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A L S O_ T O D A Y 21st Log Steve Holtzman, R.I.P.   T A B L E__T A L K What's the dream operating system for cruising the Internet? It's another Mac vs. Windows go-round in the 21st area of Table Talk   Search and ye shall find -- personal health, family wealth and bibliophilic happiness at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     ____________________ Technology news from Apple opens parts of its OS ____________________   R E C E N T L Y Repurposing Ada By Michael Mattis A Victorian countess is widely credited today as the first programmer -- but historians say that doesn't compute (03/16/99) "E-mail is a real revolution" By Kyra DuPont and Eric Pape For a Cambodian opposition leader, the Net is a lifeline (03/15/99) "Wing Commander" creator takes the director's chair By Howard Wen Chris Roberts talks about his passage from the little screen to the big screen (03/12/99) Beauty and the geeks By Janelle Brown Female technology execs face cruel choices about selling their own sex appeal (03/11/99) Amazon vs. the ants By Scott Rosenberg Sure, David can beat Goliath on the Web -- if he's got a New York Times columnist in his corner (03/10/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

Tipping the antitrust scales How the right helped make the federal courts safe for Microsoft. BY ANDREW LEONARD | Microsoft's bumbling defense during its antitrust trial has startled even the software company's most fervent critics. The government, most observers agree, has constructed an unexpectedly strong case. Microsoft could actually lose. So what? If Microsoft loses, it will undoubtedly appeal. And at the appellate court level, Microsoft may well find the antitrust weather more to its liking. It's not just that the particular court certain to hear any appeal is dominated by conservative Reagan-Bush appointees who look askance at government intervention in the economy -- although that certainly helps. More troubling, say some antitrust experts, is the entire federal judiciary's resistance to aggressive enforcement of the antitrust laws -- a reluctance that may in large part be due to the influence of a well-funded campaign to exalt one particular school of legal thought over all others: a discipline known as "law and economics." The campaign, largely bankrolled by politically conservative institutions such as the John M. Olin and Sarah Mellon Scaife foundations, includes massive financial support for law and economics programs at elite law schools, as well as the funding of "public interest" law firms that consistently pursue pro-corporate agendas. Most controversially, the campaign specifically targets federal judges, treating them to all-expenses-paid, two-week seminars held at tony resorts. At these conferences, judges are drilled in advanced legal and economic theories that advocate a hands-off approach to the "free market." Law and economics is a complex and wide-ranging set of legal theories that, upon close examination, resists easy pigeonholing to one particular political ideology. Many legal theorists now consider "the economic analysis of law" to be a tool that comes with no inherent political bias and that should be a natural and fundamental part of any law school's curriculum. But others are alarmed at the debt that law and economics research owes to its financial supporters -- corporations and conservative philanthropists such as Richard Mellon Scaife, chairman of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, who have obvious political and economic interests at stake. The financial support, argue the critics, has warped the entire legal profession far too much toward a perspective that emphasizes pseudo-quantitative economic analysis at the expense of concerns for social justice and equity. And as the most important antitrust trial in a generation lumbers its way toward resolution, Microsoft may well be poised to benefit. Over the past 25 years, at least 460 judges, or nearly two-thirds of the federal judiciary at the district and appellate levels (including two judges who have already ruled on Microsoft-trial related matters) have attended the Economics Institutes administered by the Law and Economics Center of the George Mason University School of Law, according to university documents. Henry Manne, the founder of the George Mason Law and Economics Center, has described the seminars as "so popular that for most new judges today [they are] thought to be almost a requirement." By Manne's account, "The judges acknowledge that their own formal education did not really equip them for many of the issues that they regularly deal with as federal judges." Such issues include, according to Manne, "basics of price theory, economic notions of cost and the theory of the firm." Typically, the institutes have been held at plush resorts in comfortable locations such as Florida's Sanibel Island and Key Biscayne. The two-week seminars cost at least $5,000 to $6,000 per judge, the full tab for which is picked up by George Mason. "It's a nice sort of social event for them," says Gary Minda, a professor at the Brooklyn School of Law and the author of "Postmodern Legal Movements: Law and Jurisprudence at Century's End." "It's an enormous propaganda event. I've been at these events. The experience is that if you are not a true believer then you are not part of the club." Most alarming to critics is the fact that key financial supporters of the seminars are foundations such as Olin and Scaife -- philanthropic institutions whose normal list of annual grantees reads like a hall of fame roll call for the right-wing intellectual power structure. While Scaife has provided seed money and continuing funding for the Law and Economics Center at George Mason, the Olin Foundation has spent millions on a large-scale attempt to promote law and economics curricula at law schools across the country. N E X T_P A G E .|. "Hired propagandists, awash in corporate money"   ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MORSE