Legal and Ethical Implications of Corporate Social Networks

Corporate social networking sites provide employees and employers with considerable opportunity to share information and become friends. Unfortunately, American laws do not directly address social networking site usage. The National Labor Relations Act, civil rights laws, and various common law doctrines such as employment at-will and defamation provide the pattern for future social networking laws. Ethical considerations such as productivity, security, goodwill, privacy, accuracy, and discipline fairness also affect future laws. Corporate policies on corporate social networking should balance the employer‘s and employee‘s interests. Existing laws and ethical issues associated with social networking should impact social networking policies related to configuration, communication, discipline, and evaluation of policies. Corporate social networking policies should be business-related, ensure user notification of monitoring, maintain adequate records, and provide for reliable, consistent, and impersonal evaluation of monitoring effectiveness

Punishment and penal activity : the expansion of legal fines and fees in Texas from 1985 to 2015

Across the United States, legal fines and fees generate millions of dollars per year in revenue despite widening the net of criminalization and increasing penal severity for poorer individuals. Unlike in other penal policy domains, legal fines and fees represent an ambiguously defined form of punishment that has received bipartisan support. Understudied is how legal fines and fees have become an increasingly preferred policy choice among state-level political actors. In this study, I use archival data on legal statutes and legislative sessions in Texas – home to one of the largest prison and jail system in the U.S. – to investigate the development of legal fines and fees across a 30-year period. I use insights from socio-political and legal theories to offer a comprehensive analysis of the structure of legislative policy networks and the development of legal fines and fees legislation. I demonstrate that both liberal and conservative political actors facilitated the passage of legal debt legislation. Furthermore, I consider the role of legislative testimony to show the association between testimony and the rate of legislation on legal fines and fees. I discuss the implications of my findings for understanding how policy networks and legislative activity are related to criminal justice outcomes and are influenced by a variety of social actors. My study contributes to theoretical explanations on the roles of state actors in developing policies that become increasingly implicated in social inequalities.Sociolog

Asymmetric Information under the \u3ci\u3eKafala\u3c/i\u3e Sponsorship System: Impacts on Foreign Domestic Workers’ Income and Employment Status in the GCC Countries

This paper examines the legal and policy implications of information asymmetry on foreign domestic workers employed under the Kafala sponsorship system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Drawing from ethnographic and field-based observations in large GCC migrant destinations—including Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—we investigate the flow of information and market uncertainties between five key stakeholders: labor-receiving government, labor-sending government, recruitment agencies (subagents), sponsors (employers), and social networks. Several factors contribute to asymmetric information: the lack of bilateral labor agreements and government policy coordination, programs between and among government entities, the absence of labor law for domestic workers, and the laissez faire approach of the labor-receiving government. These sources of asymmetric information do not only create serious market vulnerabilities for the domestic worker population, but often lead to loss of employment and early deportation. The concluding section further outlines various critical policy implications and potential areas of methodological research on GCC migration

Tutorial on Computing: Technological Advances, Social Implications, Ethical and Legal Issues

Computing and information technology have made significant advances. The use of computing and technology is a major aspect of our lives, and this use will only continue to increase in our lifetime. Electronic digital computers and high performance communication networks are central to contemporary information technology. The computing applications in a wide range of areas including business, communications, medical research, transportation, entertainments, and education are transforming local and global societies around the globe. The rapid changes in the fields of computing and information technology also make the study of ethics exciting and challenging, as nearly every day, the media report on a new invention, controversy, or court ruling. This tutorial will explore a broad overview on the scientific foundations, technological advances, social implications, and ethical and legal issues related to computing. It will provide the milestones in computing and in networking, social context of computing, professional and ethical responsibilities, philosophical frameworks, and social, ethical, historical, and political implications of computer and information technology. It will outline the impact of the tremendous growth of computer and information technology on people, ethics and law. Political and legal implications will become clear when we analyze how technology has outpaced the legal and political arenas

Deinstitutionalization: A Review of the Literature with Implication for Social Work Training and Practice in Rural Areas

The manuscript reviews the social, legal, and political background of the deinstitutionalization movement, reviews successful programs for deinstitutionalized chronic mental patients in the major problem areas of socialization skills training, supportive living, interventions with families, vocational rehabilitation, and medication monitoring. Problems which prevent the successful replication of these programs in rural areas, such as differing characteristics of rural and urban clients, distance and travel, and staff attitudes are discussed. Implications for social work training and practice in rural areas include the increased need for paraprofessional staff development and supervision skills, ability to utilize and mobilize existing community helping networks, and training in behavior modification techniques

Creating Safe Space in a Challenging Landscape: Empowerment for Rural Women in Nicaragua

