Law Commons^™

Monopolizing Free Speech, Greg Day

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The First Amendment prevents the government from suppressing speech, though individuals can ban, chill, or abridge free expression without offending the Constitution. Hardly an unintended consequence, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously likened free speech to a marketplace where the responsibility of rejecting dangerous, repugnant, or worthless speech lies with the people. This is supposed to maximize social welfare since the market is believed to promote good ideas and condemn bad ones better than the state. Nevertheless, anxiety is mounting that large technology corporations exercise unreasonable power in the marketplace of ideas.

Because the ability of “big tech” to abridge speech …

Law And The Blockchain, Usha Rodrigues

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All contracts are necessarily incomplete. The inefficiencies of bargaining over every contingency, coupled with humans’ innate bounded rationality, mean that contracts cannot anticipate and address every potential eventuality. One role of law is to fill gaps in incomplete contracts with default rules. The blockchain is a distributed ledger that allows the cryptographic recording of transactions and permits “smart” contracts that self-execute automatically if their conditions are met. Because humans code the contracts of the blockchain, gaps in these contracts will arise. Yet in the world of “smart contracting” on the blockchain, there is no place for the law to step …

Interstitial Space Law, Melissa J. Durkee

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Conventionally, customary international law is developed through the actions and beliefs of nations. International treaties are interpreted, in part, by assessing how the parties to the treaty behave. This Article observes that these forms of uncodified international law—custom and subsequent treaty practice—are also developed through a nation’s reactions, or failures to react, to acts and beliefs that can be attributed to it. I call this “attributed lawmaking.”

Consider the new commercial space race. Innovators like SpaceX and Blue Origin seek a permissive legal environment. A Cold-War-era treaty does not seem adequately to address contemporary plans for space. The treaty does, …

Advanced Artificial Intelligence And Contract, John Linarelli

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The aim of this article is to inquire whether contract law can operate in a state of affairs in which artificial general intelligence (AGI) exists and has the cognitive abilities to interact with humans to exchange promises or otherwise engage in the sorts of exchanges typically governed by contract law. AGI is a long way off but its emergence may be sudden and come in the lifetimes of some people alive today. How might contract law adapt to a situation in which at least one of the contract parties could, from the standpoint of capacity to engage in promising and …

Game Of Drones: Rolling The Dice With Unmanned Aerial Vehicles And Privacy, Rebecca L. Scharf

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This Article offers a practical three-part test for courts and law enforcement to utilize when faced with drone and privacy issues. Specifically addressing the question: how should courts analyze the Fourth Amendment’s protection against ‘unreasonable searches’ in the context of drones?

The Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence produced an intricate framework to address issues arising out of the intersection of technology and privacy interests. In prominent decisions, including United States v. Katz, California v. Ciraolo, Kyllo v. United States, and most notably, United States v. Jones, the Court focused on whether the use of a single …

Music Modernization And The Labyrinth Of Streaming, Mary Lafrance

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The shift from record sales to music streaming has revolutionized the music industry. The federal copyright regime, which is rooted in a system of economic rewards based largely on sales, has been slow to adapt. This has impaired the ability of copyright law to channel appropriate royalties to songwriters, music publishers, and recording artists when the streaming of their works displaces record sales. The Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act of 2018 addresses some of the most significant flaws in the current system. At the same time, it creates significant ambiguities and leaves some existing issues unresolved.

The Rise Of Automated Investment Advice: Can Robo-Advisers Rescue The Retail Market?, Benjamin P. Edwards

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Consumer interest in automated investment advice continues to grow. One informed observer recently predicted that automated investment advisers may manage $2 trillion in assets by 2020.Today, the two largest automated investment advice providers now manage approximately seventeen billion in assets while continuing to expand their capabilities. This rise of automated investment advice firms may disrupt and improve the market for investment advice and finally allow modem technology to make financial intermediation more efficient. For a variety of reasons, costs in the sector have remained abnormally high. One study found that "the unit cost of intermediation is about as high today …

Distributed Governance, Carla L. Reyes, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Benjamin P. Edwards

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Distributed ledger technology disrupts traditional business organizations by introducing new business entities without the directors and officers of traditional corporate entities. Although these emerging entities offer intriguing possibilities, distributed entities may suffer significant collective action problems and expose investors to catastrophic regulatory and governance risks. Our Article examines key considerations for stakeholders and argues that distributed entities must be carefully structured to function effectively.

