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What Counts As Data?, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

We live in an age of information. But whether information counts as data depends on the questions we put to it. The same bit of information can constitute important data for some questions, but be irrelevant to others. And even when relevant, the same bit of data can speak to one aspect of our question while having little to say about another. Knowing what counts as data, and what it is data of, makes or breaks a data-driven approach. Yet that need for clarity sometimes gets ignored or assumed away. In this essay, I examine what counts as data in …

Welcome Home: Aboriginal Rights Law After Desautel, Kent Mcneil, Kerry Wilkins

All Papers

In R v Desautel, decided April 23, 2021, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada held, for the first time, that an Indigenous community located in the United States, whose members are neither citizens nor residents of Canada, can have an existing Aboriginal right, protected by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, to hunt a specified area within Canada. This will be so, the Supreme Court majority held, where the community can show that it descends from (is a successor of) an Indigenous community that was present in what is now Canada at the time of …

Linguistic Branching Of Semantics In Arabic: A Social Approach, Hanan Ismael Amayreh, Mohammad Ismael Amayreh

Al-Balqa Journal for Research and Studies البلقاء للبحوث والدراسات

Linguist Branching is appropriate for Arabic Language as words branch out mostly from roots, and every root becomes a tree, which is different from others, not because of the tree itself, but because of what society uses. Language branching expresses the controversial relationship between the language and the rules that govern it from one side, and society’s preference of certain terms over others from the other side. This study tries to answer the following questions: does the language impose the used words, or does it offer options for society to choose what suits it? The study reaches a conclusion that …

Textual Consistency Mechanisms In The Poem "Lost Nostalgia" By Abu Alqasim Alshabbi, Esa Slah Al Tarawneh

Al-Balqa Journal for Research and Studies البلقاء للبحوث والدراسات

The research addresses a significant topic related to (Text Linguistics) based on analyzing poetry speech textuality. The research tracks a textual occurrence as the base of assessing the text quality, which is "Textual Consistency”. The research will study the Textual Consistency mechanism in Abu Alqasim Alshabbi's poem, "Alashwaq Altae'ha", unfolding the consistency of its phonetics, vocabularies, and structural contents, highlighting the significant role of these mechanisms on this outstanding text in maintaining its unity, coherence and cohesion. The research adopted the Descriptive approach, using literary analysis. Key words: Textual Linguistics, Text, Consistency, Abu Alqasim Alshabbi, "Alashwaq Altae'ha”.

Transformative Constitutions And Constitutionalism : A New Theory And School Of Jurisprudence From The Global South?, Willy Mutunga

The Transnational Human Rights Review

The article seeks to interrogate, historicize, and problematize what transformative constitutions and their attendant constitutionalism/jurisprudence are. Some of the critical elements of transformative constitutions are analyzed as well as the development of the jurisprudence that is emerging from these constitutions. In the quest for an answer to the question posed, which is the title of the article, Kenya is used as a case-study. Kenya has had a transformative constitution since it was promulgated on 27 August 2010. Its core elements/pillars of transformation are highlighted in this article. Kenya’s experience with the implementation of this Constitution, particularly with regard to the …

Citizenship Deprivation As An Act Of Persecution: Case Study Of The Assam Citizen Exercise As A Precursor To A Nation-Wide Determination Of Citizenship, Ishita Chakrabarty

The Transnational Human Rights Review

This essay explores the reasons behind describing India’s Citizenship practices (now modified through the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019) as ‘persecutory’. In doing so, the essay refers to the international law on citizenship conferment and withdrawal that has traditionally been viewed as exclusive to a state’s sovereign domain. The essay also looks into the socio-political dynamics, past persecutory conduct exemplified by the Assam-NRC exercise and the lack of protection afforded by those entrusted with the legal duty of conferring and withdrawing citizenship. The essay further uses the Assam-NRC exercise as a case study to claim that there exist well-founded grounds for …

Case Study: The International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia’S Court Transcripts In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian—Part 1: Needs, Feasibility, And Output Assessment, Besmir Fidahić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remains the most important organization for the past, the present, and the future of the former Yugoslavia. Faced with a country that always lived under totalitarian regimes with very little insight into actions of the groups and individuals who reaped unthinkable havoc on each other at the end of the twentieth century, the ICTY set undisputable historical record about events that took place during the 1991–1999 wars and put the country on an excellent track towards transformation for the better. But even 28 years since the establishment of the ICTY, the former …

