Law Commons^™

Democratic Experimentalism, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic Experimentalism is an orientation in contemporary legal thought that draws on both the critical impulses of modernist theory and the constructive practice of postbureaucratic organization.

Some of the core ideas of Democratic Experimentalism were formulated long ago, notably by pragmatists in the John Dewey mold, but they have been elaborated in response to social developments of recent decades. A recurring challenge presented by these developments is uncertainty, by which we mean the inability to anticipate, much less to assign a probability to, future states of the world. The constellation of changes that make contemporary economies more innovative produces uncertainty …

Interview On The Black Box Society, Lawrence Joseph, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Hidden algorithms drive decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms. Thanks to automation, those firms can approve credit, rank websites, and make myriad other decisions instantaneously. But what are the costs of their methods? And what exactly are they doing with their digital profiles of us?

Leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on corporate surveillance and the automated judgments it enables. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only …

Reflecting On The Subject: A Critique Of The Social Influence Conception Of Deterrence, The Broken Windows Theory, And Order-Maintenance Policing New York Style, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In 1993, New York City began implementing the quality-of-life initiative, an order-maintenance policing strategy targeting minor misdemeanor offenses like turnstile jumping, aggressive panhandling, and public drinking. The policing initiative is premised on the broken windows theory of deterrence, namely the hypothesis that minor physical and social disorder, if left unattended in a neighborhood, causes serious crime. New York City's new policing strategy has met with overwhelming support in the press and among public officials, policymakers, sociologists, criminologists and political scientists. The media describe the "famous" Broken Windows essay as "the bible of policing" and "the blueprint for community policing." Order-maintenance …