Author: Eoin

Dr Eoin O'Dell is a Fellow and Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin.

Black Swans and The Tragedy of the Commons

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| college funding, Uncategorized

Black swan, via wikipediaHow should universities promote research and, if necessary, afford it legal protection by means of intellectual property rights? Two considerations of that question have recently swum across my desktop.

First there is a new article by Michael Madison “The University as Constructed Cultural Commons” (SSRN) applying Michael Madison, Brett Frischmann and Katherine Strandburg “Constructing Commons in the Cultural Environment” (SSRN) to the university environment (hat tips: University of Pittsburgh School of Law Faculty Blog here and here). …

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Teaching Evaluations – the best of both worlds?

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| Legal Education, Universities

CAPSL logo, via their website.Two – relatively recent – posts on Concurring Opinions caught my eye. They both deal with student survey evaluations of lecturers’ teaching skills.

In the first, Sarah Lawsky asks some important questions:

about teaching evaluations: how they are best structured and analyzed, disseminated, and used to make decisions, and, in the larger scheme, how differing interests should be weighed as we address these issues.

And in the comments, she receives some excellent advice (“the overriding principle is to have a clear understanding of who the intended audience for an instrument is”) and links to further resources on the topic.

In the second, Dave Hoffmann points to another paper on the issue, and concludes from it that

well-regarded, young, inexperienced teachers provide better short-term results (hypothesis: enthusiasm), but over the longer term unpopular, older, experienced teachers add the most value.

Query: in an attempt to give students the best of both worlds, can teachers and lecturers not be both enthusiastic and experienced?…

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Another small step towards Mental Capacity legislation

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| Irish Law, Irish Society, Mental Capacity

Law Reform Commission index logo, via their siteIn December 2006, the Law Reform Commission published a very valuable report on Vulnerable Adults and the Law (83-2006) (pdf). In May of this year, Carol Coulter reported in the Irish Times that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform intended to act on that Report by means of a Mental Incapacity Bill which would replace the existing wardship jurisdiction with an alternative system for dealing with the affairs of vulnerable people, which will offer them assistance in making decisions and protect them from exploitation. Today’s print version of the Irish Times (but not, so far as I can see, the online version; update: though it did get a mention in the paper’s online Breaking News section) has further developments: …

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Google and Privacy: the facts speak for themselves

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| data retention, Privacy

image via Battelle mediaFrom the BBC (hat tip also to Canadian Privacy Law Blog; advance warning from The Register):

Google is to halve the amount of time it stores users’ personal search data in response to continued pressure from the EU over its privacy policy. The search giant has said it will anonymise identifiable IP addresses on its server logs after nine months. Google said respecting users’ privacy is “fundamental to earning and keeping their trust”.

From the Official Google blog (cross-posted on the Google Public Policy Blog): …

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Teaching Passions in Universities

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| Uncategorized

THE cover, via their website.In a sparkling cover story in this week’s Times Higher Education (cover left), Tom Palaima tells of the passion that drove him to teach Classics and how it is at odds with the “educational shopping mall’ vision of officialdom. His experience has universal relevance, as Irish public policy on state-funded higher education is “learning” from the US practice, rather than recognising it for the mistake it is, as cogently argued by Palaima (article | pdf | html) …

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Is DC v Heller a Roe v Wade for our times?

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| Law, Politics, US Supreme Court

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Roe v Wade 410 US 113 (1973) (Findlaw | Justicia | Oyez | wikipedia), which held the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution protects the (penumbral) right to privacy, including a woman’s qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. It was a controversial decision which demonstrated that the Court was at the vanguard of the dominant public political mood. The Court was sharply divided; the case was decided on the basis of contestable constitutional theory; and it has subsequently given rise to a huge amount of analysis and scholarship, as well as much partisan social commentary and political scheming.

In 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States decided US v Heller 554 US __ (2008) (official pdf | Findlaw report) (Balkinization | Mike O’Shea on Concurring Opinions | NRA | Posner | ScotusWiki | Volokh | Wikipedia), which held that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.…

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Ten Things Lawyers Should Know About Internet Research

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| Law

CAIDA orb logo, via their site.kc claffy, of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center of the University of California, San Diego has a blog post (hat tip: David) under the above heading:

Last year kc claffy was invited to give a 15-minute vignette (at the Supernova 2007 conference) on the challenge of getting empirical data to inform telecom policy. Following the conference, she was invited to attend a meeting in March 2008 hosted by Google and Stanford Law School — Legal Futures — to convey the most important data points she knew about the Internet to lawyers thinking about how to update legal frameworks to best accommodate information technologies in the 21st century. With a couple months of more thought, kc has come up with a comprehensive list of the top ten most important things lawyers need to understand about the Internet.

It is fascinating to have the techie view on research relating to the internet written from that perspective but with an eye to a legal (and policy) readership. She has provided ten link-rich, punchy and informative posts which every lawyer and policy-maker should read. …

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