44 research outputs found

    Combating Domestic Violence Against Women in Nigeria: The Role of Library and Information Science Professionals

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    The incident of domestic violence against women in Nigeria is assuming an alarming proportion to the point of being considered a public health problem. Domestic violence has several consequences on the victim including the erosion of self-esteem. It can result in psychological and emotional trauma. The seriousness of this problem and the rising occurrence in Nigeria demands that all hands must be on deck to combat it. Like their counterparts in other professional fields, library and information science professionals have a role to play in combating this menace that has several consequences. Nigerian library and information science professionals may be considered appropriate to combat this problem because of their training in information selection, organisation, dissemination and preservation. This paper examines the concept of domestic violence against women. It highlights the types of domestic violence against women in Nigeria, causes of domestic violence and its effects. The paper also proffers some roles for Nigerian library and information science professionals aimed at combating the problem. This includes a range of strategies including the provision of domestic violence information resources/help desks, awareness campaigns, participation in advocacy campaigns, and the formation of anti-domestic violence groups. They may also maximise social media by creating content focused on domestic violence. Library and information science professionals may also empower victims through the provision of adult education classes and skill acquisition that will enable victims to make decisions that are in their best interest

    Designing for Socially Acceptable Security Technologies

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    Security technologies (STs) are increasingly being positioned, developed, and implemented as technological-fixes for addressing crime; never more so than in the wake of the numerous terrorist attacks beginning with September 11th 2001. However, despite the purported security benefits afforded citizens by these technologies, their smooth assimilation into society is never assured. STs which evoke social controversy and resistance fail to survive unscathed over the mid- to long-term; subjected instead to enforced modification, restrictions on acquisition, restrictions on use, or in the worst case scenario - outright banning. Such controversies can negatively affect the companies designing these STs, end-users who employ them, governments who authorise them, and citizens whose security may genuinely remain compromised. The aim of this thesis is to assist the developers and designers of STs in anticipating and mitigating negative societal responses to their technologies upstream in the design process. The logic being that; by targeting STs before they are completed those elements of design most likely to evoke controversy can be modified, which in turn will produce STs the public are more likely to afford legitimacy through acceptance. To achieve this aim, three objectives were set. The first was to identify the causes of social controversies arising from the design and operation of STs. Through repeated focussed case-studies of previous controversial STs a taxonomy of forty-three commonalities of controversy was produced. The second goal was to generate guidelines for the development of future methodological design-tools that could be produced to assist those developing STs in identifying these controversies. This was achieved by conducting interviews with scientists and engineers actively involved in the design and production of STs. Finally, this taxonomy and guidelines were applied to produce two prototypes of potential design tools; with one subsequently applied to an ongoing ST design project

    Can Preemption Protect Public Participation ?

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    The Problem of Jurisdictional Non-Precedent

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    Most critiques of the Supreme Court\u27s June 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush (including Justice Scalia\u27s dissent in the same) have at their core the argument that Justice Kennedy\u27s majority opinion is inconsistent with prior precedent, specifically the Supreme Court\u27s 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. A closer read of Eisentrager, though, reveals a surprisingly unclear opinion by Justice Jackson, that seems to go out of its way to reach various issues on the merits even after suggesting that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction over habeas petitions filed by 22 Germans convicted of war crimes by a U.S. military tribunal in China. Put another way, it is hard to understand the scope of the rule that the Eisentrager majority thought it was enunciating, and therefore the extent to which it should have also applied in the Guantanamo cases. This problem is not unique to Eisentrager, though. In the Court\u27s June 2008 decision in Munaf v. Geren, it also brushed aside a post-World War II precedent -- the 1948 decision in Hirota v. MacArthur, again because it was not clear exactly which facts the earlier jurisdiction-precluding decision relied upon. As I explore in this essay -- part of the Tulsa Law Review\u27s annual Supreme Court review -- these decisions are emblematic of a judicial methodology that is no longer in vogue, thanks to the Supreme Court\u27s 1998 decision in Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment. After Steel Co., federal courts can no longer reach issues over which they lack jurisdiction, and so are far more careful to resolve jurisdictional questions at the outset, before moving on (where possible) to the merits. But what effect does Steel Co. have on prior precedent, where the Court\u27s decision leaves unclear how much the merits actually mattered? As I explore in this essay, Steel Co. may itself compel that contemporary courts narrowly construe jurisdiction-precluding rules in cases like Eisentrager and Hirota, on the assumption that those courts would not have analyzed questions the answers to which could not have mattered. Reasonable people may disagree about whether Boumediene and Munaf were rightly decided, but the critical point for present purposes is that both were decided on jurisprudential clean slate

