The Constitutional Rights of Advanced Robots (and of Human Beings)

Constitutional rights create and destroy otherwise available options for the rights-bearer, for governments, and for affected third parties. Thus, conferring a constitutional right always requires at least some minimal defense. But conferring a constitutional right can certainly be appropriate if the recipient of the right seems to deserve or otherwise qualify for the right in question, or if conferring the right makes sense on other, perhaps partly pragmatic, grounds. Among our civic responsibilities is to better understand the nature, justification, and the appropriate scope and extension of constitutional rights. Most often, we consider these matters in some specific political context. But it is also possible to reflect upon these dimensions of constitutional rights from a more detached perspective, stimulated by hypothetical, or at least less pressing, circumstances. This Article takes the latter tack and seeks to enhance our understanding of constitutional rights for humans by considering the provocative case of what might be termed "advanced robots.

Secret texts and cipherballots: secret suffrage and remote electronic voting

Una de les principals preocupacions sobre el vot telemàtic és com preservar el sufragi secret. La llista d’estudis que afirmen que el vot per Internet és incompatible amb el secret del vot és força extensa. Si bé estudis posteriors sobre experiències reals han tingut resultats més matisats, les preocupacions sobre el sufragi secret i el vot telemàtic es mantenen. Abordar aquestes preocupacions esdevé una obligació ineludible. En aquest context, la nostra recerca és novadora. En primer lloc, el nostre punt de partida no es basa en definicions legals preexistents que s'accepten com a donades. Partint de l'enfocament universalista del dret constitucional comparat, hem entès que el principi del sufragi secret transcendeix les opinions i convencions lligades a comunitats polítiques concretes. Aquesta concepció comú i bàsica s'ha traduït en tres estàndards: individualitat, confidencialitat i anonimat. Aquests estàndards s’han de satisfer en qualsevol canal de votació. En segon lloc, hem adoptat un enfocament més ampli en l’aplicació d’aquest principi al vot telemàtic. Hem demostrat que el sufragi secret es pot garantir mitjançant la llei, el codi informàtic, les normes i fins i tot el mercat. La normativa actual tendeix a ser limitada perquè recorre a analogies amb els canals de votació en paper i no reconeix les especificitats del vot telemàtic. Per contra, aquí hem examinat el paper que exerceixen (i les limitacions pròpies) del xifrat asimètric, l'anonimització basada en mix-nets o el recompte homomòrfic, i el vot múltiple.Una de las principales preocupaciones sobre el voto telemático es cómo garantizar el secreto del voto. La lista de autores que afirman que el voto por Internet es incompatible con el sufragio secreto es considerable. Aunque las conclusiones de estudios posteriores sobre experiencias reales hayan sido más matizadas, las preocupaciones sobre el sufragio secreto y el voto telemático se mantienen. Abordar estas preocupaciones constituye en una obligación ineludible. En este contexto, nuestra investigación es novedosa. En primer lugar, nuestro punto de partida no se basa en definiciones legales preexistentes que se aceptan como dadas. Partiendo del enfoque universalista del derecho constitucional comparado, hemos entendido que el principio del sufragio secreto trasciende las opiniones y convenciones ligadas a la cultura de comunidades políticas concretas. Esta concepción se ha traducido en tres normas: individualidad, confidencialidad y anonimato. Estas normas deberían aplicarse a cualquier canal de votación. En segundo lugar, hemos adoptado un enfoque más amplio sobre la aplicación de este principio. Hemos demostrado que el sufragio secreto puede garantizarse mediante la ley, el código, las normas e incluso el mercado. La normativa actual tiende a ser limitada porque recurre a analogías con los canales de votación en papel y no reconoce las especificidades del voto telemático.One of the key concerns about remote electronic voting is how to preserve secret suffrage. The list of authors who claim that Internet voting is incompatible with the secrecy of the vote is actually quite long. Even if later studies that analysed the actual implementation of remote electronic voting in public political elections had more nuanced findings, concerns about secret suffrage and remote electronic voting remain. Addressing these concerns becomes an inescapable obligation. In this context, our research is quite novel. First and foremost, our starting point is not based on pre-existing legal definitions that are accepted as given. Drawing from the universalist approach to comparative constitutional law, we have understood that the principle of secret suffrage exists in such a way that it transcends the culture bound opinions and conventions of particular political communities. This core understanding has been translated into three standards: individuality, confidentiality, and anonymity. These standards should apply to any voting channel. Second, we have taken a wider approach at the enforcement of this principle. We have showed that secret suffrage may be enforced through law, code, norms, and even the market. Current regulations tend to be constrained because they resort to analogies with paper-based voting channels and fail to acknowledge the specificities of remote electronic voting. In contrast, we have examined the role played by (and the limitations of) asymmetric encryption, anonymization based on mix-nets or homomorphic tallying, and of multiple voting to enforce secret suffrage

Mobilization and Partisan Identities: A Comparative Study of Partisanship under Compulsory and Voluntary Voting

Partisan identification is intimately related to many central aspects of political behavior. It influences vote choice, voters’ policy positions, and the manner in which voters process new political information. Partisanship has the power to undermine politicians’ accountability and it can even trump voters’ democratic values in polarized societies. Yet large gaps remain in our understanding of the relationship between partisanship and another key subject of political behavior: voter participation. We know that partisans are more likely to turn out to vote than their non-partisan counterparts; but why are partisans more likely to turn out? Are partisans simply people who are more interested in politics (and, therefore, more likely to participate)? Or is there a direct, causal relationship between partisanship and turnout? In this dissertation, I examine competing theories of why partisans participate more than non-partisans. With a series of novel empirical tests aimed at causal identification, I clarify the mechanisms underlying the relationship between partisanship and turnout. Partisanship mobilizes voters by introducing additional incentives to vote, separate from the intensity of their policy preferences. Partisanship generates expressive incentives to vote and engenders a sense of partisan duty — an obligation to do one’s part to contribute to the party’s success. When voters adopt partisan identities, they conceive of themselves as part of a larger group. These group identities fundamentally alter the calculus of voting, facilitating a cooperative logic of turnout. In contrast to oft-made claims in the political behavior literature, I find that the causal chain does not run in both directions: voting does not foster partisan identities. Prior work posited that the act of voting makes people more likely to adopt partisan identities, either through a process of political learning or a desire to resolve cognitive dissonance. The hypothesis that voting fosters partisanship underlies the dominant theory of how compulsory voting laws shape partisanship. Thus, my finding that voting does not foster partisanship calls for a new approach to understanding partisan dynamics under compulsory voting. In the second part of this dissertation, I present a new theory of party-voter linkages under compulsory voting. In both compulsory and voluntary voting systems, parties face a breadth-versus-depth tradeoff in their outreach to voters. When voting is voluntary, parties prioritize depth: they work to build stronger partisan identification among a smaller subset of the population. These stronger partisan identities are necessary to ensure that a party’s supporters are motivated to show up on Election Day. In compulsory voting systems, where parties need not concern themselves with extensive mobilization efforts, breadth becomes more important than depth. Parties competing in compulsory voting systems must win over a larger share of the population, since would-be abstainers are compelled by law to participate. But they don’t face the same burden of mobilizing their supporters, so they don’t need to invest in building ties as strong as those in voluntary systems. The result is that more voters identify with parties in compulsory voting systems, but the strength of their identification is, on average, weaker

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality