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Beyond The Corporate Responsibility To Respect Human Rights In The Dawn Of A Metaverse
Get PDFTechnological advances in the 21st century pose new threats to human rights from business activities. In this new technological age, individuals and communities engage through an increasing myriad of digital means and platforms, all facilitated by a smaller, more powerful set of global BigTech companies, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Meta (formerly known as Facebook). In so doing, however, our lives as workers, consumers, and citizens become subject to increasing corporate control through surveillance capitalism and algorithmic governance. With the dawn of metaverses—3D immersive digital environments in which you can interact with others via avatars and through virtual and augmented reality—upon us, some commentators anticipate that BigTech control over our (digital) lives could be all-consuming. Given the negative impacts and threats to human rights resulting from the current dominance of BigTech companies, it is not difficult to imagine how we could be at the beginning of a ‘Ready Player One’ dystopian reality: ensconced in digital, state-like walled gardens that are controlled by a handful of companies wielding sovereign-like authority. This would challenge theoretical foundations underpinning the operation of international human rights law and how corporations are considered within it. As such, it is important to revisit the adequacy of governance frameworks for the protection of human rights in a truly digital age. In so doing, this Article questions how we can understand corporate responsibility in relation to human rights in digital milieux, it discusses the adequacy of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, and it posits that we should consider a corporate responsibility to respect and protect (digital) human rights. The article also engages with the interesting tangential development of Web2 versus Web3 realities, and argues that the distinction at present does not negate the force of the arguments presented towards considering a corporate responsibility to protect human rights in a metaverse
The Impact Of Covid-19 On Domestic Violence And Digital Abuse: Addressing The Problem Through A National Action Plan
Get PDFThis Article discusses the impact of COVID-19 on domestic violence and digital abuse around the world, with a focus on the United States. Violence against women has increased since the start of the pandemic largely due to lockdown restrictions and other measures taken by governments to slow the spread of the virus. Further, with an increase in the use of technology throughout our daily lives, digital abuse has become more prevalent and particularly impacts women and girls. This paper analyzes the national action plans on gender-based violence in Australia and South Africa and explores how the United States can create an effective national action plan to combat these issues
Trade Transparency: A Call for Surfacing Unseen Deals
Get PDFFor many years, the executive branch has concluded foreign commercial agreements with trading partners pursuant to delegated authority from Congress. The deals govern the contours of a wide range of U.S. inbound and outbound trade: from food safety rules for imported products to procedures and specifications of exported goods, to name two. The problem is that often no one-apart from the executive branch negotiators- knows what these deals contain. A lack of transparency rules has inhibited the publication of and reporting to Congress of these unseen deals. Dozens if not hundreds of foreign commercial deals are unseen in two ways: (1) The executive branch rarely makes their texts readily available, and (2) the texts of many such deals appear largely to have been lost by the executive branch itself This Piece lays out how the Biden Administration and Congress could ameliorate such problems in the trade transparency and recordkeeping systems. It identifies the flaws in our separation of trade law powers that have led to the hiddenness of such deals, drawing from interviews with U. S. officials that help to shed light on the deals\u27 obscurity. Expecting that the Biden Administration is likely to rely on these deals despite these acute problems, this Piece suggests changes to the system without hampering the executive\u27s use of this increasingly important tool
Managing Mass Tort Class Actions: Judicial Politics and Rulemaking in Three Acts
Get PDFJudges take part in a variety of non-adjudicative tasks that shape the structure of litigation. In addition to their managerial functions, judges sit as administrative heads of court. They participate in civil justice reform projects and develop procedures for criminal and civil trials. What norms and principles ought to guide judges in this other work? In their casework we expect judges to be neutral and fair, setting aside politics and rationally following the law. Indeed, this article will demonstrate that there is good reason to insist on these qualities in both judges’ case-related and broader court-related reform activities. To test this proposition, this article examines the work of judges who sat on the Advisory Committee for Civil Rules, the committee that evaluates and makes recommendations for rule amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In particular, this Article reviews the committee’s nearly thirty-year effort to make rules for approving settlements in mass tort class actions. The review reveals politics and competition not only between judges and Congress for the authority to design rules of procedure, but also points to a lesser explored phenomenon, of competition between judges of the different levels of court
The Norms of Algorithmic Credit Scoring
Get PDFThis article examines the growth of algorithmic credit scoring and its implications for the regulation of consumer credit markets in the UK. It constructs a frame of analysis for the regulation of algorithmic credit scoring, bound by the core norms underpinning UK consumer credit and data protection regulation: allocative efficiency, distributional fairness and consumer privacy (as autonomy). Examining the normative trade-offs that arise within this frame, the article argues that existing data protection and consumer credit frameworks do not achieve an appropriate normative balance in the regulation of algorithmic credit scoring. In particular, the growing reliance on consumers\u27 personal data by lenders due to algorithmic credit scoring, coupled with the ineffectiveness of existing data protection remedies has created a data protection gap in consumer credit markets that presents a significant threat to consumer privacy and autonomy. The article makes recommendations for filling this gap through institutional and substantive regulatory reforms
