Beth Tucker Long
Modified the tweet template after adding Yoast SEO and author Twitter handle with this post.
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Beth Tucker Long
This post update should show a smaller thumnbail author image. An alternate post update with minor tweak to the new filter. This is a new post for tweeting that uses a different profile image. Using a new filter to upload the author image (if it exists).
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Beth Tucker Long
This is the body of an updated tweet that uses a different profile image.
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Referendums have been used to decide divisive constitutional questions in polities around the world. In some cases, the relevant divisions run deeply along ethnic and religious fault-lines and the polities have long histories of conflict. Joanne McEvoy’s 2018 article, Letting ‘The People(s)’ Decide: Peace Referendums and Power-Sharing Settlements, makes a significant contribution to the emerging literature on “peace referendums.” In what follows, I will highlight this contribution and argue that her text merits close attention from comparative constitutional law scholars.
At the outset of the article, McEvoy identifies her aims and underlines the high stakes involved when referendums are held in societies riven by conflict. She writes:
This article assesses the use of the referendum to legitimate power-sharing democracy in deeply divided societies. If we lack a full understanding of the dynamics of referendum design in transitions to power-sharing, minority groups may find themselves in a polity they perceive to be both illegitimate and in favour of the majority. Further intracommunal antagonism and the risk of recurring conflict could threaten a fragile political bargain reached by elites. Exploring the value of referendums is therefore important for the stability and legitimacy of peace-building. (P. 865.)
McEvoy situates her text in the extensive literature on power-sharing arrangements. Continue reading "Power to the People(s): Referendums in Deeply Divided Societies"
It’s rare for two JOTWELL editors to choose the same article to review. When that happens, it’s surely a sign of an “instant classic.” So even if you’ve read Kevin Collins’s laudatory jot of Daniel J. Hemel and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette’s superb piece a few months ago, you should read this one, too. And, if you didn’t read that review, you should definitely read this one.
If double coverage weren’t enough, three years ago, my jot reviewed Hemel and Ouellette’s brilliant article, Beyond the Patents-Prizes Debate. Besides explaining the importance of considering the full panoply of tools to incentivize innovation—such as patents, prizes, grants, and tax credits—Hemel and Ouellette showed that these tools could be decoupled and refashioned to create effectively new, mutant-like rights with potentially superior effects than in their “pure” form.
In this follow-up article, Hemel and Ouellette insightfully discern the broad theoretical ramifications of their previous IP reconstructions. Because Kevin Collins’s jot lucidly summarizes the expanse of the article’s exposition, I focus on the article’s most salient insight—namely, that IP’s “incentive” function is separable from its “allocation” function. Specifically, the “incentive” function refers to the market-based financial reward provided to innovators for producing an innovation (and here I elide the distinction between R & D-based “inventions” and commercialized “innovations”). The “allocation” function concerns the payment of a proprietary price by consumers (and intermediaries) to access innovations covered by IP rights. Continue reading "Decoupling Intellectual Property’s Incentive and Allocation Functions"
Beth Tucker Long
As more and more states legalize physician aid in dying, it appears that the acceptability of aid in dying turns on three critical requirements—that the patients be competent to make medical decisions, that they be terminally ill, and that they self-administer the lethal dose of medication. From Oregon to Hawaii, every state that has legalized aid in dying has included these three criteria for eligibility. But a report from Canada on that country’s experience with aid in dying suggests that only two of the three requirements may be needed.
