Expert systems and the law

ABSTRACT

The project discussed here involved an online debating activity between intellectual property (IP) law students in Egypt and the UK, using a closed group on Facebook. The aim was to harness freely available online social media technology to create a space in which valuable discussions and learning could take place. We showed that Facebook can be a powerful educational tool to encourage active learning and usefully connect learners across continents. In enabling the exchange of views between students in different jurisdictions, Facebook provides exposure to different cultures and different perspectives as well as different legal cultures and different legal systems, while also, importantly, enabling participants to identify commonalities. This debate focused on IP law, which is of increasing international importance, and specifically on the topic of access to medicines, which is highly contentious. Through the activity, students learned that they need not only to learn the law, but also to appreciate the socio-cultural and political complexity underlying policy issues in different jurisdictions. On reflection, the Facebook debate definitely enhanced the study of IP law through an interesting and enjoyable international, intercultural activity, led by staff and students, which successfully extended the classroom experience.     

Majority Party Power and Procedural Motions in the U.S. Senate

While the metaphor of House parties as cartels is widely accepted, its application to the Senate is difficult as the majority party lacks the power to unilaterally manipulate rules and pass legislation. Nevertheless, several scholars have argued that the Senate majority party is able to employ nondebatable motions to table to exclude unwanted amendments with procedural rather than substantive votes. Does the motion to table yield negative agenda control or special party influence? Using an analysis of individual Senators' behavior on thousands of votes and an assessment of interest group scores, we find that motions to table do not elicit higher party influence or provide much political cover. A desire to speed up the legislative process, rather than to insulate members from electoral scrutiny, seems to motivate the use of motions to table.     

The Promise and Perils of Interpretivism in Australian International Relations

Australian International Relations (IR) was once a hybrid of American and European styles of political science, but today it is dominated by a British‐inspired post‐positivism which has its virtues – and its vices – and which utilises various interpretive and semi‐interpretive approaches. This paper welcomes the ‘interpretive turn’ in Australian IR, but recognises its weaknesses, and argues that, to overcome them, interpretivists must be clear about what interpretivism should and should not entail. It argues that a thoroughgoing interpretivism offers two things that qualitative work in Australian IR desperately needs: a revived focus on explaining international relations, as well as understanding it, and a renewed engagement with other fields and other modes of studying the field.     

On Necessity as a Defence to Crime: Possibilities, Problems and the Limits of Justification and Excuse

The article reviews recent developments in England in the law of necessity as a defence to crime and calls for its further extension. It argues that the defence of necessity presents the criminal law with difficult questions of competing values and the ordering of harms. English law has taken a nuanced position on the respective roles of the courts and the legislature in the ordering of harms, although the development of the law has been pragmatic rather than coherently theorised. The law has granted necessity some scope as an exculpatory principle in the law of general defences, but it has also respected the primacy of the legislature as the legitimate arbiter of many of the competitions of value that necessity throws up. The recognition of necessity has not been in the form of a single unified defence of that name. Rather it has taken the form of a number of defences, based on a principle of necessity, but with different nomenclature and different rationales. This approach to necessity is defended as right in terms of principle and policy. Any further development of necessity as a general defence should be restricted to two contexts, namely those of emergencies, and of conflicts of duty, where a danger of death or serious injury is present.

Post-conflict justice in divided democracies: the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India

Abstract

Official figures claim that almost 3000 people were killed, and many more injured or displaced, in four days of rioting aimed at the Sikh population of Delhi in late October and early November 1984 following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. This article analyses the efforts made to address the human rights violations that occurred. It argues that as a divided democracy, India has struggled to do justice to the victims, despite multiple commissions of inquiry, compensation schemes and a prime ministerial apology. It argues that this has occurred not simply because of challenges commonly faced by democracies dealing with similar incidents, but also because of the particular problems faced in a context in which we see continuity of rule by a political elite allegedly implicated in the abuse and in which there is acute concern for the survival of a fragile divided polity.     

Evaluation, Policy Learning and Evidence-Based Policy Making

The increasing emphasis on the need for evidence-based policy indicates the continuing influence of the 'modernist' faith in progress informed by reason. Although the rationalist assumptions of evidence-based policy making have been subject to severe challenge from constructivist and post-modernist perspectives, it is argued that the attempt to ground policy making in more reliable knowledge of 'what works' retains its relevance and importance. Indeed, its importance is enhanced by the need for effective governance of complex social systems and it is argued that 'reflexive social learning' informed by policy and programme evaluation constitutes an increasingly important basis for 'interactive governance'. The expanded use of piloting of new policies and programmes by the current UK Government is considered to provide limited scope for evaluation to derive reliable evidence of whether policies work. There is a need for greater clarity about the role of evaluation in situations where piloting essentially constitutes 'prototyping'. More emphasis should be placed on developing a sound evidence base for policy through long-term impact evaluations of policies and programmes. It is argued from a realist position that such evaluation should be theory-based and focused on explaining and understanding how policies achieve their effects using 'multi-method' approaches.