Information Inflation: Can The Legal System Adapt?

Information is fundamental to the legal system. Accordingly, lawyers must understand that information, as a cultural and technological edifice, has profoundly and irrevocably changed. There has been a civilization- wide morph, or pulse, or one might say that information has evolved. This article discusses the new inflationary dynamic, which has caused written information to multiply by as much as ten thousand-fold recently. The resulting landscape has stressed the legal system and indeed, it is becoming prohibitively expensive for lawyers even to search through information. This is particularly true in litigation

Fixing the national security state: commissions and the politics of disaster and reform

In the U.S. federal system, “crisis commissions” are powerful instruments of social learning that actively mediate the politics of disaster and reform. Typically endowed with the legal authority to establish causes of dramatic policy failures and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence, commissions can prompt major governmental reorganizations. Yet commissions are also frequently accused of being influenced by dominant interests and faulted for articulating incomplete or politically expedient narratives of failure. Even when commission conclusions are accepted, the reforms they propose are not always adopted. Using the 9/11 Commission as a conceptual backdrop, this dissertation explores the relationship between disaster, public investigation, and reform by undertaking a detailed study of the Space Shuttle Columbia Accident Investigation Board and Iraq Study Group. Together, the cases constitute a study of the national security state seeking to correct failures across different domains of state power: border security, war-making capability, and dominance in space. I argue that commissions, as one-shot diagnostic and therapeutic instruments, are more effective than standing political institutions at confronting entrenched ways of seeing and knowing in complex systems of the national security state, which are defined by the interaction of ideology, large bureaucracies, and advanced technologies. The ability of commissions to see critically for society itself is not given but rather constructed through investigative and deliberative processes that must overcome the action of political interests. Commission credibility is therefore not an essential trait that derives a priori from the inherent stature of its members, but is rather the output of the investigative phase as commissions identify, compile, and publicize errors made by the state. In this adversarial process, an aggressive professional staff emerges as a determinant of commission success, leading to an important distinction between investigative commissions with “super staffs” and advisory commissions that lack them. Process tracing recommendations over a multi-year period nevertheless reveals dynamics of agency and resistance at play between commissions and the institutions they attempt to reform, highlighting the partial success commissions are likely to achieve at coercing entrenched institutions to implement their recommendations.This work was sponsored by the Gates Cambridge Trus

Navigating through digital folders uses the same brain structures as real world navigation

Efficient storage and retrieval of digital data is the focus of much commercial and academic attention. With personal computers, there are two main ways to retrieve files: hierarchical navigation and query-based search. In navigation, users move down their virtual folder hierarchy until they reach the folder in which the target item is stored. When searching, users first generate a query specifying some property of the target file (e.g., a word it contains), and then select the relevant file when the search engine returns a set of results. Despite advances in search technology, users prefer retrieving files using virtual folder navigation, rather than the more flexible query-based search. Using fMRI we provide an explanation for this phenomenon by demonstrating that folder navigation results in activation of the posterior limbic (including the retrosplenial cortex) and parahippocampal regions similar to that previously observed during real-world navigation in both animals and humans. In contrast, search activates the left inferior frontal gyrus, commonly observed in linguistic processing. We suggest that the preference for navigation may be due to the triggering of automatic object finding routines and lower dependence on linguistic processing. We conclude with suggestions for future computer systems design

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

THINKING LIKE A LAWYER ABOUT LEGISLATION: IMPLEMENTING LEGISLATIVE DECISION THEORY THROUGH IMPROVED CITATION

The Texas Supreme Court in the late 1990s, in two significant cases, arguably interpreted statutes to achieve a result directly opposite to the Texas Legislature’s decision to adopt a specific text. Why do lawyers and judges struggle when reading and applying legislation, especially when using enactment history? Under Professor Victoria Nourse’s legislative decision theory, the struggle is attributable to the fact that lawyers do not consider the legislature’s institutional rules and procedures to find the proper text to interpret a statute in light of the available legislative evidence. Wider implementation of her theory is hampered by current legal citation practices that mistreat legislative evidence and legislation itself and inhibit legal reasoning when using these authorities. The Bluebook and other citation manuals are designed primarily to enable sophisticated reasoning with case law. This bias is demonstrated by the ways in which the Bluebook has radically altered how lawyers and judges think about federal law with little notice. Legislative decision theory shows how accepted legislative procedures indicate the Texas Supreme Court reached the opposite result decided by the Legislature in each case. Because current legal citation practice did not provide a method for citing the proper legislative action, the court was unable to read the pertinent statutes in light of the relevant legislative evidence. Using Texas as a case study, a detailed review of the legislative process and the legislative evidence it produces demonstrates the need for comprehensive and workable citation practices for legislation. These goals are best achieved by individual states’ issuance of a specialized citation manual, such as a proposed Orangebook for Texas, to prevent recurring, substantial errors made by lawyers and courts in interpreting statutes

