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Inequitable Distribution of Plastic Benefits and Burdens on Economies and Public Health
Get PDFPlastic heterogeneously affects social systems – notably human health and local and global economies. Here we discuss illustrative examples of the benefits and burdens of each stage of the plastic lifecycle (e.g., macroplastic production, consumption, recycling). We find the benefits to communities and stakeholders are principally economic, whereas burdens fall largely on human health. Furthermore, the economic benefits of plastic are rarely applied to alleviate or mitigate the health burdens it creates, amplifying the disconnect between who benefits and who is burdened. In some instances, social enterprises in low-wealth areas collect and recycle waste, creating a market for upcycled goods. While such endeavors generate local socioeconomic benefits, they perpetuate a status quo in which the burden of responsibility for waste management falls on downstream communities, rather than on producers who have generated far greater economic benefits. While the traditional cost-benefit analyses that inform decision-making disproportionately weigh economic benefits over the indirect, and often unquantifiable, costs of health burdens, we stress the need to include the health burdens of plastic to all impacted stakeholders across all plastic life stages in policy design. We therefore urge the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to consider all available knowledge on the deleterious effects of plastic across the entire plastic lifecycle while drafting the upcoming international global plastic treaty
Transboundary Marine Species at Risk & Their Recovery in a Changing Climate: Workshop Report
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Of Bass Notes and Base Rates: Avoiding Mistaken Inferences About Copying
Get PDFTo prove copyright infringement, a plaintiff must convince a jury that the defendant copied from the plaintiff’s work rather than independently creating it. To prove copying, especially cases involving music, it’s common for plaintiffs and their experts to argue that the similarities between the parties’ creative works are so great that it is simply implausible that the defendant’s work was created without copying from the plaintiff’s work. Unfortunately, in its present form, the argument is mathematically illiterate: It assumes, without any underlying evidence, that the experts know or could reasonably estimate how likely it is that a song with similarity level x to another, earlier song was created without copying from the earlier song. Until the state of the underlying art changes, it is reasonable for experts to testify about the existence of similarities between works, but it is unsupported and unreasonable for them to testify about the likelihood that those similarities came about from copying. We don’t know that likelihood in the absence of evidence about base rates: how common is it for a song to have similarity level x with some other song in the corpus of existing songs, and how common it is for that similarity to come from copying or from independent creation (or from both copying a shared antecedent). Until that knowledge is available, testimony about the probability of copying should be deemed inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702
Open Prosecution
Get PDFWhere the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved without a trial, the criminal system in the United States is a system of pleas, not trials. While a plea, its terms, and the resulting sentence entered in court are all public, how the outcome was negotiated remains almost entirely nonpublic. Prosecutors may resolve cases for reasons that are benign, thoughtful, and well-calibrated—or discriminatory, self-interested, and arbitrary—with very little oversight or sunlight. For years, academics and policymakers have called for meaningful data to fill this crucial void.
In this Article, we open the “black box” of prosecutorial discretion by tasking prosecutors with documenting detailed case-level information concerning plea bargaining. This is not a hypothetical or conceptual exercise, but rather the product of theory, design, and implementation work by an interdisciplinary team. We collected systematic data from two prosecutors’ offices for one year. The Article describes how the data-collection methodology was designed, piloted, and implemented, as well as the insights that have been generated. Our system can be readily adapted to other offices and jurisdictions. We conclude by discussing how documenting the plea-bargaining process can affect prosecution practices, defense lawyering, judicial oversight, and public policy, its constitutional and ethical implications, and its broader implications for democratic legitimacy. An open-prosecution approach is feasible and, for the first time in the United States, it is in operation
Federal Recognition of Native American Tribes in the United States and the International Right to Self-Determination: Why Congress Should Exercise Its Constitutional Authority to Federally Recognize the Lumbee Tribe
Get PDFNative American tribal nations covet state and federal tribal recognition. The Lumbee Tribe is one of those tribes. Though North Carolina has granted the Lumbee Tribe State recognition, the Lumbee Tribe\u27s 134-year-long quest for Federal recognition has not been successful. Neither of the two types of Federal Recognition – Administrative and Congressional – have permitted the Lumbee Tribe to benefit alongside the other federally-recognized Tribes from increased respect, sovereignty, and resources. Instead, the Lumbee Tribe has been spun around by the regulatory recognition rigmarole.
In this article, I first explore arguments for and against federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe. Next, I investigate the long-standing debate between Congressional and Administrative recognition. Finally, against this backdrop, I propose two solutions. First, Congress could independently recognize the Lumbee Tribe. Or second, Congress or the BIA could modify the federal recognition process to ensure that Native American tribes, like the Lumbee Tribe, have a fair and just opportunity to petition for and receive recognition
