Self-Enforcing Legal Limits: Bureaucratic Constraints on Repression under Emergency Powers

Understanding of the causes and correlations for algorithmic decisions is currently one of the major challenges of computer science, addressed under an umbrella term “explainable AI (XAI)”. Being able to explain an AI-based system may help to make algorithmic decisions more satisfying and acceptable, to better control and update AI-based systems in case of failure, to build more accurate models, and to discover new knowledge directly or indirectly. On the legal side, the question whether the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides data subjects with the right to explanation in case of automated decision-making has equally been the subject of a heated doctrinal debate. While arguing that the right to explanation in the GDPR should be a result of interpretative analysis of several GDPR provisions jointly, the authors move this debate forward by discussing the technical and legal feasibility of the explanation of algorithmic decisions. Legal limits, in particular the secrecy of algorithms, as well as technical obstacles could potentially obstruct the practical implementation of this right. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the authors explore not only whether it is possible to translate the EU legal requirements for an explanation into the actual machine learning decision-making, but also whether those limitations can shape the way the legal right is used in practice.

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Hybrid Trade Restraints: The Legal Limits of a Government's Helping Hand

Supreme Court Economic Review ◽

10.1086/scer.2.1147124 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

pp. 165-185

Author(s):

Howard P. Marvel

Keyword(s):

Legal Limits

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Poplar-Assisted Bioremediation for Recovering a PCB and Heavy-Metal-Contaminated Area

Agriculture ◽

10.3390/agriculture11080689 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (8) ◽

pp. 689

Author(s):

Valeria Ancona ◽

Ida Rascio ◽

Giorgia Aimola ◽

Claudia Campanale ◽

Paola Grenni ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Organic Carbon ◽

Southern Italy ◽

Organic Carbon Content ◽

Contaminant Removal ◽

Soil Microbial ◽

Treated Area ◽

Legal Limits ◽

Bacterial Groups ◽

Contaminated Area ◽

Stimulation Of

A Monviso clone has been applied to promote PCB degradation in a soil historically contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals (HMs). The multi-contaminated area is located in Southern Italy. PCBs, HMs, and the soil microbial community (abundance, viability, and structure) were analysed in selected plots of the poplar-treated area. At 900 days after poplar planting, chemical analyses showed that PCBs and most of HMs diminished under the Italian legal limits. The overall results suggest that the poplar clone was effective in promoting PCB rhizodegradation and HM phytostabilization. Organic carbon content increased strongly in the rhizosphere of the planted plots. Microbiological results highlighted an overall increase in microbial abundance, cell viability, and the presence of bacterial groups involved in PCB degradation. The poplar-based bioremediation technology is a nature-based solution able to promote the recovery of soil quality in terms of contaminant removal, increase in organic carbon, and stimulation of autochthonous bacterial groups able to transform PCBs.

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The Failure of British Counter-Espionage against Germany, 1907–1914

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x00005094 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 28 (4) ◽

pp. 835-862 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Nicholas Hiley

Keyword(s):

Full Scale ◽

Joint Conference ◽

Emergency Powers ◽

And Control ◽

Police Surveillance

Modern British counter-espionage effectively began in April 1907, when a joint conference of naval and military officials, formed the previous year to consider ‘the Powers Possessed by the Executive in Time of Emergency’, recommended both an immediate strengthening of the laws against espionage, and a War is Office investigation of ‘the question of police surveillance and control of aliens’. These recommendations were to prove an important initiative, and did much to determine the course of British counter-espionage before 1914, yet at the time they probably seemed little more than an airing of old grievances unlikely to find new support, for they were among the last remnants n. of the abortive ‘Emergency Powers Bill’ which the War Office intelligence department had been advocating to strengthen home defence ever since the invasion scare of 1888. The 1906 joint conference had in fact hoped to further the cause of this great legislative package, with its radically new powers of access, requisition and seizure but, faced with the Liberal administration's commitment to the ‘continuous principle’ that a full-scale landing was impossible, had been forced instead to confine itself to the purely naval and military aspects of home defence. As its report confessed in April 1907, in the prevailing climate of opinion the only hope for the great ‘Emergency Powers Bill’ was as a series of ‘small and independent measures’.

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