Legal aspects of text mining

“Text mining” covers a range of techniques that allow software to extract information from text documents. It is not a new technology, but it has recently received spotlight attention due to the emergence of Big Data. The applications of text mining are very diverse and span multiple disciplines, ranging from biomedicine to legal, business intelligence and security. From a legal perspective, text mining touches upon several areas of law, including contract law, copyright law and database law. This contribution discusses the legal issues encountered during the assembly of texts into so-called “corpora”, as well as the use of such corpora.     

The loss of that which never was: Evaluating changes to the senior management of the Public Health Agency of Canada

In the fall of 2014, the Government of Canada formally split the role of the Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) into two positions: the CPHO and the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada. Despite concerns raised by the public health community, these changes are consistent with the CPHO's authority. However, the nature of responsible government means that the CPHO cannot simultaneously serve as an independent advocate for policies and programs that might prevent disease and as a senior advisor to the government of the day.     

Class Dealignment in Britain Revisited

Recent tranformations in voting patterns have made Britain one of the best known examples of electoral dealignment in Western Europe. But recently Heath, Jowell and Curtice have defended older accounts of class voting by questioning whether there has been any change at all in relative class voting, as measured by a particular index, the odds ratio. This article first outlines the innovative elements in Heath el al.’s argument. Second, it demonstrates that the odds ratio is a highly volatile and hard‐to‐interpret statistic. Third, it shows that other elements of Heath el al.’s empirical analysis do not substantiate their case. Fourth, it disputes the strategy of focusing only upon ‘relative class voting’, and argues that the growth of third‐party voting is a symptom of class dealignment, rather than a factor which must be discounted in advance before assessing trends in class voting.     

Family Unification Program: Housing Services for Homeless Child Welfare–Involved Families

The Family Unification Program—a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiative to facilitate interagency collaboration between the child welfare and public housing service systems—aims to stabilize families at risk for parent–child separation by addressing housing needs. Findings from a randomized controlled trial suggest that families referred to the program experienced lower risk for homelessness and out-of-home placement compared with child welfare services as usual. The findings suggest that housing services offer an effective alternative to foster care.