Is Pro Bono Practice In Legal “Backwaters” Beyond The Scope of The Model Rules?

[Excerpt] While many private sector attorneys offer pro bono legal services that reflect the same level of diligence and skill characteristic of the work done on behalf of their paying clients, the egregious failures described in the MC v. GC case and those that occur in many unreported matters highlight the dangers of pro bono initiatives designed to bridge the “access to justice gap.” As used here, the term “justice gap” refers to the chasm between the need for legal representation in civil disputes and public interest attorneys available to serve poor and working class clients. Justice gap pro bono programs connect low-income individuals in need of legal assistance in matters such as eviction prevention, family disputes, and consumer debt collection cases with attorneys from large law firms that typically specialize in commercial litigation and corporate transactions. Though well intentioned, justice gap pro bono initiatives that succeed do so in spite of the impediments to ethical representation that pervade this method of legal service delivery. The market forces and “informal collegial control” that shape attorney conduct in the for-profit setting are often absent within the world of pro bono service. Moreover, the ethics rules that should govern pro bono attorneys offer inadequate guidance to lawyers grappling with the unique concerns of pro bono lawyering practiced in a for-profit context

The Failure of “She: An Evaluation of Solutions to Gendered Language

This thesis looks at the prevalence of gendered language in modern day English in North America. Drawing upon different analyses of masculine pronouns and slang, this paper argues that modern solutions to gendered language fail to come to terms with the contextual elements of language. While acknowledging that gendered language is a significant problem, the author argues that the solutions thus far presented, specifically replacing the generic pronoun “he” with “she,” cannot combat the way language reflects societal masculinization. Using Wittgenstein to criticize a Heidegger’s notion of language, this paper argues that societal change is a prerequisite to the success of linguistic substitutions for gendered language

Identity and the Legislative Decision Making Process: A Case Study of the Maryland State Legislature

Both politicians and the mass public believe that identity influences political behavior yet, political scientists have failed to fully detail how identity is salient for all political actors not just minorities and women legislators. To what extent do racial, gendered, and race/gendered identities affect the legislation decision process? To test this proposition, I examine how race and gender based identities shape the legislative decisions of Black women in comparison to White men, White women, and Black men. I find that Black men and women legislators interviewed believe that racial identity is relevant in their decision making processes, while White men and women members of the Maryland state legislature had difficulty deciding whether their identities mattered and had even more trouble articulating how or why they did. African American women legislators in Maryland articulate or describe an intersectional identity as a meaningful and significant component of their work as representatives. More specifically, Black women legislators use their identity to interpret legislation differently due to their race/gender identities

Workers' participation in safety and health at work

This paper focuses on the importance of getting workers involved in safety and health issues at work. Since modernisation and industrialisation have led to human loss and tragedy all around the world due to industrial accidents, safety practitioners and observers have widely agreed that the traditional belief that employers are solely responsible for the workers’ safety at work should have a new paradigm. To create a safe working condition, workers should be allowed to participate actively in safety and health matters and cooperate with the employers. Since they are closer to their work, it is felt that the workers themselves are the most qualified to make decisions about safety and job improvements. Evidence showed that various benefits could be yielded if workers work together with employers including the reduction of death and injury rates at work. However, to make workers’ participation in this field effective, several criteria are crucial. They are the legal support, management support, trade union support, training and the positive quality of the workers involved

Hedged Assertion

Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity to thinking about hedging, so as to illuminate aspects of interest to both linguists and philosophers. In particular, we consider three broad questions. 1) The structural question: when one hedges, what is the speaker’s commitment weakened from? 2) The functional question: what is the best way to understand how a hedge weakens? And 3) the taxonomic question: are hedged assertions genuine assertions, another speech act, or what

Computation vs. Information Processing: Why Their Difference Matters to Cognitive Science

Since the cognitive revolution, it’s become commonplace that cognition involves both computation and information processing. Is this one claim or two? Is computation the same as information processing? The two terms are often used interchangeably, but this usage masks important differences. In this paper, we distinguish information processing from computation and examine some of their mutual relations, shedding light on the role each can play in a theory of cognition. We recommend that theorists of cognition be explicit and careful in choosing\ud notions of computation and information and connecting them together. Much confusion can be avoided by doing so