Partisan Gerrymanders: Upholding Voter Suppression and Choosing Judicial Abdication in \u3cem\u3eRucho v. Common Cause\u3c/em\u3e
Get PDFUnder the Constitution, voters choose their elected officials. Partisan gerrymanders, however, enable elected officials to choose their voters and, in the process, dilute the votes of citizens who do not support them. From this perspective, partisan gerrymanders undermine the sovereignty of the people and, thereby, undermine the foundation of this democratic republic. In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court declared that partisan gerrymandering raises a nonjusticiable political question beyond the competence of the federal courts. This Article asks: How did this happen? How could the Supreme Court abdicate its duty to protect the sovereignty of the people and its duty to provide access to justice? The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, located the issues raised in these cases not in the jurisprudence of voting and voting rights but in a series of narrow claims about the competence of federal courts to craft appropriate legal standards. The dissent, penned by Justice Elena Kagan, focused on voters, voting, and the sovereignty of the people. Grounded in the constitutional values of a democratic republic, the dissent offered a passionate repudiation of virtually every element of the majority opinion. Yet, in the end, it was the dissent that developed a methodology, based on the work of the lower federal courts, for a workable standard for addressing the challenges that the majority rejected as impossible. It was the dissent that found a way forward based on the recognition of the modern technology of vote dilution that provides the basis for preserving the voters’ access to justice. Nevertheless, the crafty and at times disingenuous framework of the majority opinion that ignored voting rights and democracy prevailed. This Article suggests that this may well be only a temporary victory as a younger generation of lawyers, judges, and citizens with more experience with the technology of partisan gerrymandering will find the majority’s framework and strategy as implausible and unpersuasive as the dissent already did in Rucho
Franchisor Power as Employment Control
Get PDFLabor and employment laws are systematically underenforced in low-wage, franchised workplaces. Union contracts, and the benefits and protections they provide, are nonexistent. The Fight for Fifteen movement has brought attention to the low wages, systemic violations of workers\u27 rights, and lack of collective representation in fast-food franchises. Given that franchisees can be judgment-proof and cannot set industry standards, the deterrence, remedial, and collective bargaining goals of labor and employment laws can depend on holding the franchisor (the brand) responsible under the joint employer doctrine. In a series of cases, however, a dominant approach has emerged that essentially foreclosed the possibility that franchisors and their subordinate companies (franchisees) are joint employers. Recent political developments mirror this foreclosure and pose a historic narrowing of the scope of joint employer liability. This Article challenges courts, administrative agencies, and legislators to take more seriously franchisors\u27 power over their franchisees and the working conditions of low-wage fast-food workers. To advance this argument, we rely on insights from an original empirical data set of (1) forty-four contracts between leading fast-food franchisors and franchisees in 2016 and (2) comprehensive documentation provided in joint employer legal proceedings against two major fast-food franchisors in the United States: McDonald\u27s and Domino\u27s Pizza. Our proposed power as employment control construct considers, within the confines of existing doctrines, the cumulative effects of lead franchisor firms\u27 reserved (unexercised) and exercised influence over the working conditions in their subordinate businesses. By giving power more consideration in analyses of joint employer liability, courts, administrative agencies, and policy-makers can bring more justice and consistency to this hotly contested area
Labor’s New Localism
Get PDFMillions of workers in the United States, disproportionately women, immigrants, and people of color, perform low-paid, precarious work. Few of these workers can improve their workplace standards because the National Labor Relations Act ( NLRA ) does not sufficiently protect their right to form unions and collectively bargain. Lacking sufficient influence in federal and state government to strengthen labor and employment law, unions and worker centers have increasingly sought to build power in cities. The shift to local labor lawmaking has delivered local minimum wage, paid sick leave, and fair scheduling ordinances covering millions of low-wage workers, as well as groundbreaking unionization and collective bargaining agreements, including in regions of the United States historically hostile to unions. This has positioned cities as a primary staging ground for labor law reform.
This Article examines this trend as a rejuvenated labor localism and this trend\u27s effects on state and local government law and labor and employment law. Labor localism advances the democratic values of labor and local law by channeling worker and community protests and bargaining through the direct democracy mechanisms of cities, instead of or in addition to the NLRA. While provoking fierce employer campaigns seeking state preemption of local lawmaking, labor localism can often manage these state local conflicts by engaging in state law reform and pivoting to adjacent areas. Modest home rule reform can improve its stability and reach and, contrary to conventional wisdom, improve local accountability. Labor localism, finally, reveals the central roles of localism in enabling a bottom up reform effort to counteract the weaknesses of federal labor law and in safeguarding democratic norms in the United States