Unsettled facts: on the transformational dynamism of evidence in legal discourse

In this article I conduct an examination of discursive identity of a legal ‘object’ in the course of its treatment by various figures in the legal process. The need for this examination arises from a widespread concern about the effects of creating ‘records’, i.e., transforming spoken discourse by way of documentation into ‘evidence’. After a brief review of the current discussion about this phenomenon, I argue that the identity of textualized evidence is upheld by way of references to other texts, all of which create a field of signification within which an object under discussion (evidence) shows different facets without however losing its identity. In order to support my argument, I offer an analysis of ethnographic data pertaining to a specific criminal case. My objective for the analysis is to trace the status of a specific discursive identity after its enunciation during an attorney–client conference. My findings indicate that textualization should be understood not as a form of fixity for discourse, but rather as semantic pivot that provides for different ‘argumentation figures’ within the referential grid of the legal case

Paul Celan in Translation: Du sei wie du

Translating the lyric poetry of Paul Celan, especially his later poems, carries not only the endemic challenge and difficulty of any verse translation, but the added incentive of doing justice to a writer whose whole recourse after the Holocaust—whose sanctuary, if he was to have any at all—he sought in language itself, specifically in the Muttersprache, the mother tongue that was as well the tongue of those who murdered his mother and father. This essay exposes a process of translating Du sei wie du (1970), which perhaps more than any other poem by Celan, at once solicits and defies translation, moving as it does from modern to medieval German, and closing with Hebrew words from Isaiah— a messianic imperative that shows Celan verging as ever on his Jewish identity

Reputation Agent: Prompting Fair Reviews in Gig Markets

Our study presents a new tool, Reputation Agent, to promote fairer reviews from requesters (employers or customers) on gig markets. Unfair reviews, created when requesters consider factors outside of a worker's control, are known to plague gig workers and can result in lost job opportunities and even termination from the marketplace. Our tool leverages machine learning to implement an intelligent interface that: (1) uses deep learning to automatically detect when an individual has included unfair factors into her review (factors outside the worker's control per the policies of the market); and (2) prompts the individual to reconsider her review if she has incorporated unfair factors. To study the effectiveness of Reputation Agent, we conducted a controlled experiment over different gig markets. Our experiment illustrates that across markets, Reputation Agent, in contrast with traditional approaches, motivates requesters to review gig workers' performance more fairly. We discuss how tools that bring more transparency to employers about the policies of a gig market can help build empathy thus resulting in reasoned discussions around potential injustices towards workers generated by these interfaces. Our vision is that with tools that promote truth and transparency we can bring fairer treatment to gig workers.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, The Web Conference 2020, ACM WWW 202

Grappling with Online Work: Lessons from Cyberlaw

Employment law is currently unequipped to decide rights and obligations in many online work scenarios. We simply do not know how the courts will address the dramatic divergence between existing law and the realities of the modern online workforce. But, it is worth remembering that courts have already grappled extensively with the general question of how to apply existing rules to the Internet. Cases dealing with online property, contract, tort, and crime can help us project how courts might approach the novel and perplexing questions sure to arise in online work disputes. This Article identifies three basic approaches: (1) the “blind eye,” in which courts essentially ignore the fact that the activity is taking place online and apply existing law without adjustment; (2) analogy or functional equivalency, in which the courts look to directly or functionally analogous real-world legal scenarios to guide their decisions; and (3) “context-driven” analysis in which courts recognize at the outset the crucial differences presented by online environments, then, by disposing of certain doctrinal elements, adding others, or crafting entirely new standards, endeavor to reconcile existing law with situations its authors could never have envisioned. This Article focuses mostly on cases from the earlier years of cyberlaw, before doctrines developed and legislatures acted. It offers something of a roadmap to practitioners, online employers, and potential employee plaintiffs, explaining how courts and administrative bodies first struggled to cope with the migration of regulable activity into a virtual environment