“It’S Not Really Hate Crime” – Reframing Hate Crime As Not Police Business” – Police Narratives Of Resistance And Denial, Timothy Bryan, Lorretta Trickett

Journal of Hate Studies

Within a global pandemic and increased questioning of police utility and legitimacy around racism and violence against women and girls (VAWG), this article examines the gap between police policy and practices on hate crime. Based on research with police forces in Canada and the UK, it demonstrates how police officers view hate crime through a policing rather than victim-centred mandate. Without reframing hate crime as a public and community safety issue, hate crime policies and procedures designed to ‘take hate crime seriously’ are unlikely to do just that. Real ‘commitment’ is needed to tackle hate crime as part of the …

No Honor In Genocide: A Case Study Of Street Renaming And Community Organizing In The Wake Of National Decolonization Efforts, Margo Hill

Journal of Hate Studies

The United States hosts countless streets, structures, and cities named after colonial and military leaders. Although many of these white historical figures, like Robert E. Lee, were revered in their own eras, modern history now acknowledges their involvement in immoral acts such as slavery and genocide. As they recognize that individuals responsible for such traumatic events should no longer be honored, the citizens of many towns and cities across the nation are attempting to rename their public properties. These efforts, however, rarely prove straightforward; the process of renaming a single road, for example, requires a thorough understanding of city ordinances …

Kung Flu And Roof Koreans: Asian/Americans As The Hated Other And Proxies Of Hating In The White Imaginary, Julia R. Decook, Mi Hyun Yoon

Journal of Hate Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about not only political, social, and economic disaster globally, but also rising hate and the exacerbation of social inequity. As the pandemic spread beyond China, hate crimes against Asians skyrocketed in the United States and internationally. Amidst growing xenophobia and a global health crisis, 2020 also marked worldwide Black Lives Matter protests. Memes that featured “Roof Koreans” started being shared during the protests, along with the already racist memes about COVID-19 that targeted Asians. In this essay, we critically analyze memes from the spring and summer of 2020 to examine how Asian/Americans are not only positioned …

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter, Fall 2021

Mid-Atlantic Ethics Committee Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Predictors Of Refugees’ Ability To Pass The United States Citizenship Exam, Molly Grover, Fern Hauck, Sarah Blackstone, Emily Cloyd

Virginia Journal of Public Health

Background: Passing the United States citizenship exam can be challenging for refugee populations for several reasons, including affordability of English classes, time restraints, medical stressors, and limited formal education. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that may influence a refugees’ ability to pass the citizenship exam, including English proficiency, education, employment, and completion of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

Methods: Refugee patients at the International Family Medicine Clinic (IFMC) in Central Virginia participated in a survey that assessed their levels of English proficiency and whether or not they had passed the citizenship exam. The survey …

Crisis, Rupture And Structural Change: Re-Imagining Global Learning And Engagement While Staying In Place During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Shruti Rana, Hamid Ekbia

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented closures of national borders and the withdrawal of much of the social and cultural activities of society into the walls of the home. For us, educators focused on global engagement and analyzing international law and society, the abrupt retreat into the shelter of domestic walls disrupted the very subjects we were studying-inside and outside the classroom. In the pandemic 's first wave, most study abroad and international experiential programs were cancelled indefinitely, and the programs that continued had to operate in an environment of social distancing and uncertainty. We were forced to scramble to …

Declaring, Exploring, Instructing, And (Wait For It) Joking: Tonal Variation In Majority Opinions, Lisa A. Eichhorn

Faculty Publications

British literary critic I.A. Richards once defined “tone” as a literary speaker’s attitude toward his or her listener. Borrowing that definition, this article posits that the genre of the majority judicial opinion leaves more room for tonal variation than many scholars have previously theorized. The article first elaborates on the concept of “tone,” distinguishing it from “voice” and “style.” It then reviews the existing scholarship on tone in legal writing and describes the specific dynamics of tone in majority opinions. At that point, the article closely analyzes tonal variation in two 2020 Supreme Court opinions: the majority opinion in Chiafalo …

An Ecological And Holistic Analysis Of The Epistemic Value Of Law Libraries, Paul D. Callister, Dana Neacsu

Faculty Works

We examine the libraries' roles within the "epistemic foundation of society.” Our analysis is in response to the omission of Yale Law Dean Gerken of the role of libraries in her recent article about legal education's new focus and to remarks by AALS President Vicki Jackson that suggest an uncertain role for libraries. We have adapted holistic ecological media theory, as developed by Ronald Deibert, to reject a technologically deterministic view of libraries as having no future. We have considered the role of law libraries in the social epistemology or cognitive authority of the legal community, the role of law …

Predict And Suspect: The Emergence Of Artificial Legal Meaning, Daniel Maggen

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

No abstract provided.

