Hypothesis

The increasing centrality of the Internet in modern communications, together with massive changes in the landscape of the telecommunications market, have intensified the calls for Congress to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In this paper, we analyze this looming legislative challenge by dividing it into two sets of issues: first, issues concerning the proper substance of telecommunications policy reform; and, second, issues concerning the appropriate institutions for carrying out that reform. In Part I, we argue that Congress should require regulators to adhere more closely to (and justify departures from) basic antitrust principles in developing the substance of competition policy. In particular, we explore how those principles would have brought greater predictability and analytical rigor to the FCCs implementation of statutory provisions requiring incumbent telephone providers to lease parts of their networks to competitors. Moreover, we explain how antitrust principles can now inform the current debate over whether to regulate broadband platforms to prevent discrimination against independent providers of applications like voice over Internet protocol. In Part II, we turn to Congresss institutional choices in reforming telecommunications regulation. Despite our advocacy for antitrust-oriented rules of decision, we argue for a continued reliance on the FCC, rather than antitrust courts, as the appropriate institution for superintending the efficient development of competition throughout the industry. Not only does the FCC enjoy specialized expertise in the economics and technology of the telecommunications industry, it also enjoys a distinct advantage over courts in developing and enforcing complicated - and necessary - prescriptive rules, such as those governing interconnection and its associated intercarrier fees. At the same time, the FCC will increasingly need to refocus its energies from prescriptive regulation to a new emphasis on after-the-fact enforcement and market-monitoring, much like the role played today by the Federal Trade Commission.