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Reimagining Resistance: The Voting Rights Act\u27s Immediate Resistance
No full textThis piece situates the current fight over voting rights and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into historical context. More specifically, Hayter argues that current contention over minority voting dates to 1965 itself. Resistance to the Voting Rights act is not only older than many people know, but the continuity of that resistance also forces us to question telling the story of the American Civil Rights Movement as a triumph narrative
Social Equality and the Stateless Society
No full textSocial egalitarians should rethink their support for democratic political institutions. The ideal social egalitarian institutional arrangement would be a stateless society. If it were feasible to live without a state, then citizens\u27 subservience to a state could not be justified on the grounds that people were able to influence what the state did. Unfortunately, a stateless society is infeasible. As a matter of non-ideal theory, social egalitarians generally support democratic institutions. But there are four reasons that social egalitarians should not support democracy. First, many of the arguments that social egalitarians cite in favor of democracy appeal to an ideal of democracy, but if ideal institutional arrangements were feasible, then a stateless society would be better. Second, social egalitarians would not support the use of democratic procedures to make collective decisions within the context of private relationships if people could instead decide separately. Third, democratic societies entrench status inequalities between citizens and non-citizens and, at times, between majority groups and minority groups. Though democracy people one kind of equal status, it institutionalizes and intensifies other forms of oppression. Fourth, relative to the status quo, relational egalitarians ought to support less governmental control over people\u27s lives, and that means less democracy
Business Versus Ethics? Thoughts on the Future of Business Ethics
No full textTo commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors in chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialogue around the theme Business versus Ethics? (inspired by the title of the commentary by Jeffrey Harrison). The authors of these commentaries seek to transcend the age-old separation fallacy (Freeman in Bus Ethics Q 4(4):409–421, 1994) that juxtaposes business and ethics/society, posing a forced choice or trade off. Providing a contemporary take on the classical question “if it’s legal is it ethical?”, David Hess explores the role of the law in promoting or hindering stakeholder-oriented purpose and governance structure. Jeffrey Harrison encourages scholars to move beyond the presupposition that businesses are either strategic or ethical and explore important questions at the intersection of strategy and ethics. The proposition that business models might be inherently ethical or inherently unethical in their design is developed by Sheila Killian, who examines business systems, their morality, and who they serve. However, the conundrum that entrepreneurs are either lauded for their self-belief and risk-taking, or loathed for their self-belief and risk-taking, is discussed by M. Tina Dacin and Julia Roloff using the metaphor of taboos and totems. These commentaries seek to explore positions that advocate multiplicity and tensions in which business ethics is not either/or but both
Why Meta Users Need a Public Advocate: A Modest Means to Address the Shortcomings of the Oversight Board
Get PDFMeta took an unprecedented step in content moderation when it created an independent board, the Oversight Board, to adjudicate the company’s decisions on contested posts. Whether that step constitutes a step forward in the ongoing struggle to moderate online communities depends on whether Meta iterates on its innovation. The current structure of the Oversight Board renders it unable to institute broad and necessary changes to Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s main platforms. The creation of an Office of the Public Advocate, charged with representing the interests of Meta’s users before the Board, would drastically improve the ability of the Board to positively change Meta’s Community Standards. Such an office would serve as a model for other companies to emulate as users seek more influence over their online communities
Digital Asset Valuation
Get PDFExisting valuation metrics for legacy assets only limitedly apply in the context of digital assets. The valuation infrastructure in the current legal, accounting, technology, and back-office framework, in combination with the immaturity of the digital asset market, create an environment of digital asset valuation uncertainty. This article evaluates the existing asset valuation methods and their limited application to digital assets before contrasting new and evolving digital asset valuation trends
When the Consumer Becomes the Product: Utilizing Products Liability Principles to Protect Consumers from Data Breaches
Get PDFCurrent products liability law is not equipped to handle products in the age of data. The potential for harm was traditionally coupled with the product: wherever the product went, the potential for harm followed. As the product proceeded down the supply chain—from the manufacturer to the wholesaler, to the retailer, and then to the consumer—the risk of harm went with it. Data collected from consumers carries a different risk. Data products originate with a person who is often the consumer of a physical product in the traditional supply chain. That data product is then transmitted to another entity, which is often the manufacturer of the physical product that the consumer purchased. The potential for harm, however, stays with the consumer because she is the one that suffers from her data being stolen or made public. Thus, in a data breach, the collector does not suffer harm—the original consumer does
Am I My Brother\u27s (river)keeper? the Ripple Effects of a Community- based Stream Restoration
No full textAsk any group of students at University of Richmond why they chose UR, and someone will say, “It’s such a beautiful campus!” and every head will nod. The grounds consistently top rankings such as Princeton Review’s Most Beautiful Campuses. The university tour guides will happily share that the picturesque campus was designed by Charles Gillette to be built around Westhampton Lake on the land of a former amusement park, and that it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an archetypal example of Collegiate Gothic architecture. Of course, that’s only part of the story. An ecological stream restoration in a long-ignored portion of campus is helping to daylight both the stream that runs through it and the hidden history that surrounds it (see Fig. 1). We describe how the project has tapped into faculty, student, and community interest and energy to do more than simply remove sediments and nutrients from an unhealthy stream. Using tenets of ecological urbanism (Mostafavi and Doherty 2016), we are actively defining a new hub on campus where conversations about the past, present, and future are occurring around a flowing waterway that embodies the many connections that have come to define the site
The Promise and Perils of Private Enforcement
Get PDFA new crop of private enforcement suits is sprouting up across the country. These laws permit people to bring enforcement actions against those who aid or induce abortions, against schools that permit transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identities, and against schools that permit transgender students to play on sports teams consistent with their gender identities. Similar laws permit people to bring enforcement actions against schools that teach critical race theory and against those who sell restricted firearms. State legislatures are considering a host of laws modeled on these examples, along with other novel regimes. These are new adaptations of private enforcement regimes—laws that task members of the public with enforcing regulatory statutes in court. Private enforcement has a somewhat long lineage in U.S. law, dating back to at least the nineteenth century. Since then, in contexts as diverse as employment discrimination, housing discrimination, antitrust, securities, and other contexts, the U.S. legal system has endowed members of the public with the power to enforce regulatory law in court. While these traditional forms of private enforcement have been relatively stable and survived legal challenges, the new adaptations cropping up have prompted challenges in court and intense debate. Among other things, scholars argue that they amount to a form of legal vigilantism, suppress existing legal rights, and pose due process concerns in their design. Yet, to fully distinguish between private enforcement’s traditional forms and these new variations, we need a richer account of the meaning and role of private enforcement in democracy.
This Article provides such an account, analyzing and distinguishing private enforcement regimes through the lens of a participatory democracy theory of regulatory governance. Drawing on debates and thinking at the dawn of the modern regulatory state, this Article argues that private enforcement is democratically valuable when it (1) evens out structural power disparities that can undermine democracy, (2) enables members of the public to bring the expertise of experience to dynamic regulatory environments, and (3) facilitates democratic deliberation. This Article argues that traditional private enforcement suits generally contribute to democratic governance under each rationale. In contrast, the new private enforcement suits perform less well, and indeed, often undermine the rationales for popular participation in regulatory governance. This Article thus articulates a richer theory of popular participation in regulatory governance that shows the promise of private enforcement generally and the perils of recent adaptations
War Torts
Get PDFThe law of armed conflict has a built-in accountability gap. Under international law, there is no individualized remedy for civilians whose property, bodies, or lives are destroyed in war. Accountability mechanisms for civilian harms are limited to unlawful acts: Individuals who willfully target civilians or otherwise commit serious violations of international humanitarian law may be prosecuted for war crimes, and states that commit internationally wrongful acts must make reparations under the law of state responsibility. But no entity is liable for lawful but unintended harmful acts—regardless of how many or how horrifically civilians are hurt. This Article proposes developing an international “war torts” regime, which would require states to pay for both lawful and unlawful acts in armed conflict that cause civilian harm. Just as tort and criminal law coexist and complement each other in domestic legal regimes, war torts and war crimes would overlap but serve different aims. Establishing war torts and creating a route to a remedy would not only increase the likelihood that victims would receive compensation, it would also create much-needed incentives for states to mitigate or reduce civilian harms. Ultimately, a war torts regime would further the law of armed conflict’s foundational purpose of minimizing needless civilian suffering
Examining the Relationship Between Environmental Justice and the Lack of Diversity in Environmental Organizations
Get PDFThis article highlights the ongoing lack of diversity in each of the three major types of environmental organizations—conservation and preservation organizations, governmental agencies, and environmental grantmaking foundations—and assesses how this lack of diversity has historically marginalized people of color. Assessing the history of how the environmental movement has marginalized people of color is key because from this marginalization grew the rise of the environmental justice movement and recognition from the legal system of environmental issues that disproportionately impacted people of color. Last, this article presents solutions on how environmental organizations can increase and retain diversity in their staff and leadership and put an end to the history of defining environmental issues from a predominantly White perspective