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal, Volume 10, William & Mary Law School

Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Journal

Where Theory Meets Practice

October 1-2, 2020

Panel 1: Where Theory Meets Practice: A Tribute to Henry E. Smith

Panel 2: The Housing Crisis

Lunch Roundtable: Emerging Issues in Takings and Eminent Domain Law

Panel 3: The Reach of Government's Confiscatory Powers Over Exigencies and Emergencies

Panel 4: The Risk of Unjust Compensation

Article: Anti- Love Jihad Law: An Analysis Of Women’S Religious And Marital Rights, Snehal Sharma

Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications

In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh government enacted an ordinance – ‘Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020’. Since the ordinance has made the process of religious conversion and interfaith marriage complicated and prolonged in the state, it is commonly known as ‘anti- love jihad law’. This paper analyses and lays out the potential impact of this ordinance on inter-religious marriages, and how it conflicts with women’s religious, marital, and bodily autonomy. Here the author discusses the procedures of anti-conversion ordinance along with the Special Marriage Act (1954) and personal laws related to marriage to assess their impact on inter-religious couples …

Disloyalty & Disqualification: Reconstructing Section 3 Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Myles S. Lynch

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

To become President of the United States, you must be constitutionally qualified. You must be thirty-five years old, a natural born citizen, and fourteen years a resident within the United States. Neither Congress nor any state can set this threshold higher; the same is true for congresspeople. But since it was last successfully invoked in 1917, most have forgotten the other qualifier—for officers at both the state and federal levels—from Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Those who have violated their oath to uphold our Constitution can be disqualified from holding any public office under the United States or any …

In Search Of Ordinary Meaning: What Can Be Learned From The Textualist Opinions Of Bostock V. Clayton County?, Sam Capparelli

University of Chicago Law Review

In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court held that Title VII protects gay and transgender individuals from employment discrimination. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch adhered to textualist principles and relied on the ordinary public meaning of the phrase “discriminate because of sex.” Despite the ma-jority opinion purportedly not reaching beyond the words of the statute, three other conservatives on the Court accused Justice Gorsuch of legislating from the bench. Central to this Comment, Justice Brett Kavanaugh took exception with how Justice Gorsuch reached his ordinary meaning of the phrase. The debate between these two Justices can be …

Contract Schemas, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

This review draws on the notion of “contract schemas” to characterize what ordinary people think is happening when they enter into contractual arrangements. It proposes that contracts are schematically represented as written documents filled with impenetrable text containing hidden strings, which are routinely signed without comprehension. This cognitive template, activated whenever people encounter objects with these characteristic features, confers certain default assumptions, associations, and expectancies. A review of the literature suggests that contract schemas supply (a) the assumption that terms will be enforced as written, (b) the feeling that one is obligated to perform, and (c) the sense that one …

Critical Interviewing, Laila L. Hlass, Lindsay M. Harris

Utah Law Review

Critical lawyering—also at times called rebellious, community, and movement lawyering—attempts to further social justice alongside impacted communities. While much has been written about the contours of this form of lawyering and case examples illustrating core principles, little has been written about the mechanics of teaching critical lawyering skills. This Article seeks to expand critical lawyering theory, and in doing so, provide an example of a pedagogical approach to teaching what we term “critical interviewing.” Critical interviewing means using an intersectional lens to collaborate with clients, communities, interviewing partners, and interpreters in a legal interview. Critical interviewers identify and take into …

Rico Had A Birthday! A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Questions Answered And Open, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) came into the world in 1970, a time of great social upheaval that was accompanied by shifting attitudes towards both crime and civil litigation. From the outset, the statute’s complexity, ambiguity, and uncertain purpose have confounded courts and commentators. At least some doubts as to the statute’s meaning and application arise because it has criminal and civil components that subject it to the twin—yet antithetical—social impulses to be “tough on crime” while containing a perceived “litigation explosion.” In this Article, I situate RICO in this larger context and offer that context as …

