Identity crisis: Global challenges of identity protection in a networked world

Modern identity is valuable, multi-functional and complex. Today we typically manage multiple versions of self, made visible in digital trails distributed widely across offline and online spaces. Yet, technology-mediated identity leads us into crisis. Enduring accessibility to greater and growing personal details online, alongside increases in both computing power and data linkage techniques, fuel fears of identity exploitation. Will it be stolen? Who controls it? Are others aggregating or analysing our identities to infer new data about us without our knowledge or consent? New challenges present themselves globally around these fears, as manifested by concerns over massive online data breaches and automated identification technologies, which also highlight the conundrum faced by governments about how to safeguard individuals' interests on the Web while striking a fair balance with wider public interests. This paper reflects upon some of these problems as part of the inter-disciplinary, transatlantic ‘SuperIdentity’ project investigating links between cyber and real-world identifiers. To meet the crisis, we explore the relationship between identity and digitisation from the perspective of policy and law. We conclude that traditional models of identity protection need supplementing with new ways of thinking, including pioneering ‘technical-legal’ initiatives that are sensitive to the different risks that threaten our digital identity integrity. Only by re-conceiving identity dynamically to appreciate the increasing capabilities for connectivity between different aspects of our identity across the cyber and the physical domains, will policy and law be able to keep up with and address the challenges that lie ahead in our progressively networked world.     

Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation

A substantial body of sociolegal scholarship suggests that the legitimacy of the law crucially depends on the public's perception that legal processes are fair. The bulk of this research relies on an underdeveloped account of the material and institutional contexts of litigants' perceptions of fairness. We introduce an analysis of situated justice to capture a contextualized conception of how litigants narrate fairness in their actual legal encounters. Our analysis draws on 100 in‐depth interviews with defendant's representatives, plaintiffs, and lawyers involved in employment discrimination lawsuits, selected as part of a multimethod study of 1,788 discrimination cases filed in U.S. district courts between 1988 and 2003. This article offers two key empirical findings, the first at the level of individual perceptions and the second at the level of legal institutions. First, we find that neither defendants' representatives nor plaintiffs believe discrimination law is fair. Rather than sharing a complaint, however, each side sees unfairness only in those aspects of the process that work to their disadvantage. Second, we demonstrate that the very notion of fairness can belie structural asymmetries that, overall, profoundly benefit employers in employment discrimination lawsuits. We conclude by discussing how a situated justice analysis calls for a rethinking of empirical research on fairness. Audio recordings of respondents quoted in this article are available online. ¹      

Regulation of legal services in the e-world: a need to short circuit hot spots in ethics and novel practices?

This paper examines the professional and regulatory implications for legal practices of a rapidly evolving legal services marketplace shaped by new technologies and e-spaces. The paper focuses on three burgeoning areas in the delivery of legal services: (i) legal outsourcing; (ii) virtual law firms; and (iii) use of social media networking. The authors examine how Australian legal practitioners are utilising these new practices and technologies and the ethical implications of their use. The paper argues that the current regulatory framework in Australia does not adequately address the challenges and concerns raised by an increasingly borderless and e-based legal services market and thus calls for Australian legal regulators to remedy this deficiency as a matter of priority.     

Reye's syndrome. A review from the forensic viewpoint

Reye's syndrome, encephalopathy and fatty change in the liver and other viscera, typically occurs suddenly in infants and children recovering from a viral illness, particularly influenza or varicella. Its rapid clinical course may suggest a drug-related insult and the differential diagnosis includes a variety of toxins. There are grounds for suspicion that exogenous substances--including aspirin--may be cofactors with recent viral illness in the syndrome's pathogenesis. For these reasons, medical examiners may be called upon to rule the diagnosis in or out, to assess the possibility of direct toxic injury, or to document presence or absence of possible cofactors. With these tasks in mind, this review summarizes the diagnostic, pathologic, and laboratory findings of Reye's syndrome and considers the roles of viral infection, heritable predispositions, and exogenous toxins in its causation. It singles out salicylate treatment for special considerations as a possible cofactor, and concludes with a suggested approach to the forensic medical investigation of possible cases of Reye's syndrome.     

Street youth and labor market strain

This article applies strain theory to a high-risk sample of homeless street youth, with a particular focus upon labor market strain to predict violent and property crime and substance use. Data were collected through interviews with 200 street youth in a western Canadian city. Labor market strain was found to be related to the frequency of the youth's property, violent, and total crimes. Criminal peers and norms were also related to these crimes, as well as to drug use. Results also revealed a significant interaction effect between labor market strain and criminal norms predicting property, violent, and total crime. Interactions between strain and criminal peers, and external attributions also predicted property crime. Contrary to predictions, emotions were unrelated to crime and drug use. The results are discussed in light of Agnew's revised strain theory and suggestions are offered for future research on this topic.