3,533 research outputs found

    Virtually Inaccessible: Resolving ADA Title III Standing in Click-and-Mortar Cases

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    As the electronic age has taken hold of the global community, and digital devices have become the mainstay of human interaction, new accessibility barriers have emerged for people with disabilities. Although most courts now conclude virtual inaccessibility is an injury cognizable under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, great ambiguity surrounds the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III standing in online accessibility cases. Despite pleading for elucidation and clarifying principles, federal district courts have been left to navigate the uncharted territory of the digital injury-in-fact inquiry with exiguous guidance from higher courts. The resultant confusion in the federal courts has manifested itself as diametrically contradictory injury-in-fact holdings in factually identical cases, both inter- and intra-circuit. This Comment clarifies the digital injury-in-fact inquiry by identifying and dissecting four crucial issues dividing federal courts in ADA Title III online accessibility cases: (1) the location a plaintiff must intend to return; (2) the application of the geographic intent-to-return test factors in cyberspace; (3) the role of future injury; and (4) the scope of virtual standing. First, this Comment argues the destination of a plaintiff’s intent to return is preordained by the type of injury alleged by the plaintiff. If a plaintiff alleges a purely virtual website injury, federal courts must assess the plaintiff’s intent to return to the inaccessible website. If a plaintiff alleges a hybrid website injury, federal courts must assess the plaintiff’s intent to return to the inaccessible website and intent to avail themselves to the goods or services of the public accommodation’s brick-and-mortar location. Second, this Comment contends the geographic intent-to-return factors are not probative of a plaintiff’s intent to return to a website. However, federal courts cannot merely remove the geographic factors from the intent-to-return test because the resulting analysis infringes on Supreme Court precedent. Rather, federal courts must substitute the intent-to-return test’s geographic factors with factors appropriate in cyberspace. Third, this Comment asserts the injury-in-fact inquiry cannot be satisfied by past injury alone. Instead, federal courts must assess the plaintiff’s likelihood of future injury. Finally, this Comment argues federal courts should not adopt a lenient approach to standing because a lenient approach is not necessitated by Supreme Court precedent, it is inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent, and it exacerbates the extant issue of serial litigation in online accessibility cases

    The Legal Argument Game of Legal Relations

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    The Language of LEGAL RELATIONS (LLR) is a representation language for expressing rules and arguments in the legal domain. The fundamental legal conceptions of Wesley N. Hohfeld, one of the foremost legal philosophers of the 20th Century, provide the first giant step in the development of the LEGAL RELATIONS Logic (LRL) that underlies LLR. LRL is an extension, enrichment, and formalization of the eight fundamental legal conceptions that Hohfeld viewed as the lowest common denominators of legal discourse that could be used to describe every possible legal state of affairs and every change in such states.This robustness is actually achieved by LRL, along with its capacity to represent every possible legal rule as well as every possible legal argument

    One Use of Computerized Instructional Gaming in Legal Education: To Better Understand the Rich Logical Structure of Legal Rules and Improve Legal Writing

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    This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published

    The Legal Argument Game of Legal Relations

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    The Language of LEGAL RELATIONS (LLR) is a representation language for expressing rules and arguments in the legal domain. The fundamental legal conceptions of Wesley N. Hohfeld, one of the foremost legal philosophers of the 20th Century, provide the first giant step in the development of the LEGAL RELATIONS Logic (LRL) that underlies LLR. LRL is an extension, enrichment, and formalization of the eight fundamental legal conceptions that Hohfeld viewed as the lowest common denominators of legal discourse that could be used to describe every possible legal state of affairs and every change in such states.This robustness is actually achieved by LRL, along with its capacity to represent every possible legal rule as well as every possible legal argument

    Exploring Computer Aided Generation of Questions for Normalizing Legal Rules

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    The process of normalizing a legal rule requires a drafter to indicate where the intent is to be precise and where it is to be imprecise in expressing both the between-sentence and within-sentence logical structure of that rule. Three different versions of a legal rule are constructed in the process of normalizing it: (1) the logical structure of the present version, (2) the detailed marker version, and (3) the logical structure of the normalized version. In order to construct the third version the analyst must formulate and answer specific questions about the terms that are used to express the logical structure of the first version that relates the constituent sentences marked in the second version. Questions about the two types of logical structure may be of two different kinds: (1) direct questions about the interpretation of terms that express each type of structure, and (2) indirect questions by means of hypothetical situations that indicate how the terms that express structure are intended to be interpreted. Direct questions are generated from natural language terms that are used to express structure by a series of transformations that use progressively more detailed defined structural terms and that culminate in structure that is expressed entirely in the defined structural terms of the basic normalized form. Arrow diagrams accompany these direct questions to help teach normalization to those unfamiliar with it. Examples of such direct questions, as well as examples of indirect ones, are provided with respect to normalization of section 2-207 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Indirect questions are generated about hypothetical situations that involve various appropriate combinations of conditions expressed in the rule that lead to the various mentioned results. This kind of question may be easier for an expert to respond to and thus be a better vehicle for eliciting the expertise of such a person. It is possible that some computer assistance can be provided in generating direct questions, but less likely for indirect questions. Furthermore the number of indirect questions generated my be unmanageably large and require too much human assistance to be practical. In this chapter the feasibility of such computer-aided question generation will be explored to determine to what extent it can facilitate the normalizing of legal rules

