Geological Observatory of Coldigioco
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Amplifying Their Voices: Equity and Assistive Technology for Children with Disabilities
No full textAssistive technology devices are crucial to the educational development of children who suffer from hearing loss. For some hearing-impaired children, access to hearing aids is vital to their ability to acquire language, develop speech, and socialize. Yet many hard of hearing children are unable to acquire hearing aids because most insurance policies do not cover them. Access to assistive technology devices for hard of hearing individuals has been the subject of long-standing controversy. The law recognizes the benefits of assistive technology devices and includes them within the scope of services school districts may be required to provide in order to ensure that children with disabilities have a free appropriate public education (FAPE) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, the Supreme Court’s FAPE standard requires only that school districts provide special education services that are “reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress in light of the child’s circumstances.” As a result, school districts often deny requests for assistive technology, even if there is medical evidence that such services would benefit the child academically and socially, if the child is making “progress,” which is often measured by “passing grades and advancement from year to year.” This narrow interpretation of progress fails to account for the unique benefit evolving technology can have on the development of a child with a disability and the detrimental impact caused by an inability to acquire access. Additionally, children who are unable to acquire assistive technology from their school district are often left with no other options for financial support because government and private insurance funding for certain devices, such as hearing aids, is limited. Many scholars have noted the implications of the Supreme Court’s standard, including that it remains “unpredictable” and lacks clarity as to how to define “substantive appropriateness,” but the scholarship has not addressed the impact the standard has on children who do not have access to hearing aids. This Article analyzes the issues related to access to assistive technology by focusing on children with hearing loss as an illustration of the inequities caused by the limited scope of the law, the substantial cost of hearing aids, and the significant social and academic developmental cost to children who are unable to afford the technology they need. To address the legal and financial barriers to access, the FAPE standard should be interpreted to recognize the unique benefit of quickly evolving and much-needed assistive technology for children with hearing loss, and states should take steps to mandate government-based and private insurance coverage
Life After Google v. Oracle: Three Reflections on a Theme
No full textIn 2004, Professor Leaffer published an article titled Life after Eldred: The Supreme Court and the Future of Copyright. He wrote about three cases decided in or after 2001 to provide a snapshot of the Supreme Court’s position on copyright issues. This Article discusses three reflections on this theme. The first reflection flows directly from Google. It discusses fair use in Andy Warhol Found. for Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, as well as text and data mining for artificial intelligence uses. This Article then reflects on Arnstein v. Porter’s lessons for modern copyright infringement law. Finally, it reflects on the current state of software protection at the intersection of patent and copyright law in light of Alice Corp. Pty. v. CLS Bank Int’l
Blockchain and the Genesis of Creative Justice to Disintermediate Creativity
No full textHistorically, the art market has been shrouded in opaqueness and exclusivity, permissioned access and asymmetry of information that rivals the systemic ills of legacy financial markets that led to the Great Recession. Moreover, legacy art market stakeholders have, through the centuries, been entrenched in elitist and inequitable notions of art that excluded Black artists. These legacy intermediaries have also consistently demonstrated a deep and enduring disdain for any art connected to the digital world. That is, until the age of COVID-19 and the dramatically increasing value and dominance of the non-fungible token (NFT) market.
This Essay explores why, and how, the technology that Satoshi intended for the disintermediation of financial markets has demonstrated incredible potential to disintermediate the art world and enfranchise Black and brown artists. The often-exclusionary bright line between revered “fine art” expressed in physical form, and digital art, has begun to blur. So too has the invisible racial dividing line used to segregate artists based on race. If measuring creative justice in terms of the building blocks of the future of creativity, we are at the genesis
The Alchemy of Effective Auditor Regulation
No full textThe audit profession has repeatedly failed in its obligation to accurately opine on financial statements prepared by companies that trade in U.S. markets. The list of entities that have contributed to the quest for effective regulation of these auditors is long; it includes the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Congress, outside directors of public companies, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a recent congressional creation. Yet, despite 50 years of effort, the formula for efficacious oversight of the audit profession remains elusive.