The three basic requirements help ensure that patients really are suffering from a serious illness that is incurable and irreversible. They also help ensure that the desire for aid in dying reflects a genuine expression of self-determination1 rather than the irrational choice of someone suffering from mental illness. Controversial cases of aid in dying have involved patients who were no longer able to express their wishes or who appeared to need psychiatric care. Continue reading "WP to Twitter Test post"
Despite the fact that bisexuals are, by most counts, the largest sexual minority group in the United States, they remain woefully under-researched and under-theorized. This invisibility in the realm of research and scholarship may be tied to the fact that bisexual programs and organizations receive only a minuscule amount of funding compared to either gay or lesbian organizations. As one study noted, over a forty-year period, bisexual programs and organizations received less than 0.3% of the funding awarded to their gay or lesbian counterparts. See Anthony Bowen, Forty Years of LGBTQ Philanthropy: 1970–2010, 33 (2012). Furthermore, bisexuals face alarming physical and mental health disparities—including higher levels of mood and anxiety disorders and of suicidal ideation—compared to individuals of other sexual orientations, which may well be a consequence of the fact that bisexuality is stigmatized by both heterosexual and homosexual communities.
This background of invisibility and stigmatization helps illustrate the importance of Brian Dodge et al.’s Attitudes Toward Bisexual Men and Women Among a Nationally Representative Probability Sample of Adults in the United States, published in the journal PLoS ONE. The article—and the study on which it is based—fills an important gap in the existing research on bisexuality as to prevailing societal attitudes toward bisexuals and the persistence of common stereotypes of this group, despite the considerable advances in societal attitudes towards gays and lesbians. Continue reading "Jotwell: Zeta-Section 2018-08-20 12:39:07"
Jotwell is taking a short summer break. Posting will resume on Monday, September 3. However, even while we’re on break, we’ll be accepting submissions, editing them, and updating various technical parts of the site. We’ll also be planning our fall fundraiser, so this is good time to ask you to please help support Jotwell; give enough and we may not have to have do the fundraiser at all.
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If you like Jotwell, share — help us find more readers. Tell a friend about Jotwell. And if you are an academic reader, please consider recommending Jotwell to your students. We have the 2018 edition of our Jotwell Orientation Flyer for students that you can print out and post, or perhaps even hand out at Orientation.
See you in two weeks, when we start the new academic year.
As more and more states legalize physician aid in dying, it appears that the acceptability of aid in dying turns on three critical requirements—that the patients be competent to make medical decisions, that they be terminally ill, and that they self-administer the lethal dose of medication. From Oregon to Hawaii, every state that has legalized aid in dying has included these three criteria for eligibility. But a report from Canada on that country’s experience with aid in dying suggests that only two of the three requirements may be needed.
The three basic requirements help ensure that patients really are suffering from a serious illness that is incurable and irreversible. They also help ensure that the desire for aid in dying reflects a genuine expression of self-determination rather than the irrational choice of someone suffering from mental illness. Controversial cases of aid in dying have involved patients who were no longer able to express their wishes or who appeared to need psychiatric care. Continue reading "Should the Right to Aid in Dying Include a Right to Euthanasia?"
Scholarship on whether and how to regulate algorithmic decision-making has been proliferating. It addresses how to prevent, or at least mitigate, error, bias and discrimination, and unfairness in algorithmic decisions with significant impacts on individuals. In the United States, this conversation largely takes place in a policy vacuum. There is no federal agency for algorithms. There is no algorithmic due process—no notice and opportunity to be heard—not for government decisions, nor for private companies’. There are—as of yet—no required algorithmic impact assessments (though there are some transparency requirements for government use). All we have is a tentative piece of proposed legislation, the FUTURE of AI Act, that would—gasp!—establish a committee to write a report to the Secretary of Commerce.
Europe, however, is a different story. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into direct effect on EU Member States on May 25, 2018. It contains a hotly debated provision, Article 22, that may impose a version of due process on algorithmic decisions that have significant effects on individuals. For those looking to understand how the GDPR impacts algorithms, I recommend Lilian Edwards’ and Michael Veale’s Slave to the Algorithm? Why a ‘Right to an Explanation’ is Probably Not the Remedy You are Looking For. Edwards and Veale have written the near-comprehensive guide to how EU data protection law might affect algorithmic quality and accountability, beyond individualized due process. For U.S. scholars writing in this area, this article is a must-read. Continue reading "The GDPR’s Version of Algorithmic Accountability"
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