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Metaphors, mental models, and multiplicity: Understanding student perception of digital literacy
Get PDFThis study examines student perception of digital literacy from their engagement with the Fabric of Digital Life, a digital archive of emerging technologies. Through grounded theory analysis we identified the ways students make sense of an unfamiliar technology. Our results show students assign metaphors to understand a new digital platform, apply mental models transferred from previous conceptual domains onto new technologies, and express multiply-layered approaches that facilitated their digital literacy development––an indication for instructors to orient toward an expansive description of digital literacy that caters to student learning needs as well as their professional futures
Introduction: Dehumanist Education and the Colonial University
No full textThis introduction to the special issue “Educational Undergrowth” proposes an ecological view of educational institutions and practices, one that foregrounds the porosity of borders so that entities and institutions that can sometimes seem distinct are thought of as always entangled. The editors elaborate this ecological view by drawing on theories of coloniality, especially the work of Sylvia Wynter (and her human/Man distinction) and Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (in The Undercommons). In this framing, the university appears as a specific, but not isolated, part of a colonial ecology structured around producing Man. This allows both for critical accounts of how coloniality shapes institutions such as schools and universities, always in relation to many other institutions and sites, and for speculative experiments in queer, decolonial, abolitionist education. The introduction intervenes in contemporary leftist debates about the university in particular and education more generally by offering a way of attuning to critical, abolitionist, and decolonial projects as specific but intraactive outgrowths of the colonial ecology and myriad disruptive projects (happening both in and outside of institutionalized schools). On the one hand, educational undergrowth accounts for how resources circulate unevenly in the colonial ecology so that the “growth” of some people, institutions, and projects is possible only because others are deprived, defunded, and disinvited. On the other hand, it draws on affect theory, new materialisms, and work in decolonial and critical ethnic studies to valorize otherwise marginal, bewildering, errant educational encounters that are always taking place in the undergrowth of the university
Funeral Poverty
Get PDFThis Article makes a unique contribution to the literature by drawing attention to the financial burden of death service being shouldered by those who are “relatively poor,” or those for whom everyday life may be a financial struggle. The thesis is equal parts positive, normative, descriptive, and prescriptive: it is imperative that options be made available to transition human remains in a way that does not exacerbate cycles of poverty and allows for the living to preserve dignity. This need calls for important changes to existing legal structures, including modernization of consumer protection regulation, change to laws regulating the death service industry, and recharacterization of expenses for tax purposes. An overview of the death industry in the United States is explored in Part I, as a discussion of casket versus cremation as the path most followed. Part II traces the underlying economics of “shuff[ling] off this mortal coil” in the United States, and the limited options (beg, borrow, surrender) that are available to assist the struggling consumer. The structure of any marketplace influences consumption, and Part III considers gaps in marketplace regulation that highlight or exacerbate structural features such as uncertainty of need, information asymmetry, vulnerability of the consumer, and inelasticity of the marketplace. Part IV considers the multifaceted issue of funeral poverty and the potential long-term implication of these extraordinary expenses upon families. The Article concludes with a cohesive framework of solutions responsive to the unique structural features of the death services marketplace, by which funeral poverty issues may be comprehensively addressed in the United States
Trade Secrets and Personal Secrets
Get PDFThis Article aims to examine the different ways in which the law protects commercial and private secrets. The most fundamental difference is that the trade secrets regime forbids the unauthorized use of a business’s confidential information, while privacy law does not forbid the unauthorized use of a person’s confidential information. If a firm takes measures to protect information of value, the law forbids the use of this information. Yet, as to personal secrets, the mere fact that someone has taken measures to protect their privacy does not create an obligation to avoid misappropriation of their in- formation.
This asymmetry of protection is especially troubling when these two systems collide. For example, certain information can be subject to a trade secret of a company, while at the same time strongly ‘belong’ to an individual. Trade secret laws often prevent individuals from learning about uses that firms conduct with their own private information.
