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Narrative Topoi in the Digital Age
Get PDFDecades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital technology’s capacity to share and shape communication in new ways that draw on older narrative conventions and forms. In a law school, drawing on new narrative topoi can reorient legal analysis through inquiry into twenty-first-century problems of language, narrative form, authenticity, and audiences. Legal educators may also highlight historical continuity between cultural and legal history and today’s forms and experiences, foregrounding issues central to legal skills, such as analogic reasoning, advocacy, counseling, and factual analysis. We address all of these points while exploring particular examples of these narrative topoi of our digital age
Op-Ed: California’s most powerful voice on Wall Street? Its pensions
Get PDFThe fight over public pensions in California is almost exclusively described as a dispute between people worried about tax hikes and public servants wanting to get paid what they were promised. But this is only part of the pension story — one focused on the “liability” side of the balance sheet
Taxing & Zapping Marijuana: Blockchain Compliance in the Trump Administration Part 5
Get PDFThis is the fifth part of a five-part series dealing with the rescission by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions of the Obama-era policy that discouraged federal prosecutors from bringing charges in all but the most serious marijuana cases.
This article focuses on the back-end leakage in the state’s obligation to control both the physical flows of legalized marijuana, as well as the related fiscal flows (the proceeds of legalized marijuana sales). These flows intersect dramatically in retail-level frauds.
There are very few new proposals on how to solve the physical flow problems with consumer re-sales into the black market. Traditional enforcement is universally applied. It is highly indirect. There is however, one high tech proposal is being advanced by 420 Blockchain.Based in Boca Raton, Florida, 420 Blockchain is beta-testing (in Rhode Island and California) a blockchain solution. It is based on Augusta High Tech’s Framework HyperLedger, running on the Google platform.
A second proposal follows the EU’s VATCoin proposals and suggests that States that have legalized marijuana could do the same with a limited purpose crypto-tax-currency. They would mandate the token would be the only currency allowed to be exchanged for marijuana. For example, in California this digital currency might be called CALCoin.
CALCoin lends itself naturally to blockchain. Each digital transfer of CALCoin would be recorded, registered with the California Treasury. The resulting distributive ledger will be a public, not a private blockchain (unlike the blockchain proposed in part 3 for the main commercial chain). The consensus mechanism for the CALCoin blockchain proposed for public ledgers by MIT Professor Silvio Micali (Algorand) seems ideal for the CALCoin application
Zappers, Phantomware and Other Sales Suppression Software in the State of Washington
Get PDFElectronic sales suppression (ESS) is a fraud that has been a (prominent) feature of the North American retail business since at least 1996. The first EES case in the US dates from 1981. ESS is a global problem. Depending on the jurisdiction, and the research study consulted, ESS is estimated to be present in 34% (of Canadian), 50% (of German – two studies), and 70% (of Swedish and Slovenian) businesses. It may be the case today, that “you cannot leave home without” encountering (or participating in) ESS.
The most common types of sales suppression technology are Zappers and Phantomware programming. In some instances, sales suppression is a personal (hands-on) service offered by installers or ECR/POS sales representatives. This is Sales Suppression as a Service or SSaaS. Recently suppression has entered the Dark Cloud, a fully automated manipulation of sales data that (physically) takes place off shore and uses internet-based data transfers.
The common solution in all cases is digital security, or fighting technology with technology. In the US, ESS has funded common criminals, organized crime syndicates, foreign and domestic terrorist organizations. US suppression cases have involved celebrity chefs, sitting members of Congress, the funding arm of Hezbollah, popular grocery store chains, restaurants, bars/ strip clubs, and small owner-operated pizza parlors. The technological response in the US has been weak. For some reason, the US has been very slow in taking up the technology-with-technology fight.
Given that the State of Washington collects 47.3% of its revenue (not including local government taxes) from the retail sales tax, and that technology has been the backbone of the State’s economy for years, it is only natural that Washington would take a US leadership position in this effort. Washington still trails by a wide margin the international efforts. The US has a lot to learn from jurisdictions like Belgium, Brazil, Canada (notably the provinces of Quebec and Ontario), China, Croatia, Italy, Russia, Rwanda, Sweden, and by January 1, 2 each of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait)
The Law of American Health Care, 2nd ed.
No full texthe Law of American Health Care is the casebook for the new generation of health lawyers. It is a student-friendly casebook emphasizing lightly, carefully edited primary source excerpts, plain-language expository text, as well as focused questions for comprehension and problems for application of the concepts taught. The book engages topics in depth so students emerge with an understanding of the most important features of American health care law and hands-on experience working through cutting edge issues.
