Regulating Technologies: Legal Futures, Regulatory Frames and Technological Fixes by Roger Brownsword and Karen Yeung (eds)
| Published date | 01 July 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2010.00814-2.x |
| Date | 01 July 2010 |
suggestion is not, of course, that asylum determination is wholly undetermined
but, rather, that they are substantially under-determined as compared with other
forms of civil proceeding and it is this, rather than failures of implementation,
which is most likely to explain the disparities incase adjudication.
The distressi ng implication of this (as discuss ed, although not preciselyin these
terms, by Stephen Legomsky in his excellent essay alsocontained in the book) is
that e¡orts to constrain the variability of case outcomes will almost inevitably
pose a threat to judicial independence.This is troubling as, while thereis no ques-
tion that the disparities in adjudication disclosed by the refugee roulette studyare
alarming, it is di⁄cult, if not impossible, to conjecture what a correct level of case
approval might be. Although my suspicion is that those authorities with t he most
generousrates of case approval arerather closer to‘justice’than those with the most
restrictive rates, I have to accept the fact that the very opposite could be true. As in
JS Mill’s free market of ideas, the truth (or, in this case, the most just outcome)
maywellemergefromtheviewsofonlyaminority.Itmaywellbethat,as
Legomsky argues, i n an area of adjudication as inherentlycomplex and subjective
as asylum determination, such disparities are a necessary condition of judicial
independence. So I must ask myself: would I, pragmatically, be willing to trade
away 72 per cent approval rates in exchange for a guaranteed basic rate of, say,
50 per cent (rather than 15 per cent) in all jurisdictions? Well, perhaps ^ but I
would not be able to do so without the suspicion that I was trading away any
possibility of something like justice as well.
While the prose of multiple authorship can frequently be characterless and
murky, Ramji-Nogales, Schoenholtz and Schrag seem to be stones that have
rubbed each other smooth. Their prose is beautifully clear throughout. In com-
parison with OUP and Hart publications, for example, the binding by NYU
Press seems cheap. It is, however, redeemed by an exciting casino-style cover that
reminds me of a ‘play wi nning blackjack’ book bought duri ng a summer trip to
Atlantic City. At d25.99 in hardback it is excellent value and deservesto be widely
purchased and read.
Mike Sand erson
n
Roger Brownsword and Kare nYeung (e ds), RegulatingTechnologies: Legal Futures,
Regulatory Frames and Technological Fixes
,Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2008,
398 pp, pb d22.50.
Technological advances ca n bring about a host of opportu nities and threats, but
do they raise particularly new challenges for regulators? The burgeoning aca-
demic and policy interest in new technologies would suggest that theydo, but it
is di⁄cult toarticulate precisely why, largely because of the initial uncertainty that
n
Legal Consultant, UNHCR Kosovo (This review was written in the author’s private capacity and
does not re£ect the views of either the United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees or the Uni-
ted Nations).
Reviews
682 r2010The Authors. Journal Compilation r2010The Modern Law ReviewLimited.
(2010)73(4) 679^696
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