Faculty

Welcome to the Law School; Lempert, Avi-Yonah, and Malamud receive named professorships; Eric Stein, \u2742, wins University of Michigan Press Award

A Content Analysis of District School Library Selection Policies in the United States

Selection policies are practical tools used by school librarians to guide them in their collection development plans. This investigation into district-level selection policies examined policies from 80 school districts across the United States. The policies were examined to determine the status of selection policies in school libraries and if the policies reflect the recommendations of professional literature. Through content analysis, we determined that most of the school library selection policies included at least half of the expected key components. However, there is a need for school librarians to advocate for revision of policies to keep them current and provide effective guidance for school librarians as they make selections for their collections

Creative Mastering: A New Culture of Audio Post-Production

My thesis posits that a new culture of ‘Creative Mastering’ exists in the realm of audio post-production. This culture has evolved out of a more technical and procedural mode of engineering and music industry labour. My study takes seriously the mastering engineer, like the more conventional producer, as a creative participant in the contemporary recorded music production process. To better understand the modern-day mastering engineer, their culture and the creative aspects of their day-to-day work, I have conducted autoethnography and original interviews with 20 of the world’s leading practitioners. These practitioners have operated out of major facilities such as Abbey Road Studios (UK) and Sterling Sound (USA). Through my thesis, I unpack some key aspects of mastering culture to demonstrate why this particular form of technical engineering work is now gaining acceptance as creative labour. My research demonstrates why better understandings of mastering and its culture will make for much richer appreciations of popular recorded music production. I examine issues of access, learning to master and operating as an expert in the space. I also theorise how mastering engineers identify with their role, engage their creativity and make use of their studio setups. These issues that surround mastering all bear the hallmarks of creative practice. Up until very recently, technical publications and trade literature made up the dominant stock of written information on mastering, or ‘audio mastering’. I have surveyed ideas that emerge out of academic studies and discourse related to popular recorded music production, creative labour in the cultural industries, and social studies of sound. Having drawn from a large pool of scholarship, my research offers new and theoretical contributions to the field. It will help a growing collective of interdisciplinary academics who are now focusing on the creative aspects of audio post-production

The Kant-Inspired Indirect Argument for Non-Sentient Robot Rights

Some argue that robots could never be sentient, and thus could never have intrinsic moral status. Others disagree, believing that robots indeed will be sentient and thus will have moral status. But a third group thinks that, even if robots could never have moral status, we still have a strong moral reason to treat some robots as if they do. Drawing on a Kantian argument for indirect animal rights, a number of technology ethicists contend that our treatment of anthropomorphic or even animal-like robots could condition our treatment of humans: treat these robots well, as we would treat humans, or else risk eroding good moral behavior toward humans. But then, this argument also seems to justify giving rights to robots, even if robots lack intrinsic moral status. In recent years, however, this indirect argument in support of robot rights has drawn a number of objections. In this paper I have three goals. First, I will formulate and explicate the Kant-inspired indirect argument meant to support robot rights, making clearer than before its empirical commitments and philosophical presuppositions. Second, I will defend the argument against a number of objections. The result is the fullest explication and defense to date of this well-known and influential but often criticized argument. Third, however, I myself will raise a new concern about the argument’s use as a justification for robot rights. This concern is answerable to some extent, but it cannot be dismissed fully. It shows that, surprisingly, the argument’s advocates have reason to resist, at least somewhat, producing the sorts of robots that, on their view, ought to receive rights

ASBOs and the Community: Towards a New Model of Liability?

his thesis argues that anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) are the imperfect expression of a new type of community-based liability which seeks to regulate an individual’s behaviour in the context of his relationship with a particular community. The combination of civil and criminal elements in ASBOs stems from a political will to address responsibility for behaviour which is harmful to a community. Despite the central conceptual role played by the community relationship in ASBOs, legal provisions have failed to define the nature of that relationship, relying on judicial discretion to shape the orders’ application in practice. Judicial interpretation of ASBO legislation confirms the alternative nature of the orders, and the importance of the concept of community in creating a different type of liability. From a theoretical perspective, communitarian principles provide a basis for explaining how the individual/community relationship can justify and shape liability. The figure of a responsible individual constituted by his social interactions forms the premise of this type of liability, and the concept of community in this context is established as a fluid rather than rigid notion, defined as a social group connected by a range of specific interests. A model of community-based liability can be constructed from these principles: interference with a community’s interests can justify the imposition of liability, provided the individual’s behaviour represents a wilful engagement with that particular community. This model of liability provides a useful framework through which to re-examine ASBOs. While the case law broadly adopts the defining elements mentioned above, the use of ASBOs shows examples of misapplications of the principles of a community-based model of liability. Nevertheless, this framework also shows how ASBOs can be seen as a flexible and potentially integrative approach to regulating different types of individual/community relationships, despite the missed opportunities sometimes created by their practical application