14041 research outputs found
Sort by
Litigating Partial Autonomy
Get PDFWho is responsible when a semi-autonomous vehicle crashes? Automobile manufacturers claim that because Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) require constant human oversight even when autonomous features are active, the driver is always fully responsible when supervised autonomy fails. This Article argues that the automakers’ position is likely wrong both descriptively and normatively. On the descriptive side, current products liability law offers a pathway toward shared legal responsibility. Automakers, after all, have engaged in numerous marketing efforts to gain public trust in automation features. When drivers’ trust turns out to be misplaced, drivers are not always able to react in a timely fashion to re-take control of the car. In such cases, the automaker is likely to face primary liability, perhaps with a reduction for the driver’s comparative fault. On the normative side, this Article argues that the nature of modern semi-autonomous systems requires the human and machine to engage in a collaborative driving endeavor. The human driver should not bear full liability for the harm arising from this shared responsibility.
As lawsuits involving partial autonomy increase, the legal system will face growing challenges in incentivizing safe product development, allocating liability in line with fair principles, and leaving room for a nascent technology to improve in ways that, over time, will add substantial safety protections. The Article develops a framework for considering how those policy goals can play a role in litigation involving autonomous features. It offers three key recommendations, including (1) that courts consider collaborative driving as a system when allocating liability; (2) that the legal system recognize and encourage regular software updates for vehicles, and (3) that customers pursue fraud and warranty claims when manufacturers overstate their autonomous capabilities. Claims for economic damages can encourage manufacturers to internalize the cost of product defects before, rather than after, their customers suffer serious physical injury
Repairing our Legacy: Native Nations, Co-Management and the Future of Federal Public Lands
No full textEvent Description
The history and management of our nation\u27s public lands have evolved largely at the expense and exclusion of the continent\u27s Indigenous peoples. The removal, dispossession and relocation of Native Nations enabled the United States to acquire and maintain these public lands, many of which have now come to define iconic American landscapes, ideals and values. Despite that history, however, Native Nations and their citizens have maintained deep, lasting and meaningful connections with and knowledge of the territories that had been wrested from their control. Long ignored, excluded or erased from the story of public lands, these connections are now coming to redefine the way in which public lands are considered, managed, protected and used. From the Bears Ears National Monument and Chaco Canyon National Historical Park in the southwest, to the Crown of the Continent in the Northern Rockies and the national forests of the Great Lakes, as well as many other places across the country, Native voices are now asserting an interest and shaping the way in which the federal government oversees our public lands. Those voices have led to a sea change in federal policies that now seek to honor, rather than silence, Native knowledge, insight and authority. Drawing on his work focused on Tribal co-management of federal public lands, Monte Mills will discuss what has led to this critical moment, the changes that are currently underway and what they may mean for the future of our public lands. Speaker Bio
Monte Mills joined the UW faculty in 2022 as Charles I. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Native American Law Center (NALC). He teaches American Indian Law, Property and other classes focused on Native American and natural resources related topics.
Monte\u27s research and writing focuses on the intersection of Federal Indian Law, Tribal sovereignty and natural resources as well as race and racism in the law and legal education. He has published several law review articles and serves as a co-author on two textbooks: American Indian Law, Cases and Commentary (along with Robert T. Anderson, Sarah A. Krakoff, and Kevin K. Washburn) and Native American Natural Resources Law (with Michael Blumm and Elizabeth Kronk Warner). Monte also co-authored A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection, which was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020.
Prior to joining the UW faculty, Monte was a professor and Co-Director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. Prior to joining that faculty, Monte was the Director of the Legal Department for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado, an in-house counsel department that he helped organize and implement in 2005 following completion of a unique two-year in-house attorney training program. As Director of the Tribe\u27s Legal Department, Monte represented and counseled the Tribe on a broad array of issues, including litigation in tribal, state and federal courts, legislative matters before the Colorado General Assembly and the United States Congress, and internal tribal matters such as contracting, code-drafting and gaming issue
Evidence for Community Face Masking to Limit the Spread of SARS-CoV-2: A Critical Review
Get PDFThe use of facemasks in community settings has become an accepted public policy response to decrease disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding and on mechanistic studies that rely on surrogate endpoints (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies for disease transmission. The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative meta- analyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle. Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public
Disclosing Privacy and Discrimination Protections in Informed Consent
Get PDFRecent empirical work shows that providing greater detail about limitations of genetic anti-discrimination protections in informed consent documents is likely to lower individuals’ willingness to participate in research studies. This article presents these empirical findings and analyzes the implications of the findings for clinical care and for privacy and discrimination risks beyond genetic discrimination. While the paper argues that further research is needed to fully understand the potential implications of disclosure of legal protections in the clinical setting, there are clear implications in the research setting. Since individuals are likely to alter their decision to participate in research based on the depth of information provided, informed consent should contain detailed information about privacy and discrimination risks. However, for participants to truly understand the risk of loss of privacy and potential for discrimination that flows from information disclosures in research, they arguably must have a robust understanding of both when and how information may be shared, but also the legal protections and limitations that govern use of that data. Now, more than ever, it is essential to understand the privacy risks associated with joining a study since research trends related to big data and secondary research are vastly increasing the privacy risks for participants. Yet, while it is easy to state that individuals should be told of both privacy and anti-discrimination laws and their respective limitations, disclosing these in practice is much more complex. For every law, there are countless limitations that could be enumerated, but such disclosures would quickly make informed consent unwieldy and counterproductive. Thus, this paper argues that institutional review boards (“IRBs”) can help to find a limiting principle to the disclosures by assessing the likelihood of harm and contextualizing the risks to the study population. This will balance between over- and under-disclosure of legal protections and limitations while still fulfilling important foundational goals of informed consent
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: How the Ongoing War on Drugs and Discrimination in Healthcare Created a Viable Eighth Amendment Claim for Black Inmates During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFDepolarizing Climate Change in the United States
No full textAddressing climate change requires a society-wide effort sustained over decades. This simply will not happen without bipartisan cooperation and broad public support. Fortunately, there are signs of hope. There have been recent bipartisan climate policies passed at the state and federal levels, and polls increasingly suggest broad and bipartisan support for addressing climate change, especially among younger voters. What does a bipartisan approach to addressing climate change look like? Drawing on analyses of opinion polls, survey experiments, and legislative action from my research group and others, I will argue that strategies for building a big-tent climate movement include: carrots over sticks, optimism over pessimism, national pride over national shame, precise and plain-spoken discourse over hyperbole and histrionics, and kitchen-table-focused approaches to environmental justice rather than identitarian ones. Speaker Bio
Matthew G. Burgess is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies, with a courtesy appointment in Economics. Matt received his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, 2014, and his B.Sc. University of Toronto, 2009
His research focuses on economic growth futures and their impacts on the environment and society, mathematical modeling of human-environment systems, and political polarization of environmental issues. Matt uses a combination of mathematical and computer modeling, data synthesis, and collaboration with stakeholders, in order to make conceptual advances and link them to practice
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Open Research Online? Become a CORE Member to access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard! 👇