This book examines American solitary confinement – in which around 100,000 prisoners are held at any one time – and argues that under a moral reading of individual rights such punishment is not only a matter of public interest, but requires close constitutional scrutiny. While Eighth Amendment precedent has otherwise experienced a generational fixation on the death penalty, this book argues that such scrutiny must be extended to the hidden corners of the US prison system. Despite significant reforms to capital sentencing by the executive and legislative branches, Eastaugh shows how the American prison system as a whole has escaped meaningful judicial oversight. Drawing on a wide range of socio-political contexts in order to breathe meaning into the moral principles underlying the punishments clause, the study includes an extensive review of professional (medico-legal) consensus and comparative transnational human rights standards united against prolonged solitary confinement. Ultimately, Eastaugh argues that this practice is unconstitutional. An informed and empowering text, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of law, punishment, and the criminal justice system.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Solitude, Silence and Loneliness is the first major account integrating research on solitude, silence and loneliness from across academic disciplines and across the lifespan. The editors explore how being alone – in its different forms, positive and negative, as solitude, silence and loneliness – is learned and developed, and how it is experienced in childhood and youth, adulthood and old age. Philosophical, psychological, historical, cultural and religious issues are addressed by distinguished scholars from Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia.

Explore the benefits and challenges of day-to-day alone time with the latest science and stories from around the world.

This book analyzes questions of platform bias, algorithmic filtering and ranking of Internet speech, and declining perceptions of online freedom. Courts have intervened against unfair platforms in important cases, but they have deferred to private sector decisions in many others, particularly in the United States. The First Amendment, human rights law, competition law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and an array of state and foreign laws address bad faith conduct by Internet platforms or other commercial actors. Arguing that the problem of platform neutrality is similar to the net neutrality problem, the book discusses the assault on freedom of speech that emerges from public-private partnerships. The book draws parallels between U.S. constitutional and statutory doctrines relating to shared spaces and the teachings of international human rights bodies relating to the responsibilities of private actors. It also connects the dots between new rights to appeal account or post removals under the Digital Services Act of the European Union and a variety of fair treatment obligations of platforms under American and European competition laws, “public accommodations” laws, and public utilities laws. Analyzing artificial intelligence (AI) regulation from the point of view of social-media and video-platform users, the book explores overlaps between European and U.S. efforts to limit algorithmic censorship or “shadow-banning”. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of cyberlaw, the law of emerging technologies and AI law.