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Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg Jul 2022

Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

The economics of abundance, along with the sociology of abundance, the law of abundance, and so forth, should be re-framed, linked, and situated in a common context for empirical rather than conceptual research. Abundance may seem to be a new, big thing, between anxiety over information overload, Big Data, and related technological disruptions. But scholars know that abundance is an ancient phenomenon, which only seemed to disappear as twentieth century social science focused on scarcity instead. Restoring the study of abundance, and figuring out how to solve the problems that abundance might create, means shedding disciplinary blinders and going back …


Government By Code? Blockchain Applications To Public Sector Governance, Pedro Bustamante, Meina Cai, Marcela Gomez, Colin Harris, Prashabnt Krishnamurthy, Wilson Law, Michael J. Madison, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Nataliia Shapoval, Annette Vee, Martin B. H. Weiss Jun 2022

Government By Code? Blockchain Applications To Public Sector Governance, Pedro Bustamante, Meina Cai, Marcela Gomez, Colin Harris, Prashabnt Krishnamurthy, Wilson Law, Michael J. Madison, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Nataliia Shapoval, Annette Vee, Martin B. H. Weiss

Articles

Studies of blockchain governance can be divided into analyses of the governance of blockchains (such as rules and power dynamics within a given network) and governance by blockchains (such as how blockchains can be implemented to improve self-governance of community-based peer production networks). Less emphasis has been placed on applications of distributed ledgers to public sector governance. Our review clarifies that the decentralization and distributive features that enable blockchains to link up loosely connected private organizations and public agencies to improve efficiency and transparency of government transactions. However, most blockchain applications lack clear advantages over the conventional digital recording of …


Nazi Stolen Art: Uses And Misuses Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Vivian Grosswald Curran Jan 2022

Nazi Stolen Art: Uses And Misuses Of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

U.S. courts in Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (“FSIA”) cases must interpret a comprehensive statute which has been said to stand or fall on its terms. At the same time, in Nazi-looted art cases, they do not ignore entirely the backdrop of the U.S.’ adoption of international principles and declarations promising to ensure the return of such art. To some extent, such an undertaking has been incorporated into a statutory amendment of the FSIA. The years 2021 and 2022 have seen major developments in the FSIA both at the U.S. Supreme Court and in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in …


White Supremacy, Police Brutality, And Family Separation: Preventing Crimes Against Humanity Within The United States, Elena Baylis Jan 2022

White Supremacy, Police Brutality, And Family Separation: Preventing Crimes Against Humanity Within The United States, Elena Baylis

Articles

Although the United States tends to treat crimes against humanity as a danger that exists only in authoritarian or war-torn states, in fact, there is a real risk of crimes against humanity occurring within the United States, as illustrated by events such as systemic police brutality against Black Americans, the federal government’s family separation policy that took thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the southern border, and the dramatic escalation of White supremacist and extremist violence culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In spite of this risk, the United States does not have …


Blockchain Networks As Knowledge Commons, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin B. H. Weiss, Michael J. Madison Jan 2022

Blockchain Networks As Knowledge Commons, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin B. H. Weiss, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Researchers interested in blockchains are increasingly attuned to questions of governance, including how blockchains relate to government, the ways blockchains are governed, and ways blockchains can improve prospects for successful self-governance. Our paper joins this research by exploring the implications of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to analyze governance of blockchains. Our novel contributions are making the case that blockchain networks represent knowledge commons governance, in the sense that they rely on collectively-managed technologies to pool and manage distributed information, illustrating the usefulness and novelty of the GCK methodology with an empirical case study of the evolution of Bitcoin, …


Changing Every Wrong Door Into The Right One: Reforming Legal Services Intake To Empower Clients, Jabeen Adawi Jan 2022

Changing Every Wrong Door Into The Right One: Reforming Legal Services Intake To Empower Clients, Jabeen Adawi

Articles

It’s recognized that people affected by poverty often have numerous overlapping legal needs and despite the proliferation of legal services, they are unable to receive full assistance. When a person is faced with a legal emergency, rarely is there an equivalent to a hospital’s emergency room wherein they receive an immediate diagnosis for their needs and subsequent assistance. In this paper, I focus on the process a person goes through to find assistance and argue that it is a burdensome, and demoralizing task of navigating varying protocols, procedures, and individuals. While these systems are well intentioned from the lawyer’s perspective, …


Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown Jan 2022

Calls For Change: Seeing Cancel Culture From A Multi-Level Perspective, Tomar Pierson-Brown

Articles

Transition Design offers a framework and employs an array of tools to engage with complexity. “Cancel culture” is a complex phenomenon that presents an opportunity for administrators in higher education to draw from the Transition Design approach in framing and responding to this trend. Faculty accused of or caught using racist, sexist, or homophobic speech are increasingly met with calls to lose their positions, titles, or other professional opportunities. Such calls for cancellation arise from discreet social networks organized around an identified lack of accountability for social transgressions carried out in the professional school environment. Much of the existing discourse …


The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison Jan 2022

The Kind Of Solution A Smart City Is: Knowledge Commons And Postindustrial Pittsburgh, Michael J. Madison

Book Chapters

This case study brings new attention to a critical but under-appreciated dimension of so-called “smart” cities: how smart city governance builds and relies on institutionalized sharing of data, information, and other forms of knowledge across all sectors of public administration. Those smart city practices are referred to here as knowledge commons and systematized using the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) research framework. That framework extends and modifies Ostrom’s research tradition as to community-based resource governance. As with other GKC-focused research, this work relies on a qualitative case study. It draws a detailed, context-specific portrait of a smart city as knowledge commons …