Stories tagged law
Yellowstone snowmobiles: A guide leads a pack of snowmobiles through Yellowstone National Park on a recent winter trip.
Courtesy National Park ServiceA federal judge is working through proposals that would lower the number of snowmobiles that can zip through Yellowstone National Park each year. And as seems to be the case with conflicting ideas over uses of public recreational lands, there are lots of ideas on what the optimum level should be. You can get the full details here.
The newest plan would lower the current snowmobile limits by 40 percent, or 318 snowmobiles a day. That’s a little more than the average of 294 snowmobiles per day the park saw last year, but significantly lower than the 557 that were in the highest daily number recorded last winter.
Pristine snow blanket: Environmental purists want winter in Yellowstone to look more like this without snowmobile noise, exhaust or tracks.
Courtesy ApollomelosThe judge has been drawn into the debate between environmentalists who want no or minimal snowmobile presence in the park versus snowmobile enthusiasts who enjoy motoring through the picturesque park. Snowmobile limits for the park haven’t been adjusted in 28 years.
What role, if any, do you think snowmobiles should have in a national park like Yellowstone? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
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Pipe down: What's causing all this noise we're hearing down here under the water?
Courtesy Whit Welles“Hey, quiet down up there. We can’t hear a thing down here.”
No, it’s not the lament of some landlord who’s rented out the upper level apartment to a rock-and-roll loving tenant. It’s a case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court right now pitting whales off the coast of California against the U.S. Navy.
Justices heard oral arguments yesterday on the case. Environmentalists are challenging the Navy’s claim to perform training exercises along the California coast which use extensive and strong sonar transmissions. The sound waves of those sonar blasts can harm whales and other marine mammals, petitioners contend, with sounds that can be up to 2,000 times louder than a jet engine. Some scientists feel that sounds that loud can cause whales to lose hearing loss, bleed on the brain and possibly lead to mass strandings on beaches.
Decision spot: The U.S. Supreme Court is the site of a pending decision pitting U.S. Navy sonar training exercises against the health of marine mammals like whales.
Courtesy Thor CarlsonThe Navy says that strong sonar level is critical to be able to detect submarines that can elude weaker modes of sonar.
Based on justices’ questions and reactions, however, it appears that court is leaning toward siding with the Navy and national security concerns.
Here’s a full report on yesterday’s court session. Justices were pretty upfront in stating their lack of expertise in mammal biology and national defense matters.
So if you had to decide on this conflict, where would you come down on this question? Does the health and a comfort of whales trump national security? Is loud sonar just an unfortunate byproduct of keeping our national interests safe? Share your thoughts here with other Buzz readers.
Robot round-up
Robots are everywhere! So is news about robots. Here are a few stories that caught our eye recently:
A sign of the times: JGordon isn't the only one who knows how to find wacky stuff on the Web!
Courtesy Veronica Belmont
High school students compete in a robot-building competition.
A robot conducts the Detroit Symphony.
A robot dials 911.
And lawyers are beginning to debate the legal ramifications of robots on the battlefield.
Which, inevitably, leads to the society to prevent cruelty to robots
Who has the most influence in a courtroom -- the wise old judge, the quick-witted attorneys, the unjaded jurors or popular TV shows
Scientific verdict: With a growing amount of court evidence relying on scientific methods, judges are under a growing need to know more about current science and what is accurate research and what is shaky. (Photo by Chili Media)?
A group of judges meeting in Ohio last week want to make sure it’s not that final item. But the special three-day seminar was set up due to the effects judges are seeing in their courtroom caused by episodes of the CSI TV series.
Television viewers like the mystery and intrigue shown on the Crime Scene Investigation shows, but the science presented there isn’t always correct. But jurors coming to courtrooms don’t always know that.
That all means that judges need to know a lot more about current science when managing their courtrooms. They’re the gatekeepers to the scientific data that’s presented in court cases. They have to decide if one side’s scientific expert on a case is actually sharing “junk science.”
One judge at the conference reported that a juror on a case she tried was sure that hand-writing experts can determine the gender of a writer based on information that the juror saw on a CSI show. In actuality, that’s not possible.
With the increased use of DNA evidence in court cases, science has taken on a larger role in courtrooms since the 1990s. In many cases, it can be the make-or-break piece of evidence to convict or acquit a defendant.
Another major portion of their conference was devoted to dealing with hypothetical scientific court cases of the future, such as parents who are not satisfied with the result of genetic make-up of their child that had planned to have; liability for unexpected outcomes of genetically-programmed prescription drugs; or the punishments that appropriate for certain lawbreakers who may have chemical or genetic make-ups that make them more prone to commit certain crimes; just to name a few.
It sounds like judges are going to have a lot more homework to do to handle all the new science coming to their courts.
What other areas of science do you think the law needs to be better informed about? Share your thoughts here with other Science Buzz readers.
A website that offered users help in filing for bankruptcy was found by a court to be making too many legal decisions to simply be considered a clerical tool. The site's creator was found guilty of practising law without a lisence and fined.
Race: Are We So Different?Race impacts a variety of U.S. institutions and policies, often in ways that are hidden or undetected by popular media. "Race and the Justice System," featuring Judge Pamela G. Alexander, is the first of five public forums that will explore an in-depth understanding of race and its impact on our society. (Live coverage by KFAI Radio.)
February 1, 2007
Located in the 3D Cinema
6:30 to 7 p.m.: Performances
7 to 9 p.m.: Speaker, respondents, Q&A
Tickets are $12 per person, and space is limited. To reserve tickets, call 651-221-9444.
Judge Pamela G. Alexander serves as a district court judge in Hennepin County.
Respondents
Jamice Obianyo: Research and Development Director, Ecolab Research Center
Robin K. Magee: Associate Professor, Hamline University Law School
The white male law professor -- an endangered species?: Photo from Rep. Jim Cooper, US House of RepresentativesThe Science Museum of Minnesota is hosting a new exhibit Race: Are We So Different? A lot of racial topics are emotionally charged and hard to talk about. So, when we can find a scientific study, it gives us something a little more objective to discus.
This study shows that, over the last 14 years, white males have had a harder time getting jobs as law professors than minorities or female candidates:
Candidate Type Success Rate (%) Minority Women 18.5 Minority Men 17.5 Non-Minority Women 15.0 Non-Minority Men 11.3
The study looks at success rate -- that is, what percentage of white candidates get hired, what percentage of black candidates get hired, etc. It does not look at what percentage of a law school's faculty is black, white, green, purple, etc.
The large amount of data in the study makes it pretty unlikely that this is a fluke -- the pattern has held steady for 13 of the past 14 years. It's hard to avoid drawing the conclusion that women and minorities enjoy an advantage in getting hired as law school teachers. Some people would say that's discrimination. Some would say it's justified to make up for the decades these groups were barred from the profession. Some would say it's necessary to give today's students a well-rounded education with many perspectives.
What do you say? Leave a comment.
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