Submitted by Dr J.M. Skopek on Mon, 09/05/2016 - 16:13
Dr Jeffrey Skopek has published "A Theory of Anonymity" in Blinding as a Solution to Bias: Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law (Christopher Robertson and Aaron Kesselheim, eds., Elsevier 2016).
Chapter abstract:
Anonymity is at work across our law in ways that have gone unrecognized. In domains ranging from contract and copyright to criminal law and constitutional law, our legal system makes anonymity and non-anonymity into rights, conditions of exercising rights, and triggers that extinguish rights. These diverse domains and forms of anonymity rules may appear to lack theoretical coherence. But they are in fact all part of a coherent class of legal interventions whose aim is not to protect privacy, but rather to regulate relationships of influence and dependence in the creation, evaluation, and allocation of a wide set of social goods. This understanding of anonymity rules not only clarifies the law we have, but also and more importantly provides a novel and powerful set of design levers that can be used to develop innovative legal strategies for addressing problems of bias.
For more on the book see:
http://store.elsevier.com/Blinding-as-a-Solution-to-Bias/isbn-9780128024...