    Group psychoeducative cognitive-behaviour therapy for mixed anxiety and depression with older adults

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    Objectives: There is a dearth of older adult evidence regarding the group treatment for co-morbid anxiety and depression. This research evaluated the effectiveness of a low-intensity group psychoeducational approach. Method: Patients attended six sessions of a manualised cognitive-behavioural group. Validated measures of anxiety, depression and psychological well-being were taken at assessment, termination and six-week follow-up from patients, who also rated the alliance and their anxiety/depression at each group session. Staff rated patients regarding their functioning at assessment, termination and six-week follow-up. Outcomes were categorised according to whether patients had recovered, improved, deteriorated or been harmed. Effect sizes were compared to extant group interventions for anxiety and depression. Results: Eight groups were completed with 34 patients, with a drop-out rate of 17%. Staff and patient rated outcome measures showed significant improvements (with small effect sizes) in assessment to termination and assessment to follow-up comparisons. Over one quarter (26.47%) of patients met the recovery criteria at follow-up and no patients were harmed. Outcomes for anxiety were better than for depression with the alliance in groups stable over time. Conclusion: The intervention evaluated shows clinical and organisational promise. The group approach needs to be further developed and tested in research with greater methodological control

    Exploring Computer Aided Generation of Questions for Normalizing Legal Rules

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    The process of normalizing a legal rule requires a drafter to indicate where the intent is to be precise and where it is to be imprecise in expressing both the between-sentence and within-sentence logical structure of that rule. Three different versions of a legal rule are constructed in the process of normalizing it: (1) the logical structure of the present version, (2) the detailed marker version, and (3) the logical structure of the normalized version. In order to construct the third version the analyst must formulate and answer specific questions about the terms that are used to express the logical structure of the first version that relates the constituent sentences marked in the second version. Questions about the two types of logical structure may be of two different kinds: (1) direct questions about the interpretation of terms that express each type of structure, and (2) indirect questions by means of hypothetical situations that indicate how the terms that express structure are intended to be interpreted. Direct questions are generated from natural language terms that are used to express structure by a series of transformations that use progressively more detailed defined structural terms and that culminate in structure that is expressed entirely in the defined structural terms of the basic normalized form. Arrow diagrams accompany these direct questions to help teach normalization to those unfamiliar with it. Examples of such direct questions, as well as examples of indirect ones, are provided with respect to normalization of section 2-207 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Indirect questions are generated about hypothetical situations that involve various appropriate combinations of conditions expressed in the rule that lead to the various mentioned results. This kind of question may be easier for an expert to respond to and thus be a better vehicle for eliciting the expertise of such a person. It is possible that some computer assistance can be provided in generating direct questions, but less likely for indirect questions. Furthermore the number of indirect questions generated my be unmanageably large and require too much human assistance to be practical. In this chapter the feasibility of such computer-aided question generation will be explored to determine to what extent it can facilitate the normalizing of legal rules

    One Use of Computerized Instructional Gaming in Legal Education: To Better Understand the Rich Logical Structure of Legal Rules and Improve Legal Writing

    Get PDF
    This article describes an innovation in legal education and speculates about its importance and effectiveness as an educational tool. The speculations about its potential use, however, are ones that each legal educator will be able to test individually to determine the effectiveness of this use of microcomputers to improve legal education. The computer software that permits the innovation to be used will be available to interested persons by the time that this article is published

    A-Hohfeld: A Language for Robust Structural Representation of Knowledge in the Legal Domain to Build Interpretation-Assistance Expert Systems

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    The A-Hohfeld language is presented as a set of definitions; it can be used to precisely express legal norms. The usefulness of the AHohfeld language is illustrated in articulating 2560 alternative structural interpretations of the four-sentence 1982 Library Regulations of Imperial College and constructing an interpretation-assistance legal expert system for these regulations by means of the general-purpose Interpretation-Assistance legal expert system builder called MINT. The logical basis for A-Hohfeld is included as an appendix

    Controlling Inadvertent Ambiguity in the Logical Structure of Legal Drafting by means of the Prescribed Definitions of the A-Hohfeld Structural Language

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    Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of· the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language· best accomplishes the purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the logical structure of legal discourse, where desired by the drafter. The current set of signaled structural definitions that are included in the A-Hohfeld language are first set forth and their use is illustrated in an extensive example from the treaty establishing the European Economic Community. The use of definitions· in legal writing is widespread, but addressed almost exclusively to controlling the vagueness of substantive legal terms; they are seldom used for structural purposes. Furthermore, their use in American legislative drafting is unsignaled. Here, attention is devoted to the relatively-neglected domain in legal discourse of imprecisely expressed logical structure, and the remedy offered, where desired by the drafter, is a set of signaled structural definitions for use in controlling such imprecision
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