Becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability- a narrative inquiry of Irish fathers’ stories

Background: This thesis explored men’s experiences of becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years. In Ireland, it is estimated that there are almost 97% (n= 9,914) children with intellectual disabilities living at home in the care of parents, siblings, relatives or foster parents. While mothers and fathers are the primary caregivers, mothers’ experiences are well documented in comparison to the dearth of reports on fathers’ experiences. This descriptive narrative study aims to redress this gap in knowledge and understanding of men’s experiences of becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years. Method: Narrative inquiry was employed for this study as it allows stories told by fathers to be collected as a means of exploring men’s transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability. A sample of 10 fathers of children with intellectual disabilities aged between thirteen months and five years of age were recruited from a large intellectual disability Health Service Provider (HSP) in the South of Ireland. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews which were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a narrative thematic approach. Findings: Findings are presented in four themes: i) ‘becoming a father’, ii) ‘something wrong with my child’, iii) ‘entering the world of disability’ and iv) ‘living a different life’. For all 10 fathers the time of being told that their child had an intellectual disability was laden with negative emotional responses irrespective of whether the diagnosis was at birth or more gradual over the child’s early developmental period. When fathers found out that ‘something was wrong’ they spoke of ‘moving on’ and entering the world of disability. In their narratives, becoming the father of a child with an intellectual disability had changed their lives and would inevitably change their futures. Fathers’ positivity was clearly evident with many fathers identifying that the diagnosis of their child with an intellectual disability was not a life ending event but rather a life changing event. Conclusions: Healthcare professionals have a critical role in supporting fathers during the transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability. Factors which require consideration include recognising that each father’s experience is unique; that fathers require support; and that fathers achieve personal growth because of their experiences of their transition to becoming a father of a child with an intellectual disability in the early years.

Reforming the legal framework for clinical trials with neonates in Ireland: a children’s rights approach

This thesis assesses the current regulatory framework regarding clinical trials with neonates in Ireland from a children’s rights perspective, as derived from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 (UN CRC) and its supporting instruments. The focus on neonates in the thesis is due to the particular need for clinical research with this group of children, their dependency on others for their protection and the lack of attention which has been given to them in the regulatory framework. The importance of children’s rights in this area is linked to the role of human rights in the regulation of clinical research in general. A rights-based approach is of great practical relevance in reforming law, policy and practice. For example, the CRC contains a set of commonly agreed legal benchmarks which can be used to assess the current framework and shape recommendations for reform. In this way, it provides a set of binding norms under international law, which must be complied with by states and state actors in all law, policy and practice affecting children. However, the contribution which a children’s rights approach could make to the regulation of research with children has not, to date, been explored in detail. This thesis aims to address this gap by developing a set of children’s rights-based benchmarks, which are used to assess the Irish regulatory framework for clinical trials with neonates and to develop recommendations for reform. The purpose of the analysis and recommendations is to assess Ireland’s compliance with international children’s rights law in the area and to analyse the potential of children’s rights to effectively address inadequacies in the Irish framework. The recommendations ultimately aim to develop a framework which will enhance the protection of neonates’ rights in this important area of children’s lives.

Keeping their heads down: Shame and pride in the stories of Protestants in the Irish Republic

This study draws on a number of in-depth interviews to explore the ethnic aspect of Protestantism in the Republic of Ireland. We explore themes of shame and pride around issues of identity, together with a sense of loss of a minority rapidly losing cultural distinctiveness. Following Ireland‘s division, the ordinary Protestants of the south, comprising a range of religious denominations bound by history, intermarriage and culture, found themselves in a society in which their story was rarely told. The dominant narrative was one of a Catholic people, long oppressed by a wealthy Protestant minority. The story of ordinary Protestants, including those in rural and urban poverty, went largely unheard. Today, ordinary Protestants – small farmers, shop keepers, housewives – tell the story of Ireland as seen through their family‘s narratives. Themes of pride and shame, often intertwined, form a thread that binds their testimony, drawing on family, personal and local history, folklore and statements of identity.

