Mining Money: the generative capacities of scientific and legal knowledge practices in the making of resource economies

In 1997 a scandal associated with Bre-X, a junior mining firm, and its prospecting activities in Indonesia, exposed to public scrutiny the ways in which mineral exploration firms acquire, assess and report on scientific claims about the natural environment. At stake here was not just how investors understood the provisional nature of scientific knowledge, but also evidence of fraud. Contemporaneous mining scandals not only included the salting of cores, but also unreliable proprietary sample preparation and assay methods, mis-representations of visual field estimates as drilling results and ‘overly optimistic’ geological reports. This paper reports on initiatives taken in the wake of these scandals and prompted by the Mining Standards Task Force (TSE/OSC 1999). For regulators, mandated to increase investor confidence in Canada’s leading role within the global mining industry, efforts focused first and foremost upon identifying and removing sources of error and wilfulness within the production and circulation of scientific knowledge claims. A common goal cross-cutting these initiatives was ‘a faithful representation of nature’ (Daston and Galison 2010), however, as the paper argues, this was manifest in an assemblage of practices governed by distinct and rival regulative visions of science and the making of markets in claims about ‘nature’. These ‘practices of fidelity’, it is argued, can be consequential in shaping the spatial and temporal dynamics of the marketization of nature.

Expert report writing in toxicology:forensic, scientific and legal aspects

Every year throughout the world, individuals' health is damaged by their exposure to toxic chemicals at work. In most cases these problems will resolve, but many will sustain permanent damage. Whilst any justified claim for compensation requires medical and legal evidence a crucial and often controversial component of this process is the establishment of a causal link between the individual's condition and exposure to a specific chemical or substance. Causation, in terms of how a substance or substances led the claimant to his or her current plight, can be difficult to establish and the main purpose of this book, is to provide the aspiring expert report writer with a concise, practical guide that uses case histories to illuminate the process of establishing causation in occupational toxicity proceedings. In summary: A practical, accessible guide to the preparation of balanced, scientifically sound expert reports in the context of occupational toxicology. Focuses on the scientist's role in establishing a causal link between exposure to toxins and an individual's ill health. Includes real-life case histories drawn from the Author's 15 years experience in this area to illustrate the principles involved. Expert Report Writing in Toxicology: Forensic, Scientific and Legal Aspects proves invaluable to scientists across a range of disciplines needing guidance as to what is expected of them in terms of the best use of their expertise and how to present their findings in a manner that is authoritative, balanced and informative.

Precautionary principles: a jurisdiction-free framework for decision-making under risk

Fundamental principles of precaution are legal maxims that ask for preventive actions, perhaps as contingent interim measures while relevant information about causality and harm remains unavailable, to minimize the societal impact of potentially severe or irreversible outcomes. Such principles do not explain how to make choices or how to identify what is protective when incomplete and inconsistent scientific evidence of causation characterizes the potential hazards. Rather, they entrust lower jurisdictions, such as agencies or authorities, to make current decisions while recognizing that future information can contradict the scientific basis that supported the initial decision. After reviewing and synthesizing national and international legal aspects of precautionary principles, this paper addresses the key question: How can society manage potentially severe, irreversible or serious environmental outcomes when variability, uncertainty, and limited causal knowledge characterize their decision-making? A decision-analytic solution is outlined that focuses on risky decisions and accounts for prior states of information and scientific beliefs that can be updated as subsequent information becomes available. As a practical and established approach to causal reasoning and decision-making under risk, inherent to precautionary decision-making, these (Bayesian) methods help decision-makers and stakeholders because they formally account for probabilistic outcomes, new information, and are consistent and replicable. Rational choice of an action from among various alternatives-defined as a choice that makes preferred consequences more likely-requires accounting for costs, benefits and the change in risks associated with each candidate action. Decisions under any form of the precautionary principle reviewed must account for the contingent nature of scientific information, creating a link to the decision-analytic principle of expected value of information (VOI), to show the relevance of new information, relative to the initial ( and smaller) set of data on which the decision was based. We exemplify this seemingly simple situation using risk management of BSE. As an integral aspect of causal analysis under risk, the methods developed in this paper permit the addition of non-linear, hormetic dose-response models to the current set of regulatory defaults such as the linear, non-threshold models. This increase in the number of defaults is an important improvement because most of the variants of the precautionary principle require cost-benefit balancing. Specifically, increasing the set of causal defaults accounts for beneficial effects at very low doses. We also show and conclude that quantitative risk assessment dominates qualitative risk assessment, supporting the extension of the set of default causal models.