Key Features: Focused on the needs of students who want to practice health care law in a post-ACA world. First health care law casebook to consider federal law as the baseline (as opposed to state law or common law). Intro chapter provides a set of organizing principles, illustrated with in-depth case studies, which are revisited and woven throughout the remaining chapters. “Pop-up” text boxes throughout with notes that highlight key lessons, or help to explain or enhance the material. Directed Questions and hypothetical Problems are provided as well as Capstone Problems at the end of each chapter. Approximately 800 pages, which is significantly more manageable than competitors. Focused directly on topics regularly encountered in the day-to-day practice of health lawhttps://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1245/thumbnail.jp
Bringing Human Rights into Bilateral Investment Treaties: South Africa and a Different Approach to International Investment Disputes
Get PDFThis Article therefore begins with a discussion of the Western imperialist history underlying the pasts of China and Africa, discussing the evolution of a Chinese-African economic alliance. Next, this Article discusses the broader roles of BITs in the ISDS system within the context of Chinese and South Africa BITs. It continues with a discussion on the Southern African Development Community\u27s Model BIT, explaining why this particular model is a step in the right direction towards the protection of human rights in all IIAs. This Article highlights the relationship between international investment law, foreign direct investment ( FDI ), BITs, and human rights, illuminating the positive and negative impacts of investment on human rights in the African continent. This Article advocates the modification of ISDS systems to meditate human rights conflicts because of the consequences of a gap for human rights protection in investment decisions. This Article further advocates amending BITs to include a human rights approach to international investment law, consistent with state obligations put forth in the UNGPs. In conclusion, this Article applies these recommendations to the Chinese-South African context, calling upon the two nations to re-negotiate their BITs in accordance with human rights standards and to support human rights concerns within the ISDS system as a way to further their goals against colonial and imperialist tendencies within international investment law generally. Due to the fact that China-African BITs have historically been aimed at the protection of investor rights, now is the time when investor obligations should include the recognition of and for respect human rights
Crowdsourcing & Data Analytics: The New Settlement Tools
Get PDFBy protecting the right to a jury, the State and Federal Constitutions recognize the fundamental value of having civil and criminal disputes resolved by laypersons. However actual trials are relatively rare, in part because parties seek to avoid the risks and cost of trials, and courts seek to clear dockets efficiently. Even as settlement may be desirable, it is sometimes difficult to resolve a dispute. Parties naturally view their cases from different perspectives, and these perspectives often cause both sides to be overly optimistic, seeking unreasonably large or unreasonably small resolutions./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThis article describes a novel method of incorporating layperson perspectives to provide parties more accurate information about the value of their case. Specifically, we suggest that working with mediators or settlement judges, the parties should create mini-trials and then recruit hundreds of online mock jurors to render decisions. By applying modern statistical techniques to these results, the mediators can show the parties the likelihood of possible outcomes and also collect qualitative information about strengths and weaknesses for each side. These data will counter the parties’ unrealistic views and thereby facilitate settlement
The Established Continuing Duty
No full textThis brief article traces the development of a new standard of practice for lawyers handling criminal cases: an obligation to assist their former clients, through affirmatively disclosing to subsequent counsel and protecting from disclosure to prosecutors, any information that may assist the former client in attacking his prior conviction – including attacking the work of his prior lawyer. This continuing duty, most recently and expansively recognized in the American Bar Association’s Standards for the Defense Function (4th Ed. 2016), reflects increased understanding of the importance of ensuring effective assistance of counsel, acknowledged in recent state and federal court decisions, opinions of the American Bar Association Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and US Department of Justice policies. These obligations will impact prosecutors and judges, as well as defense counsel, because much of their impact will be in post-conviction proceedings. As there is yet no published commentary for the 4th Edition of the ABA’s Standards for the Defense Function, this article concisely presents the sources, background and contours of this new duty
Charging asylum application fees is the latest way the US could make immigrants pay for its red tape
No full textThe Trump administration wants to make people fleeing persecution in their home countries pay for something they’ve long gotten for free: the right to apply for asylum in the United States
The Case Against Idealising Control
Get PDFSeemingly everyone, from scholars, industry, and privacy advocates to lawmakers, regulators, and judges seems to have settled on the idea that the key to privacy is control over personal information. But in practice, there is only so much a person can do. Control is far too precious and finite of a concept to meaningfully scale. It will never work for personal data mediated by technology.Now we have an entire empire of data protection built around the crumbling edifice of control. The idealisation of control in modern data protection regimes like the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive creates a pursuit that is actually adversarial to safe and sustainable data practices. It deludes us about the efficacy of rules and dooms future regulatory proposals to walk down the same, misguided path. We should dislodge and minimise the concept of control as a goal of data protection.In mediated environments, the control we users get is illusory, overwhelming, and myopic. Justifying control measures on privacy grounds requires so much justification and tying ourselves in knots that it feels like it’s merely serving as a proxy for some other protection goal that’s just out of reach. Lawmakers and companies should pursue more direct values like trust, obscurity, and autonomy. They should embrace more direct strategies like mandatory deletion, collection and purpose limitations, and non-waivable duties of care, loyalty, discretion. People\u27s trust in companies should be protected regardless of the control they are given