In 2020, then-president Donald Trump proposed to subsume the PCAOB into the SEC, citing regulatory duplication and budget savings. This proposal could have been summarily dismissed as fodder for a deregulatory political agenda, but reactions to the proposal from those outside the discrete enclave of securities regulators revealed deeper concerns about the state of auditor regulation that beg our attention.
This Article is the first in a series of planned articles exploring regulation theory as a path to answering the clamant question: What is the alchemy of effective auditor oversight? This Article begins the discussion by examining the methods by which regulators have determined which auditors would be subject to regulatory oversight, and the extent to which that process furthers the purported goals of more reliable audit reports. This Article establishes that regulatory processes to define the audience of regulated entities have been disinterested at best, and self-interested at worst. This Article articulates the need for a complete departure from the stale, recycled approaches that have been implemented under the guise of improved regulation. A fresh approach with a clear nexus to the objective of promoting fair and accurate audits of public company financial statements is imperative to advancing in the discovery of an efficacious formula for auditor oversight
Immigration Reforms as Health Policy
No full textThe 2020 election, uniting control of the political branches in the Democratic party, opened up a realistic possibility of immigration reform. Reform of the immigration system is long overdue, but in pursuing such reform, Congress should cast a broad net and recognize the health policies embedded in immigration laws. Some immigration laws undermine health policies designed to improve individual and population health. For example, immigration inadmissibility and deportability laws that chill noncitizens from enrolling in health-promoting public benefits contribute to health inequities in immigrant communities that spill over into the broader population—a fact highlighted by the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions on noncitizen eligibility for Medicaid and other public benefits contribute to inequitable access to health care. Moreover, visa restrictions for noncitizen health care professionals run counter to health policies promoting access to health care during a time of severe shortages in the health care professional workforce. It is time that health policy be incorporated into the immigration-reform debate, with Congress considering whether and how such reforms are helping to achieve health policy goals relating to improving individual and population health
Reflective Teaching
No full textBecoming a better teacher takes deliberate thought, reflection, and action. While attending conferences or workshops on teaching is extremely helpful, the techniques and skills learned need to be applied and evaluated in an ongoing process. This session will introduce reflective teaching through the Teaching Development Cycle framework (formative feedback - pedagogical knowledge - implementation - assessment - instructional awareness) and will help teachers know how to apply it. We will also examine different formative feedback techniques, and attendees will be asked to use a number of them in the session. Time will also be spent reflecting and creating a plan to improve teaching. As the opening session to the TTT Conference, this session will help attendees prepare to apply the rest of the sessions during the conference
Cut the Cacophony: Creating Effective Visual Materials for Teaching
No full textTeaching legal research can be dense, multi-layered, and downright difficult. Conveying the information you need to students in an accessible and understandable way can be tough, particularly when you need to translate and condense complex subject matter into tangible teaching materials. In this collaborative workshop, presenters Jennifer Mart-Rice and Rachel Evans team up to combine their collective instructional experiences and work with attendees to design impactful visuals for the classroom. Attendees will learn about the must-haves and best practices for handouts and slide decks before being broken into groups where they will select a challenging slide deck and put their new skills to the test. A checklist of frequent errors, crucial components, and examples of how to address issues and concerns will double as the session handout for attendees to use when assessing their workshop slide decks and their own visual teaching materials in the future
Live Demo #2: Dungeons, Dragons, and Legal Research Andragogy
No full textIn this 30-minute session, the speaker will give a brief explanation of the cognitive science and andragogy principles behind the “lecture, exercise, review as a group, repeat” model for classes. This will be followed by a demo of how to execute this model, focusing on how to use the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons as a framework for the “review as a group” portion of the model, and how that framework can be used to successfully guide student interactions
