Privacy and the Right to One’s Image: A Cultural and Legal History

Published as Chapter 9 in Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress, Anne Bloom, David M. Engel & Michael McCann, eds.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1364/thumbnail.jp

Chairs, Stairs, and Automobiles: The Cultural Construction of Injuries and the Failed Promise of Law

Published as Chapter 5 in Injury and Injustice: The Cultural Politics of Harm and Redress, Anne Bloom, David M. Engel & Michael McCann, eds.https://digitalcommons.law.buffalo.edu/book_sections/1356/thumbnail.jp

Book review: the myth of the litigious society: why we don’t sue by David M. Engel

In The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don’t Sue, David M. Engel challenges the assumption that the USA is a compensation culture, instead showing that victims of injuries usually do not seek meaningful redress. Although the book’s central claim would be strengthened by evidence from more recent studies than those presented in the text, M. Bob Kao finds this a convincing argument in favour of shifting a hitherto dominant narrative to the potential benefit of victims of injury who may otherwise forego their claims

A Synthesis Inversion to Constrain Global Emissions of Two Very Short Lived Chlorocarbons: Dichloromethane, and Perchloroethylene

none29sìDichloromethane (CH2Cl2) and perchloroethylene (C2Cl4) are chlorinated very short lived substances (Cl‐VSLS) with anthropogenic sources. Recent studies highlight the increasing influence of such compounds, particularly CH2Cl2, on the stratospheric chlorine budget and therefore on ozone depletion. Here, a multiyear global‐scale synthesis inversion was performed to optimize CH2Cl2 (2006–2017) and C2Cl4 (2007–2017) emissions. The approach combines long‐term surface observations from global monitoring networks, output from a three‐dimensional chemical transport model (TOMCAT), and novel bottom‐up information on prior industry emissions. Our posterior results show an increase in global CH2Cl2 emissions from 637 ± 36 Gg yr−1 in 2006 to 1,171 ± 45 Gg yr−1 in 2017, with Asian emissions accounting for 68% and 89% of these totals, respectively. In absolute terms, Asian CH2Cl2 emissions increased annually by 51 Gg yr−1 over the study period, while European and North American emissions declined, indicating a continental‐scale shift in emission distribution since the mid‐2000s. For C2Cl4, we estimate a decrease in global emissions from 141 ± 14 Gg yr−1 in 2007 to 106 ± 12 Gg yr−1 in 2017. The time‐varying posterior emissions offer significant improvements over the prior. Utilizing the posterior emissions leads to modeled tropospheric CH2Cl2 and C2Cl4 abundances and trends in good agreement to those observed (including independent observations to the inversion). A shorter C2Cl4 lifetime, from including an uncertain Cl sink, leads to larger global C2Cl4 emissions by a factor of ~1.5, which in some places improves model‐measurement agreement. The sensitivity of our findings to assumptions in the inversion procedure, including CH2Cl2 oceanic emissions, is discussed.openTom Claxton; Ryan Hossaini; Chris Wilson; Stephen A. Montzka; Martyn P. Chipperfield; Oliver Wild; Ewa M. Bednarz; Lucy J. Carpenter; Stephen J. Andrews; Sina C. Hackenberg; Jens Mühle; David Oram; Sunyoung Park; Mi‐Kyung Park; Elliot Atlas; Maria Navarro; Sue Schauffler; David Sherry; Martin Vollmer; Tanja Schuck; Andreas Engel; Paul B. Krummel; Michela Maione; Jgor Arduini; Takuya Saito; Yoko Yokouchi; Simon O'Doherty; Dickon Young; Chris LunderClaxton, Tom; Hossaini, Ryan; Wilson, Chris; Montzka, Stephen A.; Chipperfield, Martyn P.; Wild, Oliver; Bednarz, Ewa M.; Carpenter, Lucy J.; Andrews, Stephen J.; Hackenberg, Sina C.; Mühle, Jens; Oram, David; Park, Sunyoung; Park, Mi‐kyung; Atlas, Elliot; Navarro, Maria; Schauffler, Sue; Sherry, David; Vollmer, Martin; Schuck, Tanja; Engel, Andreas; Krummel, Paul B.; Maione, Michela; Arduini, Jgor; Saito, Takuya; Yokouchi, Yoko; O'Doherty, Simon; Young, Dickon; Lunder, Chri

Law, Time, and Community

Research concerning law and social change has almost always treated time as a universal constant and a baseline against which variations in behavior can be measured. Yet a significant literature exists demonstrating that researchers can also regard time as a socially constructed phenomenon requiring analytic interpretation in its own right. This article explores two aspects of the human experience of time that were especially important for the residents of a rural American community: the sense of time\u27s iterative character and its linear or irreversible quality. These two ways of experiencing and conceptualizing time played a significant part in efforts by residents of Sander County, Illinois, to define their community and interpret the social, cultural, and economic transformations it was undergoing. They were also important in the residents\u27 efforts to frame and define conflict within the community and to determine when law should or should not be invoked. The article examines some ways in which the analysis of varying conceptions of time within a community can enhance understanding of expectations, perceptions, and values concerning law in a changing society

Vertical and Horizontal Perspectives on Rights Consciousness

It has become commonplace to assert that rights consciousness is expanding globally and that individuals worldwide demonstrate an increasing awareness of and insistence upon their legal entitlements. To marshal empirical support for such claims is, however, exceedingly complex. One important line of socio-legal research on rights consciousness adopts what might be called a “vertical” perspective, tracing the flow of legal norms and practices from prestigious international organizations and world centers of cultural production to local settings, where they may be adopted, resisted, or transformed. Vertical perspectives on rights consciousness have contributed new understandings of law in contemporary societies around the world, but alone they cannot determine whether rights consciousness has expanded or contracted in relation to other systems of norm enforcement and dispute resolution. To answer this question, vertical perspectives must be combined with horizontal perspectives to ascertain what norms, practices, and beliefs prevail within various social fields where ordinary people engage in everyday interactions. A combination of vertical and horizontal perspectives is illustrated by research on rights consciousness in northern Thailand, which suggests the counterintuitive conclusion that rights consciousness may have diminished and that ordinary people rely instead on new forms of religiosity to justify inaction even in the face of serious legal harms

Origin Myths: Narratives of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law

Origin stories are a distinctive form of narrative. In their account of how something began to be, such stories connect past and present, clarify the meanings of important events, reaffirm core norms and values, and assert particular understandings of social order and individual identity. The parents of children with disabilities tell strikingly similar origin stories about the day their child was first diagnosed. Such stories not only explore the meanings of a transformative event but also draw implicit connections between past encounters with medical specialists and present encounters with educational specialists as mandated by an important federal statute. This article, based on an ethnographic study of parents, children, and educators, traces the implicit references in the parents\u27 origin myths to a set of key oppositions that reflect their experiences within the statutory framework of special education: cooperative versus unilateral decisionmaking, lay versus professional knowledge, and authority versus legal empowerment. The article also compares the ways in which law and myth address the conflicting perspectives of disability specialists and of the parents and children themselves