Discontinuity Between Religion, Law, And Society Through Animal Treatment In Morocco, Michael Altman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Animal treatment is a topic which is covered by many facets of what helps create the guiding principles for humans, yet all in different ways; there is some overlap, and there is some distinction. From my three months of study in Rabat, Morocco, seeing how each person approaches the homeless animal differently, I write on how three important overarching areas: religious, legal, and societal, discuss how animals should be treated.

In this paper, I will be analyzing religious texts, legal writings both in place and in draft, and will rely on external works written animal markets and on the school …

Court Packing As An Antidote, Rivka Weill

Cardozo Law Review

Court packing is considered the nuclear weapon that may unleash total chaos on the American constitutional system. Even in the face of a highly controversial appointment process to the U.S. Supreme Court during the 2020 presidential election season, scholars caution against the wisdom and utility of resorting to court packing. This Essay makes three bold arguments: First, a President may nominate a candidate to the Supreme Court at any time, including their last year in office; this is true both empirically and normatively. It is the Senate’s responsibility to ensure the people’s will is not frustrated. Second, never since the …

Adding Context And Constraint To Corpus Linguistics, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Brooklyn Law Review

Corpus linguistics presents an exciting tool for improving interpretation of documentary language. But it would be a mistake to overvalue the tool or to use it as grounds for ejecting consideration of other data from the interpretative task. While properly operationalized corpus linguistics analysis represents an advancement over traditional textualism, it remains subject to the same problems that plague excessively rigid textualism that refuses to give consideration to contextual evidence of meaning. To be most effective in achieving accurate and just interpretative results, corpus linguistics, like traditional reading of documentary language, requires context. This includes not only the context of …

Corpus Linguistics And The Law: Extending The Field From A Statistical Perspective, Stefan Th. Gries

Brooklyn Law Review

During the last 5–10 years, corpus-linguistic applications have slowly become more widespread in matters of legal interpretation; specifically, we see more court cases in which corpus-linguistic data are brought to bear on the (original) ordinary/public meaning of expressions in legal texts (in briefs and judicial opinions), but also more academic research focusing on if/how corpus-linguistic methods can shed light on the plain/ordinary meaning of words in a legal text.While this development is welcome, it also comes with shortcoming/risks, some of which are now hotly debated in recent and forthcoming law review articles. In particular, there is a whole family of …

Big Data And Accuracy In Statutory Interpretation, Brian G. Slocum

Brooklyn Law Review

Scholarship is increasingly devoted to improving the “accuracy” of statutory interpretations, but accuracy is a contingent concept dependent on interpretive perspective. If, for instance, a scholar focuses on the language production of the legislature, she may seek to improve the methodology of statutory interpretation through a more sophisticated understanding of the legislative process. Thus, the scholar may argue that one can assess the reliability of the different types of legislative history by focusing on the actors and processes that produce them. Conversely, a scholar might focus on the language comprehension of some speech community, such as the one comprised of …

Mechanical Turk Jurisprudence, Shlomo Klapper

Brooklyn Law Review

This paper argues that data-driven interpretation creates a “Mechanical Turk” jurisprudence: a jurisprudence that appears mechanical but in fact is thoroughly human. Its contribution to the literature is twofold. First, it articulates an intellectual history of data-driven interpretation: data-driven tools have been adopted because society associates quantification with a mechanical objectivity and because objectivity is at the center of debates over statutory interpretation. Second, it criticizes surveys as an interpretative tool: in addition to a host of practical execution problems, surveys misunderstand the concept of “ordinary meaning” and threaten to undermine the value of faithful agency.

What Counts As Data?, Anya Bernstein

Brooklyn Law Review

We live in an age of information. But whether information counts as data depends on the questions we put to it. The same bit of information can constitute important data for some questions, but be irrelevant to others. And even when relevant, the same bit of data can speak to one aspect of our question while having little to say about another. Knowing what counts as data, and what it is data of, makes or breaks a data-driven approach. Yet that need for clarity sometimes gets ignored or assumed away. In this essay, I examine what counts as data in …