In this issue of the journal and in the August 2021 issue we are including some articles concerning Artificial Intelligence and ethics, and computer technology and ethics more broadly. Developments in computer science and especially in Artificial Intelligence are changing aspects of our lives very swiftly, almost surely in ways that are not adequately understood. The issues have significant technical, conceptual, and normative aspects ranging from personal privacy to the use of drones in warfare and in law enforcement—and everything in between. In some ways, the technologies are well in front of our grasp of them.
In February 2020 the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics at John Jay College hosted a series of presentations and seminars on some of the issues. Professor Hin-Yan Liu, of the Artificial Intelligence and Legal Disruption Research Group in the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen presented in that series and we are very pleased to include an article by him on AI and human rights in this issue. Richard Warner and Robert Sloan have co-authored an article in this issue, taking up issues of fairness motivated by developments in AI. Professor Warner is the Norman and Edna Freehling Scholar at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. He is the Faculty Director of Chicago-Kent’s Center for Law and Computers. Robert Sloan is Professor and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This issue also includes “Policing, Brutality, and the Demands of Justice” by Luke Hunt, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa addressing some especially timely and controversial issues. As this goes to press it is thirty years since the beating of Rodney King, an event—caught on camera—that has had a key role in awakening concern about police brutality. Jesper Ryberg, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Law at the Department of Philosophy at Roskilde has contributed an article responding to arguments on criminal sanction, proportionality and desert, presented in an article in this journal in 2019. The journal welcomes such responses to works by others in the journal.
Issues concerning contemporary technology and the law, and also drama, desert, and pardon are addressed in the book reviews. Alan Z. Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota Law School reviews Ric Simmons’ Smart Surveillance: How to Interpret the Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century. Mark Osler, the Robert & Marion Short Distinguished Chair University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis reviews Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning.