Global Health Research Center of Central Asia
Columbia Law School Scholarship ArchiveNot a member yet
5770 research outputs found
Sort by
Government Counterspeech
Get PDFWe are awash in lies. Misinformation has always been with us, but the endemicity of social media and the depth of political polarization in the United States and elsewhere has enabled falsehoods to be amplified, monetized, microtargeted, and spread around the world at unprecedented speed and scale. The consequences for democracy, public health, and social harmony are emergent and grave.
Misinformation presents one of the most vexing challenges for content moderation on social media (and off it, such as on cable news) for myriad reasons. Because misinformation can be difficult or controversial to define, policing it risks chilling core political speech, and because misinformation often resists automated enforcement, it cannot be removed or countered nearly as quickly or as cleanly as it spreads. Government regulation of misinformation raises special concerns, both because public officials may be particularly susceptible to political bias and because even outright lies enjoy a measure of constitutional protection
AI Input Data and Fair Use: A View from the U.S.
No full textFor an AI system to generate text, images, music, or computer code, it must copy vast amounts of literary, artistic or musical works. Arguably, the massive copying of works, to enable AI systems to “learn” how to produce independent outputs of literary, artistic, musical, audio-visual works or software, could shelter under the fair use defense on the ground that creating training data sufficiently repurposes the copying to count as “transformative” – at least if the outputs enabled by the inputs do not themselves infringe the source content (a highly disputed point). But one should perhaps decouple the inputs from the outputs. As to whether the copying of works into training data is a “transformative” fair use, the Supreme Court’s most recent fair use decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith suggests that analysis may depend on whether there is a market for licensing content for training data. Markets for high quality, reliable training data do exist or are emerging, notably in news media and scholarly publishing, and other authors and copyright owners are endeavoring to develop those markets as well. In that event, even if the outputs might not infringe particular inputs, commercial copying (at least) to create training data would be for the same purpose, and might, absent a “compelling justification” for supplanting authors’ markets, therefore fail a first factor fair use inquiry after AWF.
This article addresses a further issue: because traditional copyright analysis treats artistic style as akin to unprotectable ideas, is the copying of works of authorship in order to generate outputs «in the style of» the copied author or artist a fair use
An International Law Framework for Climate-Aligned Investment Governance
Get PDFThe January 2024 CCSI Working Paper, An International Law Framework for Climate-Aligned Investment Governance, outlines a framework — and invites and hopes to inspire further thinking, research, and discussion — on how to bridge gaps and build cohesion among various areas of international law relevant to investment in climate mitigation and adaptation. The working paper identifies areas of international law that are or could be relevant to investment governance, highlights points of inconsistency, and proposes a framework to reform and integrate international law with the objective of promoting and facilitating climate investment flows and achieving climate-aligned regulation of investment
Courting Censorship
Get PDFHas Supreme Court doctrine invited censorship? Not deliberately, of course. Still, it must be asked whether current doctrine has courted censorship — in the same way one might speak of it courting disaster.
The Court has repeatedly declared its devotion to the freedom of speech, so the suggestion that its doctrines have failed to block censorship may seem surprising. The Court’s precedents, however, have left room for government suppression, even to the point of seeming to legitimize it.
This Article is especially critical of the state action doctrine best known from Blum v. Yaretsky. That doctrine mistakenly elevates coercion as the archetype or model of constitutionally accountable government conduct. Even in suits against government, the Blum test normally requires plaintiffs to prove that private action has been coercively converted into government action. In such ways, the Blum state action doctrine is not merely erroneous, but has signaled to government that it can get away with censorship as long as it keeps most of it privatized and not overtly coercive
Democracy and Defections
Get PDFWithin comparative constitutional law, there is an emerging consensus that political fragmentation has weakened political parties and hindered the functioning of legislative bodies. This article examines legal efforts to curb fragmentation in parliamentary systems by prohibiting floor crossing, or “defections” — a constitutional approach that concentrates power within party leaders. It conducts a detailed case study of India, exploring what is arguably the most exten¬sive experiment in anti-defection law and its impact on accountability and representation. The article goes on to analyze similar laws in Israel and South Africa, highlighting the challenges of self-regulation. After evaluating the limitations of narrow anti-defection laws — such as the one in Pakistan — it proposes that the drawbacks of legislating party unity through formal defection regulation may prompt a reconsideration not only of legislatures but also political parties and political polarization. While some scholars have viewed attempts to stem fragmentation as a solution for limiting polarization, this article suggests the opposite: sharpening polarization, when coupled with norm-based internal party controls, may well tame the excesses of frag¬mentation, especially in non-programmatic multiparty systems. Although there are difficult tradeoffs here, as polarization can have independent (adverse) effects, the broader lessons of anti-defection laws deserve to be reckoned with. Ultimately, however, what the widespread adop¬tion of anti-defection laws might primarily reveal is the nature of our faith — or lack thereof — in the promise of a certain form of parliamentary politics
BU S4E3
No full textPhoto of Chas Cocke, founder and managing partner of investment firm LB Partners.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/beyond_unprecedented_podcast/1044/thumbnail.jp
Fatherhood, Family Law, and the Crisis of Boys and Men
Get PDFBoys and men in all racial and ethnic groups and across most socioeconomic groups are struggling on many fronts, including education, employment, physical and mental health, and social integration. In these areas and more, boys and men are much worse off than they were only a few decades ago. The crisis — which is concentrated among men without college degrees — is rooted in large-scale structural changes to the economy that have decimated jobs for this group and policy choices that emphasize incarceration while doing little to address economic inequality.
