Human-centered legal tech: integrating design in legal education

As the legal profession begins in earnest to deploy digital technology in service and information delivery, greater numbers of law schools are including technology instruction in their curricula. The prospect of more lawyers with digital expertise, while a welcome development, amplifies a parallel imperative that new technology tools be designed to be responsive to evolving human needs. This paper argues that coupling technology instruction with training in human-centered design approaches offers legal educators a means of preparing lawyers not only able to generate novel technology solutions, but able to fundamentally improve legal institutions and programs through those results. The use of design pedagogies within legal education also provides educators and students with the opportunity to reimagine the law as a creative pursuit by exploring structured methods like empathy via observation, prototyping, and the embrace of failure, with learning outcomes that hold the potential to transform how lawyers approach their role. This paper concludes by detailing the insights the NuLawLab has gained in the application of design methodologies in the creation of digital legal resources, and the modifications we are adopting to the approach to produce better results for the legal sector.     

What Kind of Joblessness Affects Crime? A National Case–Control Study of Serious Property Crime

Objective

To assess whether joblessness affects the commission of serious property crime.

Methods

We studied serious property crime, applying a case–control design to nationally representative samples of (a) known serious property crime offenders and (b) nonoffenders. This was done by comparing a national sample of prison inmates convicted of robbery or burglary (the “cases”) with a general sample of the U.S. adult population (the “controls”). In contrast to prior individual-level research, the study sample included substantial numbers of serious offenders, and provided a formal basis for generalizing the findings to the U.S. adult population. We differentiated five labor force statuses: (1) unemployed (according to the official government definition), (2) underemployed, (3) out of the labor force for widely socially accepted reasons (OLFL), (4) out of the labor force for reasons not widely accepted (OLFN), and (5) fully employed.

Results

We found that when these distinctions are made, people are not more likely to engage in burglary or robbery when they are either completely unemployed or underemployed according to the official definitions. Instead, it is being out of the labor force for reasons not widely accepted as legitimate that is significantly and positively related to serious property offending.

Conclusions

The results suggest that offending among jobless persons may reflect preexisting differences in criminal propensity among those who stay out of the labor force, rather than effects of joblessness per se. Part-time work is associated with significantly less property crime, perhaps because the willingness to accept even part-time jobs serves as an indicator of commitment to pro-social attitudes.

     

Using Carrots and Sticks to Improve American Colleges

An unintended consequence of making access to college an entitlement readily available to all high school graduates is that serious study in high school has become optional—even for those intending to apply for college admission. Without an incentive to study diligently, many students are disengaged in high school and, as a result, underprepared for college. Some freshmen arrive at college thinking that having fun is the main reason they are at college and that the pursuit of knowledge should be available for when they have nothing better to do. Before World War II academically excellent students from families unable to finance college for them could apply for competitive scholarships. Scholarships mutated into “financial aid” when the GI Bill of Rights financed college for discharged veterans of World War II. Pell grants should continue to be available to youngsters who want to go to college even if they are mediocre students—provided they can persuade a college to admit them. Mediocre students are being given a chance to become “late bloomers.” Loans, however, are expected to be repaid, and mediocre high school students with bad credit ratings are likely to default on their loans, causing serious financial problems for themselves and financial complications for the American economy. Targeting loans to students with good prospects for repaying them is more prudent financially and makes more sense educationally.     

Explaining the electoral effects of public investments: The case of the expansion of the underground in Madrid, 1995–2007

According to the literature, governments have strong incentives to use the public budget tactically in order to either obtain the electoral support of new voters or strengthen the loyalty of their traditional supporters. Yet vote‐seeking strategies only become rational when voters follow their self‐interest and reward governments when their constituency benefits from public transfers. The literature has focused on the governments' incentives, largely ignoring the importance of knowing whether the electorate is responsive to public investments. This study tests empirically whether incumbents strategically use public investments to gather more electoral support; and whether voters take these investments into account at the polls. These two questions are pursued simultaneously by using as a case study the expansion of the underground network in Madrid, Spain. Only a little evidence is found to support the idea that regional governments constructed new metro stations in neighbourhoods where they had more to gain electorally. Also, the inauguration timing strictly followed the electoral cycle, something that indicates a strategic calculus on the part of the incumbent. However, the models are also consistent with the idea that the government's investments were primarily driven by motives of efficiency. Indeed, although governments are tempted to follow vote‐seeking strategies, they are also aware that they cannot deviate too much from an efficiency‐based allocation of public resources. From the perspective of the voters, robust evidence has been found to show that regional voters rewarded this policy at the neighbourhood level. Neighbourhoods that received new metro stations voted in higher numbers for the incumbent than those quarters without new investments. All in all, these findings may have some implications for normative democratic theory.     

Development and validation of videotaped scenarios: a method for targeting specific participant groups

Researchers using scenarios often neglect to validate perceived content and salience of embedded stimuli specifically with intended participants, even when such meaning is integral to the study. For example, sex and aggression stimuli are heavily influenced by culture, so participants may not perceive what researchers intended in sexual aggression scenarios. Using four studies, the authors describe the method of scenario validation to produce two videos assessing alcohol-related sexual aggression. Both videos are identical except for the presence in one video of antiforce cues that are extremely salient to the young heterosexual men. Focus groups and questionnaires validate these men's perceptions that (a) the woman was sexually interested, (b) the sexual cues were salient, (c) the antiforce cues were salient (antiaggression video only), and (e) these antiforce cues inhibited acceptance of forced sex. Results show the value of carefully selecting and validating content when assessing socially volatile variables and provide a useful template for developing culturally valid scenarios.     

The Role of Forms of Traumatic Exposure in Relational and Physical Aggression Perpetrated by Incarcerated Men and Women

The relationship between history of trauma and violence is well studied. However, the relationship between trauma and relational aggression is not. And yet relational aggression is of considerable relevance to the criminal justice system. This study was designed to extend the literature on trauma and violence by including a measure of relational aggression and testing for sex differences. The sample was comprised of incarcerated men (N = 125) and women (N = 141). Data were collected from inmate interviews and inmate completion of a battery of instruments. Regression analyses revealed that of three types of trauma, only a history of interpersonal nonsexual trauma predicted the perpetration of both relational aggression and physical aggression while incarcerated, although no sex differences emerged. Results provide guidance for intervention efforts.     

Introduction: Second-Generation Security Sector Reform

Security sector reform (SSR) has become a commonly used tool for international approaches to insecure countries. Despite its frequent deployment as a key element of statebuilding, SSR suffers from both a lack of a conceptual hinterland and also lack of strong evidence of success. This special collection of papers explores these ideas, starting from an assumption that there are serious issues with SSR in practice. SSR, alongside many other facets of international aid programming, has suffered from an excess of technocentric and managerial approaches, with politics relegated to the sidelines. These articles outline what this means in practice and what a second generation of SSR could look like: an approach based on process and politics rather than linear managerialism.