Category «Government Documents»

The Right to Contest AI

Kaminski, Margot E. and Urban, Jennifer M., The Right to Contest AI (November 16, 2021). Columbia Law Review, Vol. 121, No. 7, 2021, U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 21-30, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3965041 – “Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to make important decisions, from university admissions selections to loan determinations to …

Subjects: AI, Government Documents, Legal Research

US Gun Production Triples Since 2000, Fueled by Handgun Purchases

The New York Times: “The United States is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal tally of gun commerce in two …

Subjects: Courts, Defense, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Drought in Numbers 2022 – restoration for readiness and resilience

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification – Drought around the world (1900-2022) “More than 10 million people lost their lives due to major drought events in the past century, causing several hundred billion USD in economic losses worldwide, and the numbers are rising (Guha-Sapir, D. et al., 2021) Severe drought affects Africa more than any …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Legal Research

Algorithmic Stablecoins and the TerraUSDCrash

CRS Insight, Algorithmic Stablecoins and the TerraUSD Crash, May 16, 2022: “…TerraUSD (UST) stablecoinuses an arbitrage mechanism typical of some algorithmic stablecoin arrangements consisting of two coins or tokens: the stablecoin, in this case UST, meant to maintain a stable value or “peg,” and a balancer token, in this case,LUNA, the value of which can …

Subjects: Congress, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research

Supply Disruptions and the U.S. Economy

CRS Insight: Supply Disruptions and the U.S. Economy, “The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the production of many goods and services. Although those disruptions have waned since spring 2020, some continue to constrain production, exacerbating inflationary pressures. The Biden Administration has announced a series of initiatives to address supply chain disruptions, which are detailed in CRS …

Subjects: Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research

The Supreme Court guards its privacy. Too bad it doesn’t care about yours and mine

Salon: “To use Justice Samuel Alito’s criteria in his recently-leaked draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, where is it written in the Constitution that practically everything that happens at the Supreme Court is secret? The answer, my worthies, is that it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Secrecy — or, if you will, …

Subjects: Courts, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

The Post-Roe Battleground for Abortion Pills Will Be Your Mailbox

Wired – “If regulation of abortion access falls to the states, it will unleash legal havoc over pregnancy-ending medications that are shipped across state lines. The draft legal opinion leaked from the Supreme Court that promises to overturn the right to abortion in the United States says it will “return that authority to the people …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Medicine

Why Roe v. Wade must be defended

The Lancet – Editorial | Volume 399, ISSUE 10338, P1845, May 14, 2022. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00870-4: “Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” So begins a draft opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, leaked from the US Supreme Court on May 2, 2022. If confirmed, this judgement would overrule the …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine, Privacy

How a Digital Abortion Footprint Could Lead to Criminal Charges

TIME: “Getting away with breaking the law in the digital age is tricky. Almost everything one does—whether it’s making a Google search for “how to clean up a crime scene,” purchasing suspicious items on Amazon, or merely having been in the proximity of a crime scene with a cell phone that had its location services …

Subjects: Courts, E-Mail, E-Records, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media

How the issue of abortion touches Americans personally

Pew Research Center: “Americans report a wide variance in how much thought they have given to the issue of abortion personally. Overall, 36% of adults say that prior to taking the survey, they had given “a lot” of thought to issues around abortion. An identical share say they had given “some” thought to the issue, while …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

Is Unauthorized Dissemination of a Draft Supreme Court Opinion a Federal Crime?

CRS Legal Sidebar – Is Unauthorized Dissemination of a Draft Supreme Court Opinion a Federal Crime? May 10, 2022 – “…Although federal law does prohibit the dissemination of certain kinds of government information—such as “classified” information related to national security—there does not appear to be a federal criminal statute expressly prohibiting unauthorized sharing of Supreme …

Subjects: Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research

Growing share of Covid-19 deaths are among vaccinated people, but booster shots substantially lower the risk

CNN: “Since Covid-19 vaccines became widely available, there has been a wide gap in deaths between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. But recent Covid deaths are much more evenly split as highly transmissible variants take hold, vaccine protection wanes and booster uptake stagnates. Breakthrough infections have become more common in recent months, putting vulnerable populations at …

Subjects: Government Documents, Health Care, Medicine