This Article explores the extent to which the distinction between the two laws is justified, and analyzes whether the law of information privacy can be modified to resemble trade secrecy more closely. This exploration is particularly relevant under today’s climate of commodification of private information, where both users and companies make transactional use of personal data on a regular basis
Almond Beverage, Oat Water, and Soaked Soybean Juice: How the Dairy Pride Act Attempts to Remedy Consumer Confusion About Plant-Based Milks
Get PDFWith sales of plant-based milks, such as almond and soy milk, on the rise and dairy industry sales declining, dairy industry supporters are taking issue with plant-based milk products calling themselves “milk.”10 In an effort to combat the “mislabeling” of non-dairy products, a few Senators banded together in an attempt to save the dairy industry by creating the DAIRY PRIDE Act.11 The Act was introduced in an effort to prohibit plant-based milk producers from using the term “milk” on their products and instead use a less misleading name, such as “almond imitation milk” or “soy beverage.”12 This Comment argues that, although the DAIRY PRIDE Act claims to remedy consumer confusion regarding the nutritional value of these plant-based products, the Act’s practical effect is to create anticompetitive issues between the dairy and plant-based milk industries by allowing Congress to pick winners and losers in this space, which could lead to congressional overreach in other markets under the guise of helping the consumer
How to Do Things with Signs: Semiotics in Legal Theory, Practice, and Education
Get PDFThis Article therefore broadly explores semiotics through a lawyer’s lens, hopefully simplifying as much as possible much of the complex, divergent, and, frankly, sometimes baffling terminology used by those who explore semiotics. This Article will first continue below with a general definition of signs and the related notion of intentionality. It will then address the structure and concomitants of signs, the nature of speech acts that are of interest to lawyers, the sign classifications used in legal analysis and rhetoric, the role of signs in careful legal thought and good legal rhetoric, the unfolding of the signified and the fixation of meaning debate, the semiotics of speaker vs. reader meaning, and some brief reflections on semiotics and the First Amendment. Finally, this Article also provides an Appendix with further terms and concepts helpful to lawyers exploring semiotics.
I hope this Article’s broad overview of semiotics underscores the vital importance of semiotics in law and in legal education reform. I also hope this Article inspires readers and legal education reformers to explore the vast worlds of semiotics that elude the page constraints of a general overview
The Veil (Or Helmet) Of Ignorance: A Rawlsian Thought Experiment About a Military’s Criminal Law
Get PDFThis Article loosely adapts political philosopher John Rawls’s famous social contract thought experiment to interrogate a corner of law that receives too little theoretical attention: the separate federal code at the intersection of criminal law and national security that regulates both martial and non-martial conduct of millions of citizens, invests judicial responsibility and prosecutorial authority in nonlawyer commanding officers, operates with no territorial limitations, and pulls even certain retirees within its jurisdiction: the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Employing the perspectives of four “idealized” actors—Congress, a president, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a potential recruit—this “experiment” reconsiders the fundamental and necessary qualities of a specialized system of criminal law. Such qualities must render the system acceptable to civilian political leadership in a representative democracy exercising ultimate command and control over a professional military, but also accepted by those over whom its penal jurisdiction will rest. When considering the reasonable inferences and deductions each of these four actors will likely make from a hypothetical “original position,” four common principles emerge. Principles of nonrepulsion, retention, mission risk reduction, and compliance operate as four prescriptive corners bounding and framing a sensible set of answers to the following questions: (1) what conduct is to be proscribed and subjected to punishment? (2) what punishments, forms of discipline, or administrative censure are available for violations? (3) what processes shall organize the steps from investigating to punishing violations? (4) who shall have discretionary agency within the ranks to administer these processes with investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial authority? and (5) what constraints, limits, or individual rights and liberties shall operate to ensure due process, justice, and protection from that authority’s abuses? Answering these questions in light of the four principles goes some way toward articulating a “normative theory of criminal law”1—a prospect that military justice currently lacks
Strictly Speaking, What Needs to Change? A Review of How Statutory Changes Could Bring Strict Products Liability to Virginia
Get PDFVirginia remains one of five states that refuse to adopt strict products liability. To date, the Supreme Court of Virginia has declined to follow the path Justice Traynor set out nearly a century ago, as its recent decisions confirm its resistance to strict liability. However, given the change in control of the General Assembly following the elections of 2017 and 2019, the General Assembly is in new hands and may remain that way for some time. This new legislative majority, among its plans for new policies, may soon consider establishing strict products liability by statute. In doing so, Virginia would not be alone. State legislation is the method that four states have already used to adopt strict liability. Others have passed statutes to further limit or expand the reach of liability that their state courts established. Legislation is thus a proven method to adopt and manage strict liability should the General Assembly take up the effort.
Part I of this Comment briefly reviews the history of Virginia products liability law, and how small changes over centuries have put the Commonwealth on a long line trending slowly towards, but keeping a healthy distance from, modern product liability norms. Part II addresses where Virginia products liability law is today, and how that practically differs from strict liability. Part III explores how Virginia could adopt strict liability without unnecessarily disrupting established precedent and provides a sample statute to accomplish that end
e-Museletter: December 2021
Get PDFThis Issue:
Director\u27s Message
Library News
Library Winter Break Closure
Featured Resources
Materials Update
Things to Consider
Student Services Corner
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