Enforcing precariousness: a comparative analysis of the limitations placed on the legal status of refugees

This thesis focuses on the manner in which the EU, the UK, and Canada respond to and engage with the refugee’s movement from a temporary to a more permanent legal status in the state. It is noted that this transition is increasingly problematized. A trend is noted in response to this among the jurisdictions examined, to exceptionalise refugee status through acts of legal categorisation and separation. These categorisations represent an attempt to re-assert control over refugees who arrived to the state in a spontaneous manner. I argue that this categorisation and fragmentation of refugee status is another means of managing life in the state and ultimately excluding refugees within the state. Refugees therefore experience a contradictory response to their presence. While they are continually reminded of the temporary nature of their legal status in the state, they are still required to demonstrate a willingness to integrate in to the host society. Their behaviour in the state is something that is once again recalled by the decision makers who determine whether they should ultimately be able to access citizenship status. In this thesis, I argue that in order to navigate a route to citizenship, the refugee must respond to the constant re-framing and re-contextualisation of her status in the state of asylum. As the thesis observes, this raises broader questions about the nature of citizenship and belonging

Legal Responsibilities When Hiring Migrant, Seasonal and H2-A Visa Workers

When farmers need to harvest a large amount of crops in a short period of time, migrant, seasonal, and H-2A Visa workers can often be the best solution to complete the job quickly and affordably. However, there are specific Federal and state legal duties and responsibilities for farmers who employ these types of workers and substantial criminal and civil penalties for failing to adhere to the law.

On legal systems

SCOPUS: ar.j

Expectativas de crecimiento sustentable de la producción agrícola de la Argentina y marco legal para lograrlo

p.205-212

Representing temporal knowledge in legal discourse

This paper presents a formalism for representing temporal knowledge in legal discourse that allows an explicit expression of time and event occurrences. The fundamental time structure is characterized as a well‐ordered discrete set of primitive times, i.e. non‐decomposable intervals with positive duration or points with zero duration), from which decomposable intervals can be constructed. The formalism supports a full representation of both absolute and relative temporal knowledge, and a formal mechanism for checking the temporal consistency of a given set of legal statements is provided. The general consistency checking algorithm which addresses both absolute and relative temporal knowledge turns out to be a linear programming problem, while in the special case where only relative temporal relations are involved, it becomes a simple question of searching for cycles in the graphical representation of the corresponding legal text.

The Jama legal narrative. Part II: A foray into concepts of improbability

In judicial decision making, the doctrine of chances takes explicitly into account the odds. There is more to forensic statistics, as well as various probabilistic approaches which taken together form the object of an enduring controversy in the scholarship of legal evidence. In this paper, we reconsider the circumstances of the Jama murder and inquiry (dealt with in Part I of this paper: "The Jama Model. On Legal Narratives and Interpretation Patterns"), to illustrate yet another kind of probability or improbability. What is improbable about the Jama story, is actually a given, which contributes in terms of dramatic underlining. In literary theory, concepts of narratives being probable or improbable date back from the eighteenth century, when both prescientific and scientific probability was infiltrating several domains, including law. An understanding of such a backdrop throughout the history of ideas is, I claim, necessary for AI researchers who may be tempted to apply statistical methods to legal evidence. The debate for or against probability (and especially bayesian probability) in accounts of evidence has been flouishing among legal scholars. Nowadays both the the Bayesians (e.g. Peter Tillers) and Bayesioskeptics (e.g. Ron Allen) among those legal scholars whoare involved in the controversy are willing to give AI researchers a chance to prove itself and strive towards models of plausibility that would go beyond probability as narrowly meant. This debate within law, in turn, has illustrious precedents: take Voltaire, he was critical of the application or probability even to litigation in civil cases; take Boole, he was a starry-eyed believer in probability applications to judicial decision making (Rosoni 1995). Not unlike Boole, the founding father of computing, nowadays computer scientists approaching the field may happen to do so without full awareness of the pitfalls. Hence, the usefulness of the conceptual landscape I sketch here.

Kappa calculus and evidential strength: A note on Åqvist's logical theory of legal evidence

Lennart Åqvist (1992) proposed a logical theory of legal evidence, based on the Bolding-Ekelöf of degrees of evidential strength. This paper reformulates Åqvist's model in terms of the probabilistic version of the kappa calculus. Proving its acceptability in the legal context is beyond the present scope, but the epistemological debate about Bayesian Law isclearly relevant. While the present model is a possible link to that lineof inquiry, we offer some considerations about the broader picture of thepotential of AI & Law in the evidentiary context. Whereas probabilisticreasoning is well-researched in AI, calculations about the threshold ofpersuasion in litigation, whatever their value, are just the tip of theiceberg. The bulk of the modeling desiderata is arguably elsewhere, if one isto ideally make the most of AI's distinctive contribution as envisaged forlegal evidence research.

[Book review] Handbook of Psychology in Legal Contexts

Review of: Handbook of Psychology in Legal Contexts. Ray Bull and David Carson (eds.) Wiley-Blackwell. 1999.

Acknowledgement [Special Issue - Formal Approaches to Legal Evidence]

This Acknowledgement refers to the special issue "Formal Approaches to Legal Evidence" of the Artificial Intelligence and Law, September 2001, Vol. 9, Issue 2-3, which was guest edited by Ephraim Nissan.