Programs and policies addressing gendered violence in impoverished rural areas in developing countries face a number of challenges: high rates of intimate partner violence, low reporting rates, cultural restrictions on women’s employment, lack of education and adequate healthcare, limited access to legal options and social services, and corruption in the criminal justice system. These social contexts in which anonymity is low and patriarchal notions of gender are especially persistent, are challenging in terms of creating safe space for victims of intimate violence. Even where legal interventions are available, the outcomes often favor the perpetrators, making this option less attractive and in some cases, dangerous. Because of these barriers, victims of intimate partner violence in rural settings rely more often on informal or community networks of support rather than formal authorities and legal sanctions to stop the violence. Consequently, addressing intimate partner violence in rural areas in developing countries requires more than a criminal justice response; it requires community intervention, empowering rural women economically and socially. This article describes one program in particular that attempts to empower rural women in Nicaragua, and the implications for creating safe space for victims of violence in challenging contexts

Rebooting Empathy for the Digital Generation Lawyer

There is a growing preference in today’s technology-saturated society for online interaction via email, text messages, social networks, and instant messaging, rather than real-world interaction through face-to-face or telephonic conversations. For today’s young people—the Digital Generation—this is more than a mere preference; it is a way of life. Research indicates that the movement toward virtual communication comes with negative consequences, such as poor real-world communication skills and underdeveloped social skills. Most significantly, research suggests that the Digital Generation are less empathic than elder generations are. Some researchers speculate that the rising prominence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life may have contributed to the Digital Generation’s decreased empathy.Today’s young ICT devotees are tomorrow’s future legal professionals. And when the Digital Generation enter legal practice they will find it entails far more than just reading cases and spotting issues. They will be called upon to counsel, to advocate, to persuade, and to adjudicate. To succeed in legal practice the Digital Generation will need strong empathic abilities. There are clear negative implications for the legal profession’s future if successful legal practice requires particular interpersonal skills but ICT usage is preventing the Digital Generation from developing these skills.This article analyzes social science literature regarding declining empathy, the Digital Generation, and technology. It establishes the importance of empathy in legal practice and examines prior suggestions for improving the legal profession’s historically fraught relationship with empathy. It then proposes new strategies to reverse this empathy decline so the Digital Generation may become successful legal practitioners despite—or perhaps even because of—their use of ICTs

"If you hold my hand, no one will be able to take you away from me": The Health Implications of an Immigration Raid on a Mixed-Status Latino community in Washtenaw County, Michigan

Immigration raids, used with increasing frequency in the United States in 2016, exemplify the reach of immigration law enforcement into the lives of Latino community members. Yet little research characterizes their health implications. Using a mixed methods critical case study design and a conceptual framework of illegality, this study investigates the health implications of a collaborative immigration raid that occurred in Washtenaw County, Michigan, on November 7, 2013. Quantitative data come from the Encuesta Buenos Vecinos, a community survey of Latinos in Washtenaw County. Qualitative data come from participant observation with law enforcement and the mixed-status Latino community in which the raid occurred, as well as interviews with 1) individuals directly involved in the raid, 2) members of social networks of individuals directly involved in the raid, and 3) representatives of social service and community organizations in the community in which the raid occurred. Findings provide strong evidence that immigration raids have negative effects on the well-being of Latinos in mixed-status communities. The social networks of those involved in the raid moderated its negative impacts by providing social and economic support. However, the sociocultural context that included 1) police and immigration enforcement collaboration; 2) policies that restrict access to driver’s licenses; and 3) law enforcement that prioritizes drug laws and ignores collateral damage (that is, damage inflicted on unintended targets); contributed to an environment in which individuals avoided encounters in which their immigration statuses may be disclosed. This avoidance limited the ameliorative impact of social networks and access to needed services. Implications from these findings suggest that social service organizations need to provide a range of services in accessible locations after immigration raids to support those directly involved, their families, and other community members; and that local police would be more effective in maintaining relationships with Latino communities if they did not enforce immigration law. Policies that support access to legal driver’s licenses among undocumented immigrants and end the use of collaborative immigration raids—especially those that target recently arrived mothers and children from Central America—would promote the health of Latinos in mixed-status communities.PHDHealth Behavior & Health EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135839/1/wdlopez_1.pd

Laws and Social Norms: Unintended Consequences of Obesity Laws

Traditional law and economic analysis considers how laws directly incentivize socially optimal behaviors. Meanwhile, a growing theoretical literature posits that beyond deterrence or incentives, laws also communicate normative judgments that can have effects unanticipated by classical predictions. This Article presents empirical evidence supporting the broader legal theory that laws can express social values, leading to shifts in social norms. Using data on adolescent peer networks in the United States, I find that where anti-obesity policies are stricter, social stigma increases for obese girls, though obesity rates do not necessarily decrease. These results are robust and consistent with a model in which the obese, in an anti-obesity policy environment, are negatively perceived as exerting less effort in their health than their non-obese peers. I explore implications of this stigma