| | |
|
JoseMariaDelajaraFirstEssay 10 - 24 Nov 2019 - Main.EbenMoglen
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
| | | As we’ve seen, legal analytics with enough data could show a picture of biased law. This could be fixed by curating the data. A data commons is a good place to do that. A "data commons" refers to knowledge being freely shared, collectively owned and managed by a community using software to manage the input, harmonize it and analyze it. In this regard, the Linux Foundation has developed two types of community data license agreement licenses to allow users to access data (one requires that the changes to data are shared, while the other doesn’t). The technical and legal requirements for data judicial commons to work are set. We can learn from the free software movement and raise awareness of the opportunities that open justice could create for government, business and citizens alike. | |
>
> |
The subject of the draft and its ostensible subject are different, which should be fixed. "Open justice" and analysis of "big judicial data" have nothing to do with each other. As you point out, a system of "open justice" exists in the US, where judicial opinions are (almost entirely) published, statistics on the behavior of courts are compiled and published in the state and federal systems, and detailed budget information is publicly accessible. This does result in findings of judicial bias in all sorts of respects, which the public largely ignores and even the professionals take for granted.
Maybe the fear of big data analytics is a primary source of opposition to open justice. You so assert, without any proof. Because the two things have nothing to do with each other, I'm a little doubtful.
So far as the corrosive effect of more comprehensive data analysis
of the behavior of courts is concerned, the direct "effect on my
job" motivation you postulate seems unlikely. For federal judges
appointed for life and state judges elected to long (in NY, 14-year)
terms, this is not credible. Nor is it credible that more detailed
analysis would be necessary to show which judges are inefficient:
the basic statistics are constantly available and are monitored
closely by the judges who supervise the judiciary. Everyone,
including the kid lawyers in every courthouse, know who the
efficient and inefficient judges are.
So the area of the draft that is the real subject is the extent to
which data reporting on judicial systems will affect the public's
level of trust in the justice system. You appear to be speculating
that there are biases that can only be found through such large-data
crunching that are not apparent on their face from what the public
(both the professional public and the masses) already know or
suspect. Why should we expect big data to prove to us more
effectively than we all know already the effects of social
stratification and marginalization on justice-system outcomes? Better answers on these points will make the next draft much stronger.
| | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |