5033 research outputs found
Sort by
Understanding Dark Patterns in Home IoT Devices
Get PDFInternet-of-Things (IoT) devices are ubiquitous, but little attention has been paid to how they may incorporate dark patterns despite consumer protections and privacy concerns arising from their unique access to intimate spaces and always-on capabilities. This paper conducts a systematic investigation of dark patterns in 57 popular, diverse smart home devices. We update manual interaction and annotation methods for the IoT context, then analyze dark pattern frequency across device types, manufacturers, and interaction modalities. We find that dark patterns are pervasive in IoT experiences, but manifest in diverse ways across device traits. Speakers, doorbells, and camera devices contain the most dark patterns, with manufacturers of such devices (Amazon and Google) having the most dark patterns compared to other vendors. We investigate how this distribution impacts the potential for consumer exposure to dark patterns, discuss broader implications for key stakeholders like designers and regulators, and identify opportunities for future dark patterns study
(Re)criminalizing Abortion: Returning to the Political with Stories
Get PDFAbortion stories have always played a powerful role in advancing women’s rights. In the abortion sphere particularly, the personal is political. Following the Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, abortion politics, and abortion storytelling, take on an even deeper political role in challenging the bloodless judicial language of Dobbs with the lived experience of women
FOREWORD: Finding Balance in the Fight Against Gun Violence
Get PDFThe United States is distinct among high-income countries for its problem with gun violence, with Americans 25 times more likely to be killed by gun homicide than people in other high-income countries.1 Suicides make up a majority of annual gun deaths — though that gap is closing as homicides are on the rise — and the U.S. accounts for 35% of global firearm suicides despite making up only 4% of the world’s population.2 More concerning, gun deaths are only getting worse. In 2021, firearm fatalities approached 50,000, the highest we have seen in at least 40 years.3 The increase in homicides in conjunction with lower crime overall further suggests an problem specifically with guns.4 As devastating as these deaths are, it does not come close to encompassing the mass toll of America’s gun violence epidemic — a toll that disproportionately impacts people of color, with the Black community suffering at the highest rates. A broader and more accurate view of what constitutes gun violence must become a part of the national discourse if we are going to develop effective strategies to combat this crisis
Private Actions to Protect Medicaid Live to See Another Day
No full textThis JAMA Viewpoint explored the US Supreme Court\u27s decision in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County et al v Talevski, which held that private parties can enforce federal Medicaid law against noncompliant states. The 7-2 majority held that the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987, which amended Medicare and Medicaid to protect nursing facility residents, could be enforced by patients and would not be restricted solely to federal agency actions. This essay explored why the majority\u27s decision was the best of the possible outcomes, though it largely maintained the status quo, because of the litigation\u27s potential to cause severe disruption in Medicaid and other social programs. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u27s opinion was especially attuned to the need for maintaining private civil rights actions but concurrences and dissents left the door open to further challenges
Title IX’s Unrealized Potential to Prevent Sexual Violence
Get PDFThe mandate of Title IX is equality in educational opportunities. If educational institutions could prevent sexual assaults from occurring, they would more fully ensure that students are not limited in their ability to benefit from the school’s educational programs. However, Title IX administration on college campuses still focuses far more on post-assault infrastructure than on assault prevention.
Yet with the ever-increasing particularity of the assault response requirements emanating from the Department of Education (“DOE”)2 and courts, Title IX jurisprudence has strayed too far from this basic purpose: to ensure that students in federally funding schools are not denied or limited in their ability to participate in or benefit from the school’s educational programs or activities on the basis of sex.3 To deliver on the promise of educational equality, preventing sexual assault is at least as important as responding to it. To offer educational opportunities equally is to offer educational environments that are as free of sexual assault as may be accomplished within the state of knowledge on sexual assault prevention. Yet Title IX today promises only a highly intentional and developed response to assault when it happens. It does little to motivate institutions to use the tools available to them to avoid assault from the outset. This essay explores three questions: first, is the DOE’s post-assault focus an intentional understanding of equality in education? Second, what does prevention look like? And third, can universities achieve it
Law and Culture
Get PDFWe often speak of law and culture in one breath. That may be so because both systems impose on each person and organization required rules of behavior. Yet, law and culture are quite different, though they relate to and affect each other. Therefore, it is desirable to examine their similarities and differences and their relationship. While the structures of law and culture are more similar than we might expect, their differences greatly affect the enforcement of the rules issued under each.
To be sure, both systems consist of rules and their enforcement. Most of our thoughts and knowledge, and many aspects of our lives and livelihood, in whatever form they take, are subject to rules and their enforcement. Here we speak of rules that are directives of behavior by humans, backed by enforcement of other humans. Yet, law and culture differ in fundamental details, including: (a) the identity of those who initiate the rules; (b) the rules’ underlying purposes and values; (c) how these rules are (i) initiated, (ii) developed, (iii) expressed, (iv) and enforced; and (d) the extent of their acceptance by those to whom they apply.
