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This article is an examination of human oversight in EU policy for controlling algorithmic systems in automated legal decision making. Despite the shortcomings of human control over complex technical systems, human oversight is advocated as a solution against the risks of increasing reliance on algorithmic tools. For law, human oversight provides an attractive, easily implementable and observable procedural safeguard. However, without awareness of its inherent limitations, human oversight is in danger of becoming a value in itself, an empty procedural shell used as a stand-in justification for algorithmization but failing to provide protection for fundamental rights. By complementing socio-legal analysis with Science and Technology Studies, critical algorithm studies, organization studies and human-computer interaction research, the author explores the importance of keeping the human in the loop and asks what the human element at the core of legal decision making is. Through algorithmization it is made visible how law conceptualises decision making through human actors, personalises legal decision making through the decision-maker’s discretionary power that provides proportionality and common sense, prevents gross miscarriages of justice and establishes the human encounter deemed essential for the feeling of being heard. The analysis demonstrates the necessary human element embedded in legal decision making, against which the meaningfulness of human oversight needs to be examined.

The Janus vs. AFSCME District 31 legal decision forced all U.S. public-sector unions to operate under “right-to-work” conditions: any union fees for those covered by a union contract are now optional. Past experiences of successful public-sector unions operating in right-to-work states should offer lessons to all public-sector unions on how to succeed. This article examines the history and recent success of the United Faculty of Florida, a statewide higher education public-sector union. Critical turning points, crises, and lessons from that history are included.

In the current issue, Wixted, Mickes, and Fisher make the claim that eyewitness memory is not inherently unreliable. They also describe specific conditions under which an eyewitness’s confidence can be a reliable indicator of accuracy in the context of both recall and recognition. We argue, however, that calculating the probative value of eyewitness evidence is more complicated than the authors acknowledge. In this commentary, we raise several concerns about the collection and assessment of eyewitness confidence in the real world. We also discuss how frequently the conditions specified by Wixted et al. are met in real cases. The potential for memory contamination is commonplace and can likely be outside the control of investigators. Moreover, there is reason to doubt that legal decision makers are sensitive to the myriad ways that eyewitness memory can be influenced. Because of this, we think eyewitness-memory scientists would do well to further research the intricacies of eyewitness confidence in the real world.

The present study aims to provide an empirical demonstration that a feasible solution to expand the jury pool is to lower the minimum age requirement to include 18-year-olds. The present study compares the following three types of responses from a youth sample and from an adult sample: (a) the ratings of reliability of commonly seen evidence, (b) guilt judgments in a hypothetical rape trial, and (c) rationales for verdicts. Results showed that both youth and adult participants were capable of basing their judgments largely on legally relevant information. When guided by evidence, some youths in the present sample could reach similar guilt judgments to the adults. However, youths appeared to have a lower threshold for being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt when certain evidence was presented.

Most legal systems are based on the premise that defendants are treated as innocent until proven guilty and that decisions will be unbiased and solely based on the facts of the case. The validity of this assumption has been questioned for cases involving racial minority members, in that racial bias among jury members may influence jury decisions. The current research shows that legal professionals are adept at identifying jurors with levels of implicit race bias that are consistent with their legal interests. Using a simulated voir dire, professionals assigned to the role of defense lawyer for a Black defendant were more likely to exclude jurors with high levels of implicit race bias, whereas prosecutors of a Black defendant did the opposite. There was no relation between professionals’ peremptory challenges and jurors’ levels of explicit race bias. Implications for the role of racial bias in legal decision making are discussed.

Scholars attribute contemporary union failure to structural factors, such as the legal decision allowing striking workers to be permanently replaced, and to globalization. This article examines the strategic choices made by New Labor’s leadership after their victory at the AFL-CIO in 1995, and the choices made by the breakaway unions that formed Change to Win. I identify the influence of Saul Alinsky in the background of many of the current New Labor leaders and attribute the strengths and weaknesses of New Labor’s organizing approach to Alinsky’s strengths and weaknesses. I argue that despite two decades of rhetoric about organizing and the difficulties presented by a hostile climate, a critical factor in labor’s decline rests with decisions within its control: to embrace corporate campaigns and narrowly defined interest-based politics—decisions that led unions away from workers and the workplace and put them at odds with unorganized workers and the community.

The present studies examine responses to individual and institutional sex-based discrimination and how these responses vary as a function of the perceiver’s gender. In Study 1A, women perceived more sexism than men and the magnitude of the gender gap was significantly larger for institutional sexism as compared to individual sexism. Study 1B provided validation for the measures of perceptions of individual and institutional sexism. In Study 2, participants reached a verdict and determined remedies in a lawsuit where the plaintiff was a woman claiming to be a victim of individual or institutional sexism. Women were more likely than men to render a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. When the plaintiff was a victim of individual discrimination, men and women awarded comparable remedies but when the plaintiff was a victim of institutional sexism, women awarded significantly more remedies than men. Thus the present research suggests that gender moderates responses to institutional and individual forms of discrimination and these gender differences may have important implications for victims of discrimination.

This study explores the court system's treatment of students' Fourth Amendment rights in cases emerging from contrasting minority school settings and whether discrepancies exist in case outcomes between these extremes. From virtually every search and seizure case that occurred between the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case in New Jersey v. T.L.O. and December 2003, data for each search and how it was administered were gathered and analyzed. Findings suggest discrepancies in the manner in which student searches are administratively justified and subsequently treated (e.g., school disciplinary infraction versus criminal violation) by school officials. Implications for leadership and the role of emotion in legal decision making are presented.

Magistrate John Jelderks’ opinion in August 2002, that Kennewick Man is not Native American under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), will likely have farreaching impacts on the relationship between American Indians and American archaeologists. More than a legal decision, the opinion also points to the inadequacies of NAGPRA. The following article looks at some of the political implications of the judge’s decision and the most recent crack in the fragile peace between archaeologists and North America’s indigenous people and discusses some of the shortcomings and ambiguities of NAGPRA.

Telephone interviews with 104 family caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients revealed that physicians progressively communicated more with caregivers and less with patients. We identified four levels of physician interaction with patients and five levels of interaction with caregivers. Caregivers wanted more information from physicians about expected progress of the disease, financial/legal issues, available services, research projects and their own personal needs. Half the caregivers had discussed advance directives with physicians, three-quarters of them had legal decision making powers for the patient, and one-third of the patients had living wills.

The purpose of this article is to describe the nature, classifications, and literature of the new decision-aiding software which relates to law practice and the legal process.

College students were asked to serve as legal advisors to six potential defendants. Prior to this task, the subjects were either reminded or not reminded about the Miranda rights via a standard warning. It was found that the students, whether or not they had been reminded of the Miranda protections, gave advice that accurately reflected the varying degree of legal jeopardy faced by the potential defendants. Subjects indicated that legal protections were more needed for potential defendents who were involved in situations that contained police accusations, rather than merely accusations by school authorities, or accusations of more severe criminal activity. However, the presence of the Miranda warning also caused subjects to evaluate legal protections as more necessary. Thus, despite the fact the subjects in this study were well informed and able to utilize legal protections in an appropriate fashion, the presence of a Miranda warning continued to serve the important purpose of encouraging the use of self-protective legal safeguards.