Rights Don't Equal Access

40 years after Roe v Wade, most states impose prohibitive requirements for women seeking access to abortio

Event Systems and Access Control

We consider the interpretations of notions of access control (permissions, interdictions, obligations, and user rights) as run-time properties of information systems specified as event systems with fairness. We give proof rules for verifying that an access control policy is enforced in a system, and consider preservation of access control by refinement of event systems. In particular, refinement of user rights is non-trivial; we propose to combine low-level user rights and system obligations to implement high-level user rights

Information disclosure and environmental rights: the Aarhus Convention

Access to information is the first "pillar" of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998). This article examines how the information disclosure obligations on states within the Aarhus Convention express a particular blend of human environmental rights, conjoining procedural entitlements (and duties) with a substantive right to an environment adequate to human health and well-being: "Aarhus environmental rights" have been lauded for increasing citizen access to environmental information, helping to secure more transparent and accountable regulatory processes. However, the information rights are rendered inconsistent in practice by three properties: 1) the discretion accorded to Convention Parties in interpreting Aarhus rights; 2) the exclusion of private entities from mandatory information disclosure duties; and 3) the indeterminate coupling of procedural and substantive rights. These tensions reflect a structural imbalance in the articulation of Aarhus rights between social welfare and market liberal perspectives

The Low Water Mark for Beach Access: Defending Government Protection of Intertidal Recreation as a Lawful Exercise of State Power

Beaches are a natural resource ideally suited for public recreation. The public generally has a right to access this intertidal land, but the purpose and scope of public access vary greatly between states. Consistent with national trends toward greater public access, the legislatures of Massachusetts and Maine have attempted to expand public beach access rights to include the right to engage in general recreation below the mean high tide line. However, the Supreme Judicial Courts of both states have declared that such legislation would be an unconstitutional taking of property requiring compensation to the abutting landowners and held that public rights of access are limited to the traditional purposes of fishing, fowling, and navigation. In doing so, the high courts of both states stymied a natural progression toward greater public intertidal rights based on a colonial city ordinance enacted in 1641. I argue that legislative determinations about the most socially valuable uses of intertidal land should be given significant weight, particularly in light of the inherent flexibility of public access rights and a national trend expanding beach access. Thus, in this Article, I argue that the state legislatures can broaden the public’s right to beach access without constituting a taking. In doing so, the Article provides a roadmap for how legislatures, including those in Massachusetts and Maine, can draft legislation broadening beach access rights that can withstand constitutional scrutiny

Controlling land they call their own: access and women's empowerment in Northern Tanzania

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal empowerment and transformations in gender relations. Yet very few have obtained land ownership titles. Drawing from Ribot and Peluso’s theory of access, we argue that more than ownership rights to land, access–to land, knowledge, social relations and political processes–is leading to empowerment for these women, as well as helping to keep land within communities. We illustrate how the following are key to both empowerment processes and protecting community and women’s land: (1) access to knowledge about legal rights, such as the right to own land; (2) access to customary forms of authority; and (3) access to a joint social identity–as women, as indigenous people, and as Maasai. Through this shared identity and access to knowledge and authority, women are strengthening their access to social relations (amongst themselves, with powerful political players and NGOs), and gaining strength through collective action to protect land rights

Endogenous growth and property rights over renewable resources

We study how different regimes of access rights to renewable natural resources - namely, open access versus full property rights – affect sustainability, growth and welfare in the context of modern endogenous growth theory. Resource exhaustion may occur under both regimes but is more likely to arise under open access. Moreover, under full property rights, positive resource rents increase expenditures on manufacturing goods and temporarily accelerate productivity growth, but also yield a higher resource price at least in the short-to-medium run. We characterize analytically and quantitatively the model’s dynamics to assess the welfare implications of differences in property rights enforcement

Competition for access; spectrum rights and downstream access in wireless telecommunications

We analyse downstream access and capacity choice in the market for wireless telecommunications, where spectrum rights are owned by vertically integrated duopolists and may be traded. In the market for wireless telecommunications, radio spectrum is an essential input. Prior to network construction, the incumbents may offer contracts for capacity to an entrant, granting service-based access on the network they will construct. Alternatively, when spectrum trading is allowed, they may sell part of their license, allowing the entrant to build its own network and enter as an infrastructure player. We find that in this Cournot setting, access is generally provided, as incumbents compete to appropriate the profits of serving a differentiated market through the entrant. Although selling spectrum rights instead of network capacity leads to a loss of economies of scale in infrastructure construction, infrastructure-based entry may dominate as a result of a strategic effect. By delegating capacity choice to the entrant, the access providing incumbent can commit to compete more aggressively, causing its rival incumbent to reduce capacity. A lower aggregate capacity will increase prices and thereby profits.

User-Oriented Authorization in Collaborative Environments

Access rights for collaborative systems tend to be rather complex, leading to difficulties in the presentation and manipulation of access policies at the user interface level. We confront a theoretical access rights model with the results of a field study which investigates how users specify access policies. Our findings suggest that our theoretical model addresses most of the issues raised by the field study, when the required functionality can be presented in an appropriate user interface