This Article breaks new ground by critically examining distributed entities. We argue that a distributed model is most appropriate when distributed ledger technology solves a unique corporate governance problem. We caution against ignoring the lessons painstakingly …

Busting Blocks: Revisiting 47 U.S.C. §230 To Address The Lack Of Effective Legal Recourse For Wrongful Inclusion In Spam Filters, Jonathan I. Ezor

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This paper discusses the growth and increasing significance of e-mail in the business and personal environment, and how unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, also known as spam, has become a significant drain on technical and economic resources. It analyzes the statutory and self-help efforts to combat spam, with a specific focus on block lists and automated spam filters, and describes how alleged spammers have brought lawsuits in U.S. courts claiming they had been wrongfully included within block lists and filters. Finally, it describes some possible claims under U.S. law, then argues for a revision to current statutes to mandate a higher …

Scientific Understandings Of Postpartum Illness: Improving Health Law And Policy?, Stacey A. Tovino

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In its broadest sense, the Article examines the relationship between science and the law in the context of postpartum illness. From classical antiquity to the present day, physicians and scientists have investigated the causes, correlates, and consequences of the depressions and psychoses that develop in some women following their transition to motherhood. The scientific investigation of postpartum illness has been characterized by an open-ended search for knowledge with the recgonition that scientific findings published one day are subject to revision the next. Legislators and judges also have sought to understand postpartum illness as necessary to make laws that affect and …

Standard Setting, Patents, And Access Lock-In: Rand Licensing And The Theory Of The Firm, Joseph S. Miller

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Many leading voluntary standard-setting organizations (SSOs) have adopted intellectual property (IP) policies under which participants must promise to license any patents on technology that they contribute to a standard, and to do so on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms (RAND). The standard setting literature includes a substantial focus on the widespread use of this RAND promise. A common refrain in these analyses of the RAND promise is that its meaning is dysfunctionally uncertain. We know more about the RAND promise, however, than the existing literature suggests. I show that we already know the RAND promise's core meaning, and why it remains …

The Problem Of Social Cost In A Genetically Modified Age, Paul J. Heald, James C. Smith

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In Part I of this Article, we apply the Coase Theorem and its most useful corollary to the problem of pollen drift. We conclude that the liability of pollen polluters should be governed by balancing rules against nuisance law, to be applied on a case-by-case basis, rather than by a blanket liability or immunity rule. We also conclude that truly bystanding non-GMO farmers should have a viable defense to patent infringement because liability would result in the application of a reverse Pigovian tax that cannot be justified under accepted economic theory. Only a contextual approach can account for the wide …

The Misperception That Bioethics And The Law Lag Behind Advances In Biotechnology, David Orentlicher

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No abstract provided.

Cloning And The Preservation Of Family Integrity, David Orentlicher

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No abstract provided.

Mandatory Non-Anonymous Testing Of Newborns For Hiv: Should It Ever Be Allowed?, Jean R. Sternlight

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In response to cries from both the public and the medical community for increased research and improved treatments with respect to pediatric AIDS, some state legislatures have attempted to enact legislation that would require routine mandatory testing of newborns for HIV on a non-anonymous basis.

Those who favor mandatory testing of newborns contend that such testing is necessary in order to protect the health of newborns and to ensure that the newborns' doctors provide them with adequate care. Moreover, testing advocates argue that because most hospitals already screen anonymously, failing to inform parents of the test results is inappropriate and …