Many of the details relate to the reaction of the subjects of the rules. Since the subjects of the rules are not identical, they are likely to differ in their reactions and these differences may affect the degree of compliance with the rules. We might assume, however, that most people follow values that relate first and foremost to their own well-being, and secondarily, to the well-being of others. This assumption applies both to those who impose the rules and those who are subjects to the rules. Their relationships may affect the level of benefits that they bestow, and the level of obedience to the rules imposed on others
JD-Next: A Valid and Reliable Tool to Predict Diverse Students’ Success in Law School
Get PDFAdmissions tests have increasingly come under attack by those seeking to broaden access and reduce disparities in higher education. Meanwhile, in other sectors there is a movement towards “work-sample” or “proximal” testing. Especially for underrepresented students, the goal is to measure not just the accumulated knowledge and skills that they would bring to a new academic program, but also their ability to grow and learn through the program. The JD-Next is a fully online, noncredit, 7- to 10-week course to train potential JD students in case reading and analysis skills, prior to their first year of law school. This study tests the validity and reliability of the JD-Next exam as a potential admissions tool for juris doctor programs of education. (In a companion article, we report on the efficacy of the course for preparing students for law school.) In 2019, we recruited a national sample of potential JD students, enriched for racial/ethnic diversity, along with a sample of volunteers at one university (N = 62). In 2020, we partnered with 17 law schools around the country to recruit a cohort of their incoming law students (N = 238). At the end of the course, students were incentivized to take and perform well on an exam that we graded with a standardized methodology. We collected first-semester grades as an outcome variable, and compared JD-Next exam properties to legacy exams now used by law schools (the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), including converted GRE scores). We found that the JD-Next exam was a valid and reliable predictor of law school performance, comparable to legacy exams. For schools ranked outside the Top 50, we found that the legacy exams lacked significant incremental validity in our sample, but the JD-Next exam provided a significant advantage. We also replicated known, substantial racial and ethnic disparities on the legacy exam scores, but estimate smaller, nonsignificant score disparities on the JD-Next exam. Together this research suggests that, as an admissions tool, the JD-Next exam may reduce the risk that capable students will be excluded from legal education and the legal profession
Metaresearch, Psychology, and Law: A Case Study on Implicit Bias
Get PDFWhen can scientific findings from experimental psychology be confidently applied to legal issues? And when applications have clear limits, do legal commentators readily acknowledge them? To address these questions, we survey recent findings from an emerging field of research on research (i.e., metaresearch). We find that many aspects of experimental psychology’s research and reporting practices threaten the validity and generalizability of legally relevant research findings, including those relied on by courts and policy-setting bodies. As a case study, we appraise the empirical claims relied on by commentators claiming that implicit bias deeply affects legal proceedings and practices, and that training can be used to reduce that bias. We find that these claims carry many indicia of unreliability. Only limited evidence indicates that interventions designed to reduce prejudicial behavior through implicit bias training are effective, and the research area shows many signs of publication bias. To examine whether law journal articles are acknowledging these limits, we collected a sample of 100 law journal articles mentioning “implicit bias training” published from 2017-2021. Of those 100 articles, 58 recommend implicit bias training and only 8 of those 58 express any skepticism about its effectiveness. Overall, only 19 articles express skepticism about implicit bias training. We end with recommendations for law journal authors, researchers, and practitioners towards more credible application of psychology findings in law research and policy. Our focus is on how empirical research can be best used to solve our most important social issues including racism
The Limits of a Voluntary Framework in an Unethical Data Ecosystem
No full textThe need for greater privacy protections in the United States has never been greater. In their work, “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies That Process Personal Data”, McCoy et al. (Citation2023) correctly conclude that existing privacy laws and data protections are insufficient. Their proposed framework is an important scholarly contribution. We agree with their ideas about the practical imperatives, principles, recommended actions, and the promise of this work to inform policy. However, we worry that an emphasis on industry self-regulation could detract from full-throated advocacy for strong privacy legislation. Companies have collected and monetized personal data for years, not simply because they do not understand the ethical questions these practices raise or because they require better definitions. We believe the bioethics community must make legislative and regulatory change the primary focus for privacy protections. To support this position, we discuss the perverse economic incentives that may cause companies to advertise privacy protections they do not actually offer, the information asymmetries and knowledge gaps that prevent people from taking personal privacy precautions, and how the practical realities of the data economy minimize the likelihood and impact of a small number of companies opting for meaningful change. We bolster these three arguments with examples involving reproductive data
For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving
No full textThis book exposes a migration of business practices, players, and norms into philanthropy that strains the regulatory regime sustaining public trust in elite generosity through accountability and transparency and proposes legal reforms and private solutions to restore it.Practices, players, and norms native to the business sector have migrated into philanthropy, shattering longstanding barriers between commerce and charity. Philanthropies organized as limited liability companies, donor-advised funds sponsored by investment company giants, and strategic corporate philanthropy programs aligning charitable giving by multinationals with their business objectives paint a startling new picture of elite giving.In For-Profit Philanthropy, Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean reveal that philanthropy law has long operated as strategic compromise, binding ordinary Americans and elites together in a common purpose. At its center stands the private foundation. The authors show how the foundation neatly combines donor autonomy with a regulatory framework to elevate the public\u27s voice. This framework compels foundations to spend a small but meaningful portion of the assets their elite donors have pledged to the public each year. Prophylactic restrictions separate foundations from their funders\u27 business and political interests. And foundations must disclose more about the sources and uses of their assets than any other business or charity. The philanthropic innovations increasingly espoused by America\u27s most privileged individuals and powerful companies prioritize donor autonomy and privacy, casting aside the foundation and the tools it provides elites to demonstrate their good faith. By threatening to displace impactful charity with hollow virtue signaling, these actions also jeopardize the public\u27s faith in the generosity of those at the top.Private ordering, targeted regulation, or a new strategic bargain could strike a modern balance, preserving the benefits of the compromise between the modest and the mighty. For-Profit Philanthropy offers a detailed roadmap to show how it can be accomplished.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1351/thumbnail.jp