    The Problem of Jurisdictional Non-Precedent

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    Agency Underenforcement as Reviewable Abdication

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    The Supreme Court held in 1985 that agency refusals to enforce are presumptively unreviewable under the Administrative Procedure Act. In doing so, the Court created an exception for when an agency has “consciously and expressly adopted a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.” Courts and scholars have mostly interpreted this abdication exception as capturing only total nonenforcement, which is when an agency completely stops enforcing its statutory responsibilities. On the other hand, the D.C. Circuit allows review of all general enforcement policies, regardless of whether they implicate abdication—but rarely do agencies create such official policies. Both these approaches, however, fail to allow review when the agency is underenforcing its responsibilities so severely that it achieves substantially the same effect as total nonenforcement. This type of “severe underenforcement” poses concerning problems. It can potentially undermine complex statutory schemes and implicates constitutional separation of powers concerns. This Note argues that courts and scholars have misread the abdication exception to include only total nonenforcement. Because severe underenforcement poses the same types of concerns that compelled the Court to establish the abdication exception, courts should also allow review under the Administrative Procedure Act when there is severe underenforcement. Adopting a severe underenforcement approach to the abdication exception would help alleviate the concerns it poses and check agency overreach via underenforcement

    Big Data Security (Volume 3)

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    After a short description of the key concepts of big data the book explores on the secrecy and security threats posed especially by cloud based data storage. It delivers conceptual frameworks and models along with case studies of recent technology

    Ulrich v. Bach Clerk\u27s Record v. 3 Dckt. 39318

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    https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho_supreme_court_record_briefs/2164/thumbnail.jp

    Cultural Convergence: Interest Convergence Theory Meets the Cultural Defense?

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    Much has been written about the so-called cultural defense or, more accurately, the proffer of cultural evidence by a criminal defendant seeking to mitigate a charge or sentence. Many scholars support the admission of cultural evidence, but argue it should be limited to cases where such evidence is used to negate the mens rea element of the charged offense. Others feel that the admission of cultural evidence violates the principle of equal protection and favors immigrant and minority defendants over American defendants, and therefore the practice should be sharply circumscribed. Recently, a few legal scholars have issued calls for recognition of an official cultural defense. In Cultural Convergence, Professor Lee neither defends nor criticizes the practice of using culture in the criminal courtroom. Rather, she seeks to illuminate why some uses of culture in the criminal courtroom seem to be more successful than others. Generally speaking, immigrants and minority defendants who seek to proffer cultural evidence in their defense are not successful. Either the judge deems the evidence irrelevant or the jury is not persuaded that the defendant\u27s cultural background should be grounds for leniency. An extensive review of the cultural defense literature, however, suggests that immigrant and minority defendants who successfully introduce cultural evidence in their defense have one thing in common. The cultural norms underlying their claims are either similar to or complement American cultural norms, including retrograde, e.g., racist and sexist, norms. Borrowing from Derrick Bell\u27s interest convergence theory, Lee argues that cultural convergence is one way to explain these results. Cultural convergence is the idea that the cultural defense claims of minority and immigrant defendants are more likely to receive accommodation when there is convergence between the cultural norms relied upon by the immigrant or minority defendant and American cultural norms. This article proceeds in three parts. Part I provides the reader with an overview of the major legal issues surrounding the use of cultural evidence in the criminal courtroom. Part II provides a comprehensive taxonomy of the ways Derrick Bell\u27s interest convergence theory has been applied by legal scholars. Part III demonstrates how Lee\u27s theory of cultural convergence can help explain many of the successful uses of culture in the criminal courtroom
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