Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: February 24, 2019

Paper – The access-to-justice crisis is bigger than law and lawyers

Access to What? Rebecca L. Sandefur. © 2019 by Rebecca L. Sandefur doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00534 Rebecca l. Sandefur is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign; and Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, where she founded and leads the Foundation’s Access to Justice re search initiative. She is also a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. Her pub- lications include Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar(with John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, and Edward O. Laumann, 2016) and Access to Justice (ed., 2009)

“The access-to-justice crisis is bigger than law and lawyers. It is a crisis of exclusion and inequality. Today, access to justice is restricted: only some people, and only some kinds of justice problems, receive lawful resolution. Access is also systematically unequal: some groups–wealthy people and white people, for example–get more access than other groups, like poor people and racial minorities. Traditionally, lawyers and judges call this a “crisis of unmet legal need.” It is not. Justice is about just resolution, not legal services. Resolving justice problems lawfully does not always require lawyers’ assistance, as a growing body of evidence shows. Because the problem is unresolved justice issues, there is a wider range of options. Solutions to the access-to-justice crisis require a new understanding of the problem. It must guide a quest for just resolutions shaped by lawyers working with problem-solvers in other disciplines and with other members of the American public whom the justice system is meant to serve.”

FBI’s War Crimes Unit on the Chopping Block

Just Security: “A special unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation that handles war crimes may be shut down imminently, according to officials familiar with the administration’s decision-making process. The FBI’s International Human Rights Unit takes the lead on investigating individuals within the United States who have been accused of committing international crimes, including war… Continue Reading

The Obama Presidential Library That Isn’t

New York Times: “The Obama Presidential Center promises to be a presidential library like no other. The four-building, 19-acre “working center for citizenship,” set to be built in a public park on the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter… Continue Reading

Thoughtful Entertainment Streaming now for free with your library card

kanopy – Over 30,000 films entirely free with a  library card from participating libraries – “The films that truly resonate with us do more than just entertain. They inspire us, enrich us, and challenge our perspectives. Kanopy ensures that these films reach viewers around the world. We stream thoughtful entertainment to your preferred device with… Continue Reading

GINA, Big Data, and the Future of Employee Privacy

GINA, Big Data, and the Future of Employee Privacy Bradley A. Areheart & Jessica L. Roberts. Yale Law Journal, Vol. 128 2018-2019, Number 3, January 2019 544-871. “Threats to privacy abound in modern society, but individuals currently enjoy little meaningful legal protection for their privacy interests. We argue that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)… Continue Reading

When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online

The Atlantic – Taylor Lorenz on what happens When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online- Googling yourself has become a rite of passage. “Almost a quarter of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their prenatal sonogram scans to the internet [and] 92 percent of toddlers under the age of 2 already have… Continue Reading

You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

Wall Street Journal testing reveals how the social-media giant collects a wide range of private data from developers; ‘This is a big mess’ [paywall] “Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last… Continue Reading

Online Oral Histories of the Manhattan Project

“Voices of the Manhattan Project” is a joint project by the Atomic Heritage Foundation and the Los Alamos Historical Society to create a public archive of our oral history collections of Manhattan Project veterans and their families. The Manhattan Project was a great human collaboration. Participants included recent immigrants who fled anti-Semitism in Europe, young… Continue Reading

Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018

AP: “All the bill needed to become law was President Donald Trump’s signature. It would create a national archive of documents from civil rights cold cases. Students had been working on the project for years, families waiting on it for decades. But time was running out. Legislation dies in the transition from one session of… Continue Reading