The decline in male well-being is not just a problem for boys and men. It is a problem for families. Men’s economic prospects have a profound impact on whether couples will commit to each other. Men without steady work — and with behaviors that often accompany unemployment, including a higher frequency of intimate partner violence — have trouble sustaining long-term relationships, and many do not marry. They often have children, but once romantic relationships end, unmarried men tend to drift away from the family. Many fathers want a larger role in their children’s lives, but this is possible only if they can strengthen their relationship with mothers. Many mothers also want fathers to be more involved, but they are concerned about issues fathers bring to the family. And children want a relationship with both parents.
Family law is part of the problem, contributing to the familial isolation of men without college degrees. In recent decades, family law has undergone a significant transformation, but this transformation primarily benefits married couples. The legal system now seeks to create “postdivorce families” — that is, families in which both parents are cooperative, active caregivers, notwithstanding the end of the parents’ romantic relationship. To this end, custody laws encourage shared parenting, and family courts offer alternative dispute resolution processes, counseling, and other assistance that strengthen fathers’ active membership in the family. But men facing economic precarity are unlikely to be married and thus need not go to court when a romantic relationship ends. Accordingly, these men do not benefit from this transformation in custody rules and processes, and they are unlikely to access the supportive services. The child support system makes things worse by imposing unrealistic orders on low-income fathers that alienate men from their families. And the family regulation system, also known as the child welfare system, treats these fathers as incompetent caregivers or, even worse, as threats.
Family law may relegate men in crisis to the periphery of family life, but it can also help bring them back. The goal is not to restore men’s patriarchal authority but rather to extend the model of cooperative parenting to more families. To this end, this Essay proposes far-reaching reforms to custody rules and processes, child support, and family regulation. In each of these problematic areas of family law, the proposed reforms give families greater autonomy in shaping agreements about family relationships, support to make these bargains workable, and opportunities for men to be active fathers
Contesting and Controlling Abortion in China’s Courts
Get PDFThe decision of the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has brought renewed global attention to how legal systems protect and restrict women’s reproductive autonomy. Central themes have included how the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States coincides with the judiciary’s embrace of a broader “jurisprudence of masculinity” and the relationship between abortion restrictions and authoritarianism, as multiple countries have enacted restrictive measures while undergoing democratic backsliding.
Yet, the scholarly conversation on abortion, democracy, and how courts reflect and entrench gender disparities entirely omits China — the largest authoritarian state and a country with a high incidence of abortion. This is largely unsurprising: the central challenge facing Chinese women has not been abortion access but state-mandated birth control and abortion. Almost no prior scholarship examines how Chinese courts adjudicate disputes over abortion. This lack of attention reflects the common understanding that courts play no role in regulating reproduction and that abortion remains unproblematic in China.
Yet Chinese courts do confront and decide claims involving abortion. Drawing on a dataset of more than 30,000 civil cases discussing abortion, this Article examines men’s claims that their wives obtained abortions without their “authorization.” Chinese courts rarely award damages explicitly on this basis. Yet, men’s claims to have legal rights to control women’s reproductive choices are common, despite having no legal basis in Chinese law. The persistence of such claims suggests that women’s access to abortion care is more regulated in China than academic and popular accounts have conveyed.
As China shifts toward encouraging rather than restricting births, traditional views of gender roles and the family increasingly align with the Party-state’s new pro-natalist policies. Courts may be an important venue for adjudicating reproductive rights and enforcing such policies. From a comparative perspective, China also presents an important example of how abortion and gender are contested in a legal system in which constitutional rights play little role and the legal status of abortion appears to be settled. This demonstrates that resolving the legal status of abortion may not eliminate legal conflict, but rather open up new areas of legal contestation regarding reproductive rights. Men’s claims to control women’s reproductive choices in China suggest the need for scholars to place more attention on the role of private law litigation in contesting and restricting reproduction across legal systems, and the ways in which rights advocacy can serve both regressive and progressive goals, in both democratic and authoritarian systems alike
Should I Call Child Protection? — Guidelines for Clinicians
No full textChild protection investigations are a commonplace occurrence for US children and their families. At current levels of risk, a third of all children and more than half of Black children can expect to experience such an investigation before turning 18 years old. While the risk of child protective services (CPS) investigations varies widely across states, significantly greater risk for Black children is a constant. In addition, large and long-standing disparities in reports to CPS by socioeconomic class, race, and disability status raise significant concerns about equity and justice. Black children are more likely to be investigated and removed from their homes, and, once removed, spend longer time in substitute care; they are less likely to be reunited with their families and experience termination of parental rights at rates higher than White families. Parents with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities are also disproportionately represented among families investigated by CPS. As other studies have identified, physicians and medical professionals contribute to these disparities in reporting
Disclosure Is an Essential Component of Ethical Practice: “I Am the Child Abuse Pediatrician”
No full textChild abuse pediatricians (CAPs) provide expert evaluations for suspected child maltreatment. Recently, there has been increased scrutiny of the work of CAPs in both courtrooms and the popular press. A particular point of reproval is a perceived lack of transparency about how CAPs introduce the work they do. Although some CAPs have published recommendations about how to conduct such introductions, CAP professional societies offer no clear guidance about how to introduce the role of the CAP, and several high-profile cases have alleged a lack of clarity in CAP introduction. Furthermore, the Illinois state legislature has debated a bill that would require CAPs to disclose specific aspects of their role and their relationship with the state’s child protective services (CPS) agency. The absence of clear guidelines and ethical standards may impair overall trust in the medical system