Expanding horizons : scientific frontiers, legal regulation, and globalization

In the six decades since the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, developments in genetic science have transformed our understanding of human health and disease. These developments, along with those in other areas such as computer science, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, have opened exciting new possibilities for the future. In addition, the increasing trend for technologies to converge and build upon each other potentially increases the pace of change, constantly expanding the boundaries of the scientific frontier. At the same time, however, scientific advances are often accompanied by public unease over the potential for unforeseen, negative outcomes. For governments, these issues present significant challenges for effective regulation. This Article analyzes the challenges associated with crafting laws for rapidly changing science and technology. It considers whether we need to regulate, how best to regulate for converging technologies, and how best to ensure the continued relevance of laws in the face of change.

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.

Editorial: context, content and aims [Special Issue - Formal Approaches to Legal Evidence]

This 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.

Evaluating health policy and legal responses : how to reduce barriers and improve access to orphan drugs for rare diseases in Canada

Abstract : Rare diseases are debilitating conditions often leading to severe clinical manifestations for affected patients. Orphan drugs have been developed to treat these rare diseases affecting a small number of individuals. Incentives in the legal framework aimed to recoup the research and development cost of orphan drugs for pharmaceutical companies have been implemented in the United States and the European Union. At the present time, Canada is still lacking a legal and policy framework for orphan drugs. Several problems at the federal and provincial levels remain: lack of research funds for rare diseases, discrepancies on orphan drug policies between provinces, difficulties to access and reimburse these high price drugs. Recommendations and measures are proposed, such as a pan-Canadian (national) scientific committee to establish evidence-based guidelines for patients to access orphan drugs uniformly in all provinces with a disease specific registry, a formal agreement for a centralized Canadian public funding reimbursement procedure, and increasing the role of “guardian” for prices by the Patented Medicines Review Board in Canada. These recommendations and measures will be beneficial for the implementation of a policy framework for orphan drugs in Canada.

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.

Populational Genetic Databases Is a Specific Ethical and Legal Framework Necessary?

Recent scientific advances and new technological developments, most notably the advent of bio-informatics, have led to the emergence of genetic databases with particular characteristics and structures. Paralleling these developments, there has been a proliferation of ethical and legal texts aimed at the regulation of this new form of genetic database.

Online data processing consent under EU law: a theoretical framework and empirical evidence from the UK

This article analyses the results of an empirical study on the 200 most popular UK-based websites in various sectors of e-commerce services. The study provides empirical evidence on unlawful processing of personal data. It comprises a survey on the methods used to seek and obtain consent to process personal data for direct marketing and advertisement, and a test on the frequency of unsolicited commercial emails (UCE) received by customers as a consequence of their registration and submission of personal information to a website. Part One of the article presents a conceptual and normative account of data protection, with a discussion of the ethical values on which EU data protection law is grounded and an outline of the elements that must be in place to seek and obtain valid consent to process personal data. Part Two discusses the outcomes of the empirical study, which unveils a significant departure between EU legal theory and practice in data protection. Although a wide majority of the websites in the sample (69%) has in place a system to ask separate consent for engaging in marketing activities, it is only 16.2% of them that obtain a consent which is valid under the standards set by EU law. The test with UCE shows that only one out of three websites (30.5%) respects the will of the data subject not to receive commercial communications. It also shows that, when submitting personal data in online transactions, there is a high probability (50%) of incurring in a website that will ignore the refusal of consent and will send UCE. The article concludes that there is severe lack of compliance of UK online service providers with essential requirements of data protection law. In this respect, it suggests that there is inappropriate standard of implementation, information and supervision by the UK authorities, especially in light of the clarifications provided at EU level.

Police officers' and legal professionals' perceptions regarding how children are, and should be, questioned about repeated abuse

This study explored the perceptions of police officers and legal professionals (i.e., prosecutors, defence lawyers and a judge) about (a) what particularisation is, (b) the type of information that is required for particularisation to occur, and (c) how particularisation is best achieved in cases of repeated child abuse. The professionals' perceptions (all experts in this area) were elicited via individual in-depth semi-structured interviews. While all participants acknowledged the importance of particularisation, the views of the police officers varied in several important ways to those of the other professionals. Overall, the police officers perceived that highly specific details (such as the location, date and time of the offence) are essential for particularisation to occur, and that maximising the number of separate offences and specific details about each offence increases the chance of successful prosecution. In contrast, the legal professionals perceived that the primacy goal of the police officers should be to elicit a free-narrative account of one or more offences. A high proportion of specific questions was perceived to negatively impact on the child's credibility by contaminating the evidence. The implications of these findings are discussed.