Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
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Police Body Cameras: Go Big or Go Home?
Get PDFPolice body-worn cameras have proliferated since the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the recent George Floyd-related protests seem set to continue or even accelerate that trend. Indeed, in her recent Nieves v. Bartlett dissent, Justice Sotomayor took time to note that many departments equip their police officers with body cameras. Body camera advocates have touted the cameras’ benefits, such as decreasing misconduct, reducing complaints, and improving accountability. At the same time, serious concerns have been raised regarding the impact of these cameras on privacy, public resources, and fairness. Despite the increased interest in body cameras, important empirical questions regarding resources and benefits remain insufficiently answered. This Article seeks to help fill that gap by analyzing a large, recently released dataset. The Article’s primary finding is that a more fulsome commitment to the body camera program—or what this Article refers to as “going big”—is associated with more favorable perceptions of the resources required for, and benefits of, body cameras
Jinting Wu, Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China
Get PDFAcross the globe, the impact of child disability on educational inequality has been relatively neglected. My current research focuses on the rising number of children with disabilities who grow up with stigma and bleak futures in China’s segregated special schools. By focusing on a uniquely marginalized population in a segregated educational setting, this research fills a compelling need to understand the intersection of disability and segregation – a dual marginality that continues to exist globally yet remains under-examined in educational, legal, and disability studies literature to date
Jennifer L. Gaynor discusses maritime Southeast Asia
Get PDFIn Episode 5 of the podcast Jennifer Gaynor discusses her current research and her previous book, Intertidal History in Island Southeast Asia, which drew on European and Southeast Asian sources, as well as four years in Indonesia, where she worked with rare Bugis language manuscripts and lived in communities of Sama sea people
Los tres modelos para la indemnización a las víctimas del conflicto armado interno en Colombia [Three Models of Reparations for Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict in Colombian Law]
No full textPublished in Reparación en los sistemas transicionales en Colombia: Los retos de un concepto en construcción, Paola Sánchez Cepeda, Gustavo Gallón Giraldo & Julián González Escallón, eds.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1422/thumbnail.jp
The Specific Consumer Expectations Test for Product Defects
Get PDFIn this Article, we propose that courts adopt an amended version of the consumer expectations test that we call the “specific consumer expectations test.” The specific consumer expectations test would apply to any product or product component for which consumers have clear, articulable ex ante expectations about the function of the product. Under the specific consumer expectations test, a defendant is liable if consumers expected such a product to reduce a particular risk, and the product in fact increased that risk. Similarly, if a product was intended to convey a particular benefit, but in fact harmed consumers along the same dimension, the test is violated. For example, if defective airbags increased the risk of injury after a motor-vehicle crash rather than decreased the risk, that product would be deemed defective under the specific consumer expectations test. By shifting the law’s focus from measuring the magnitude of consumer expectations to a simpler identification of the direction that consumers expected risks to change, the specific expectations test increases the administrability of products liability law and captures most of the incentives that the traditional consumer expectations test could theoretically provide. In particular, firms are incentivized to produce products that never increase risks unexpectedly, and consumers are empowered to purchase products which reflect their willingness to pay for risks. In cases where consumers lack specific expectations, we argue that courts should apply the risk-utility test to minimize unanticipated accident costs to consumers and firms.
We bolster our analysis with a novel experiment that demonstrates that the specific expectations test is consistent with the preferences of actual consumers. Our incentive-compatible experiment asked subjects to make consumption decisions over various risky products and determine punishments for the firms that manufacture defective products. The results reveal that individuals demand substantially greater punishments for firms that manufacture products that violate specific expectations. But, before the defect has manifested, consumers are willing to tolerate prospective defect risks in general as well as defects that would cause a product to perform the opposite of its intended function. It is after the defect has occurred that consumers display greater outrage with respect to product defects that impose harms that are the opposite of the intended function of the product or product component. Taken together, these results indicate that the specific expectations test would deter manufacturers from making defective products in the exact circumstances where consumers suffer the greatest harms from product defects, and the test would permit consumers to choose when to consume dangerous products without producers risking ex post liability