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

The relationship between task complexity, working memory and information search

In recent years, there has been growing interest in better understanding human actors in human information seeking behavior studies. Although a number of studies have been conducted to explore users’ individual differences in search behavior, there have been few studies taking both a theoretical and empirical approach to the relationship between users’ cognitive ability, task complexity and search interactions. The study presented in this paper evaluated the effect of task complexity and working memory in human information searching behavior. Twenty-four participants from a non-college-bound adolescents sample (ages 18-50+) performed two search tasks of varying levels of complexity and were administered measures of working memory. ANOVA tests revealed three important trends: (1) task complexity had a significant main effect on users’ perceptions about the task (i.e., temporal demand and level of satisfaction with time spent on the task), (2) working memory capacity had a significant main effect on users’ search behavior (i.e., queries, clicks, time until 1st click and time between search activities), and (3) a significant interaction effect was found for several search interaction measures (i.e., queries, clicks and time between search activities) and perceived level of temporal demand. Specifically, participants with high working memory capacity carried out more search activities at a faster pace and experienced less temporal workload. Taken together, these results suggest that task complexity and working memory capacity can have effects on users’ search behavior as well as their perceptions about the search experience.Master of Science in Information Scienc

A new integrated model for multitasking during web searching

Investigating multitasking information behaviour, particularly while using the web, has become an increasingly important research area. People s reliance on the web to seek and find information has encouraged a number of researchers to investigate the characteristics of information seeking behaviour and the web seeking strategies used. The current research set out to explore multitasking information behaviour while using the web in relation to people s personal characteristics, working memory, and flow (a state where people feel in control and immersed in the task). Also investigated were the effects of pre-determined knowledge about search tasks and the artefact characteristics. In addition, the study also investigated cognitive states (interactions between the user and the system) and cognitive coordination shifts (the way people change their actions to search effectively) while multitasking on the web. The research was exploratory using a mixed method approach. Thirty University students participated; 10 psychologists, 10 accountants and 10 mechanical engineers. The data collection tools used were: pre and post questionnaires, pre-interviews, a working memory test, a flow state scale test, audio-visual data, web search logs, think aloud data, observation, and the critical decision method. Based on the working memory test, the participants were divided into two groups, those with high scores and those with lower scores. Similarly, participants were divided into two groups based on their flow state scale tests. All participants searched information on the web for four topics: two for which they had prior knowledge and two more without prior knowledge. The results revealed that working memory capacity affects multitasking information behaviour during web searching. For example, the participants in the high working memory group and high flow group had a significantly greater number of cognitive coordination and state shifts than the low working memory group and low flow group. Further, the perception of task complexity was related to working memory capacity; those with low memory capacity thought task complexity increased towards the end of tasks for which they had no prior knowledge compared to tasks for which they had prior knowledge. The results also showed that all participants, regardless of their working memory capacity and flow level, had the same the first frequent cognitive coordination and cognitive state sequences: from strategy to topic. In respect of disciplinary differences, accountants rated task complexity at the end of the web seeking procedure to be statistically less significant for information tasks with prior knowledge compared to the participants from the other disciplines. Moreover, multitasking information behaviour characteristics such as the number of queries, web search sessions and opened tabs/windows during searches has been affected by the disciplines. The findings of the research enabled an exploratory integrated model to be created, which illustrates the nature of multitasking information behaviour when using the web. One other contribution of this research was to develop new more specific and closely grounded definitions of task complexity and artefact characteristics). This new research may influence the creation of more effective web search systems by placing more emphasis on our understanding of the complex cognitive mechanisms of multitasking information behaviour when using the web

The Critical Ally: Coercion and Defiance in Counterinsurgency Partnership

In counterinsurgency wars with large-scale foreign military interventions, under what conditions do in-country allies comply with the demands of foreign intervening forces and under what conditions do allies dismiss foreign demands? By examining thousands of primary source documents drawn from foreign interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan (U.S.S.R.), Sri Lanka, Afghanistan (U.S.), and Iraq, the study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze 460 specific requests from foreign allies to their in-country counterinsurgency partners, measuring conditions affecting in-country allied compliance with (or defiance of) foreign requests. Revisiting definitions of power in international relations and moving beyond underspecified explanations of alliance politics, this study theorizes that certain structures inherent in this type of counterinsurgency partnership influence the behavior of in-country allies. Specifically, the study argues that five factors influence the likelihood of in-country compliance with foreign allied demands, including: 1) the potential unilateral ability of intervening forces to implement the requested policy; 2) the alignment of allied preferences over the policy; 3) the capacity of the host government; 4) wartime complications; and 5) the presence of an acute enemy threat. These variables interact with each other to produce a complex set of incentives for allied cooperation or defiance. In particular, the study argues that whether or not allied interests converge or diverge over a proposed policy interacts with the unilateral ability of intervening forces to implement the policy. For example, if allied preferences converge and the foreign ally can implement the request unilaterally, the host ally has an incentive to free-ride and is unlikely to comply. Conversely, if allied interests diverge and the foreign ally can implement the request unilaterally, the in-country regime has an incentive to participate in order to avoid being undermined by its ally acting unilaterally. Overall, the study found remarkable consistency across this subset of wars, with approximately 1/3 of foreign requests complied with, 1/3 complied with in part, and 1/3 left unfulfilled