Aspiration and Reality in Legal Education


Book Description

Using extensive and novel new research, this book explores one of the long-standing challenges in legal education - the prospects for bringing legal theory into the training of future lawyers.




Augmented Reality Law, Privacy, and Ethics


Book Description

Augmented Reality (AR) is the blending of digital information in a real-world environment. A common example can be seen during any televised football game, in which information about the game is digitally overlaid on the field as the players move and position themselves. Another application is Google Glass, which enables users to see AR graphics and information about their location and surroundings on the lenses of their "digital eyewear", changing in real-time as they move about. Augmented Reality Law, Privacy, and Ethics is the first book to examine the social, legal, and ethical issues surrounding AR technology. Digital eyewear products have very recently thrust this rapidly-expanding field into the mainstream, but the technology is so much more than those devices. Industry analysts have dubbed AR the "eighth mass medium" of communications. Science fiction movies have shown us the promise of this technology for decades, and now our capabilities are finally catching up to that vision. Augmented Reality will influence society as fundamentally as the Internet itself has done, and such a powerful medium cannot help but radically affect the laws and norms that govern society. No author is as uniquely qualified to provide a big-picture forecast and guidebook for these developments as Brian Wassom. A practicing attorney, he has been writing on AR law since 2007 and has established himself as the world's foremost thought leader on the intersection of law, ethics, privacy, and AR. Augmented Reality professionals around the world follow his Augmented Legality® blog. This book collects and expands upon the best ideas expressed in that blog, and sets them in the context of a big-picture forecast of how AR is shaping all aspects of society. - Augmented reality thought-leader Brian Wassom provides you with insight into how AR is changing our world socially, ethically, and legally. - Includes current examples, case studies, and legal cases from the frontiers of AR technology. - Learn how AR is changing our world in the areas of civil rights, privacy, litigation, courtroom procedure, addition, pornography, criminal activity, patent, copyright, and free speech. - An invaluable reference guide to the impacts of this cutting-edge technology for anyone who is developing apps for it, using it, or affected by it in daily life.




Making Rights a Reality?


Book Description

Making Rights a Reality? explores the way in which disability activists in the United Kingdom and Canada have transformed their aspirations into legal claims in their quest for equality. It unpacks shifting conceptualizations of the political identity of disability and the role of a rights discourse in these dynamics. In doing so, it delves into the diffusion of disability rights among grassroots organizations and the traditional disability charities. The book draws on a wealth of primary sources including court records and campaign documents and encompassing interviews with more than sixty activists and legal experts. While showing that the disability rights movement has had a significant impact on equality jurisprudence in two countries, the book also demonstrates that the act of mobilizing rights can have consequences, both intended and unintended, for social movements themselves.




Legality


Book Description

What is law? This question has preoccupied philosophers from Plato to Thomas Hobbes to H. L. A. Hart. Yet many others find it perplexing. How could we possibly know how to answer such an abstract question? And what would be the point of doing so? In Legality, Scott Shapiro argues that the question is not only meaningful but vitally important. In fact, many of the most pressing puzzles that lawyers confront—including who has legal authority over us and how we should interpret constitutions, statutes, and cases—will remain elusive until this grand philosophical question is resolved. Shapiro draws on recent work in the philosophy of action to develop an original and compelling answer to this age-old question. Breaking with a long tradition in jurisprudence, he argues that the law cannot be understood simply in terms of rules. Legal systems are best understood as highly complex and sophisticated tools for creating and applying plans. Shifting the focus of jurisprudence in this way—from rules to plans—not only resolves many of the most vexing puzzles about the nature of law but has profound implications for legal practice as well. Written in clear, jargon-free language, and presupposing no legal or philosophical background, Legality is both a groundbreaking new theory of law and an excellent introduction to and defense of classical jurisprudence.




Truth, Error, and Criminal Law


Book Description

Beginning with the premise that the principal function of a criminal trial is to find out the truth about a crime, Larry Laudan examines the rules of evidence and procedure that would be appropriate if the discovery of the truth were, as higher courts routinely claim, the overriding aim of the criminal justice system. Laudan mounts a systematic critique of existing rules and procedures that are obstacles to that quest. He also examines issues of error distribution by offering the first integrated analysis of the various mechanisms - the standard of proof, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof - for implementing society's view about the relative importance of the errors that can occur in a trial.




Constitutional Space: Doctrine, Legal Reality and 3D Illusion


Book Description

This paper studies the notion and content of constitutional space, its integral parts and components, key features and principles in order to help identify the spatial limits of state power and provide efficient legal support to integration processes. To articulate the multifaceted concept of constitutional space, the author has analyzed the approaches of a number of Russian and international researchers which allowed him to trace how this concept developed from the fl at territory-bound format to a valuecentric three-dimensional presentation or so-called 3D format.The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of constitutional space, its content and role in the context of state building aimed at ensuring territorial integrity, unity of the Russian system of law and more efficient use of the mechanisms provided by federal agreements based on the analysis of scientific information sources and constitutional norms.




Law and Lies


Book Description

This is the first book to thematically investigate lying in the American legal system.




Aspiration and Reality in Legal Education


Book Description

Contrary to conventional narratives about legal education, Aspiration and Reality in Legal Education reveals a widespread desire among law teachers to integrate both theory and practice into the education of versatile and civic-minded lawyers. Despite this stated desire, however, this aspiration is largely unrealized due to a host of intellectual and institutional factors that produce a profound gap between what professors believe about law and the ideas they communicate through their teaching. Drawing on interviews with over sixty law professors in Canada, David Sandomierski makes two important empirical discoveries in this book. First, he establishes that, contrary to a dominant narrative in legal education that conceives of theory and practice as oppositional, the vast majority of law professors consider theory to be vitally important in preparing "better lawyers." Second, he uncovers a significant gap between the realist theoretical commitments held by a majority of professors and the formalist theories they almost uniformly convey through their teaching and conceptions of legal reasoning. Understanding the intellectual and institutional factors that account for these tensions, Sandomierski argues, is essential for any meaningful project of legal education reform.







Making Human Rights a Reality


Book Description

In the last six decades, one of the most striking developments in international law is the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. In many countries, though, there is little relationship between international law and the actual protection of human rights on the ground. Making Human Rights a Reality takes a fresh look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk. Emilie Hafner-Burton argues that more progress is possible if human rights promoters work strategically with the group of states that have dedicated resources to human rights protection. These human rights "stewards" can focus their resources on places where the tangible benefits to human rights are greatest. Success will require setting priorities as well as engaging local stakeholders such as nongovernmental organizations and national human rights institutions. To date, promoters of international human rights law have relied too heavily on setting universal goals and procedures and not enough on assessing what actually works and setting priorities. Hafner-Burton illustrates how, with a different strategy, human rights stewards can make international law more effective and also safeguard human rights for more of the world population.