Twenty-First Century Formalism

Formalism is one of the most widely applied but misunderstood features of law. Embroiled in a series of conflicts over the course of the twentieth century, formalism’s meaning has become confused as formalism has been enlisted by both proponents and opponents of specific legal methodologies. For some, formalism has simply become an epithet used to describe virtually anything they dislike in legal thinking. Used often and inconsistently as a stand-in (and frequently a strawman), formalism’s distinct identity has been lost, its meaning merged with whatever methodology it is being used to support or attack. This Article seeks to separate formalism from those debates, identifying formalism for what it is: a commitment to form in legal thinking. Form is critical to understanding law; because law is a shared enterprise, it can only be understood and applied as it exists in some form. Formalism recognizes the form-bound nature of law and expands on that recognition by engaging with law in its various forms rather than as an abstraction. The Article makes three main contributions to understanding formalism: First, it provides a modern definition of formalism, separating it from confusion over formalism caused by its invocation in a series of debates over law in the twentieth century. Second, it describes how formalism operates in methodologies and contexts beyond textualism and originalism, the two methodologies with which formalism is usually identified. Third, it explores the power of formalism beyond its value in determining the content of law. The form of law is what drives the various ways the law categorizes conduct, and law’s categories in turn give meaning to conduct beyond just the application of enforceable legal constraints. It is time for us to bring formalism into the twenty-first century and recognize it for its distinct role in understanding law and legal institutions

Black and Brown Coalition Building during the Post-Racial Obama Era

This essay explores how the past Civil Rights Movement and discrimination against persons of color, mainly Latinos and African Americans, can help to address current forms of discrimination in our country. In particular, since the election of the first African American President, who also has immigrant parents, many people have claimed that we have reached a “post-racial” America. In the new post-racial America, proponents claim that the pre-Civil Rights Movement racial caste system of the sixties has been eradicated. In this context, this essay seeks to explore whether there is any link between the past experiences of African Americans with the current experiences of Latinos in resisting laws that deprive both groups of their basic civil and human rights. To this end, this essay first examines past employment discrimination against Latinos and African Americans. Second, the paper addresses why there is an historical absence of a unified movement to address discrimination against African Americans and Latinos. The underlying goal is to create a sense of identification between African Americans and Latinos and their experiences in the United States. This section also addresses how both groups may or may not benefit from unified strategies to address discriminatory laws and work for the passage of laws that exclude persons from membership in the American society. The third section addresses how the law has reified social exclusion of African Americans and Latinos. This section focuses on using past models of resistance in an attempt to address labor discrimination against Latinos and African Americans as a wise strategy. Finally, the essay will discuss how intersection and structural-racism theories can be used as a foundation for building a coalition between African Americans and Latinos

A deception based framework for the application of deceptive countermeasures in 802.11b wireless networks

The advance of 802.11 b wireless networking has been beset by inherent and in-built security problems. Network security tools that are freely available may intercept network transmissions readily and stealthily, making organisations highly vulnerable to attack. Therefore, it is incumbent upon defending organisations to take initiative and implement proactive defences against common network attacks. Deception is an essential element of effective security that has been widely used in networks to understand attack methods and intrusions. However, little thought has been given to the type and the effectiveness of the deception. Deceptions deployed in nature, the military and in cyberspace were investigated to provide an understanding of how deception may be used in network security. Deceptive network countermeasures and attacks may then be tested on a wireless honeypot as an investigation into the effectiveness of deceptions used in network security. A structured framework, that describes the type of deception and its modus operandi, was utilised to deploy existing honeypot technologies for intrusion detection. Network countermeasures and attacks were mapped to deception types in the framework. This enabled the honeypot to appear as a realistic network and deceive targets in varying deceptive conditions. The investigation was to determine if particular deceptive countermeasures may reduce the effectiveness of particular attacks. The effectiveness of deceptions was measured, and determined by the honeypot\u27s ability to fool the attacking tools used. This was done using brute force network attacks on the wireless honeypot. The attack tools provided quantifiable forensic data from network sniffing, scans, and probes of the wireless honeypot. The aim was to deceive the attack tools into believing a wireless network existed, and contained vulnerabilities that may be further exploited by the naive attacker

JURI SAYS:An Automatic Judgement Prediction System for the European Court of Human Rights

In this paper we present the web platform JURI SAYS that automatically predicts decisions of the European Court of Human Rights based on communicated cases, which are published by the court early in the proceedings and are often available many years before the final decision is made. Our system therefore predicts future judgements of the court. The platform is available at jurisays.com and shows the predictions compared to the actual decisions of the court. It is automatically updated every month by including the prediction for the new cases. Additionally, the system highlights the sentences and paragraphs that are most important for the prediction (i.e. violation vs. no violation of human rights)