Law Commons^™

Implementing Ethics Into Artificial Intelligence: A Contribution, From A Legal Perspective, To The Development Of An Ai Governance Regime, Axel Walz, Kay Firth-Butterfield

Duke Law & Technology Review

The increasing use of AI and autonomous systems will have revolutionary impacts on society. Despite many benefits, AI and autonomous systems involve considerable risks that need to be managed. Minimizing these risks will emphasize the respective benefits while at the same time protecting the ethical values defined by fundamental rights and basic constitutional principles, thereby preserving a human centric society. This Article advocates for the need to conduct in-depth risk-benefit-assessments with regard to the use of AI and autonomous systems. This Article points out major concerns in relation to AI and autonomous systems such as likely job losses, causation of …

Sail We Must: Why Icsid Proceedings Should Not Lie At Anchor For Arbitrator Challenges, Natalie Pita

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

This Article shows that the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes’ (ICSID) current rules for arbitration, which automatically suspend the arbitration proceeds, are direct contributors to the high costs and long proceedings in ICSID. The Articles also argues that failing to eliminate the automatic suspension of proceedings is simply putting off a change that will inevitably need to be made. Following complaints that investment arbitrations were too costly and too lengthy, ICSID finally began addressing the issue of arbitrator disqualifications by initiating a round of amendments in October 2016. ICSID has proposed two different remedies to this problem, which …

Dog Whistles And Discriminatory Intent: Proving Intent Through Campaign Speech In Voting Rights Litigation, Nabiha Aziz

Duke Law Journal

Politicians are increasingly employing dog whistles in campaign speech to appeal to a divided electorate. Simultaneously, states continue to pass legislation restricting minority access to the ballot box. Litigants attempting to challenge new vote denial laws are left with only one tool—Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act—which requires the difficult task of demonstrating that the jurisdiction violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite the frequency of dog whistles, courts have declined to use campaign rhetoric as evidence of discriminatory intent in Fourteenth Amendment challenges.

This Note argues that, to ease the nearly insurmountable burden of proving discriminatory intent in voting rights …

How The States Can Fix Sell: Forced Medication Of Mentally Ill Criminal Defendants In State Courts, Nick Katz

Duke Law Journal

In Sell v. United States , the Supreme Court announced a constitutional standard permitting involuntary medication of mentally ill criminal defendants to render them competent to stand trial. Lower federal courts have struggled to apply the Court’s balancing test, reading the same Sell language to impose different requirements.

While much ink has been spilled debating whether the Sell standard is sufficiently rights-protective, less attention has been devoted to the state court implementations of Sell . But because many more criminal prosecutions take place in state court than in federal court, it stands to reason that significantly more Sell requests should …

Whose Forum Is It Anyway: Individual Government Officials And Their Authority To Create Public Forums On Social Media, Joseph A. D’Antonio

Duke Law Journal

Modern technology and the internet have radically transformed the ways in which individuals interact and communicate. At the forefront of this digital-speech movement are social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, which the Supreme Court has identified as among “the most important places . . . for the exchange of views” in our modern culture. But these platforms are not just for private citizens; government officials also use social media sites as a way to connect with their constituents. However, First Amendment questions have arisen as these officials have sought to regulate their pages by “blocking” individual users. To date, …

The Internet Of Torts: Expanding Civil Liability Standards To Address Corporate Remote Interference, Rebecca Crootof

Duke Law Journal

Thanks to the proliferation of internet-connected devices that constitute the “Internet of Things” (“IoT”), companies can now remotely and automatically alter or deactivate household items. In addition to empowering industry at the expense of individuals, this remote interference can cause property damage and bodily injury when an otherwise operational car, alarm system, or implanted medical device abruptly ceases to function.

Even as the potential for harm escalates, contract and tort law work in tandem to shield IoT companies from liability. Exculpatory clauses limit civil remedies, IoT devices’ bundled object/service nature thwarts implied warranty claims, and contractual notice of remote interference …

Journal Staff

Duke Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Oligarchs, Foreign Powers, And The Oppressed Minority: Regulating Corporate Control In Latin America, Carlos Berdejó

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Corporate law and governance scholarship have traditionally focused on understanding the agency costs that result from unresolved conflicts of interest between shareholders and management. This agency problem becomes trivial when corporate ownership is concentrated, as is the case in many countries outside the United States. In this context, the more pressing agency problem results from conflicts of interest between minority shareholders and controlling shareholders seeking to divert resources at the expense of the former.

When ownership is concentrated, legal rules must seek to protect minority shareholders from controlling shareholders, rather than shareholders from managers. In many countries, minority shareholders are …

Journal Staff

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.

Call It What It Is: Genocide Through Male Rape And Sexual Violence In The Former Yugoslavia And Rwanda, Claire Bradford Di Caro

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Genocide and its various iterations have repeatedly been contextualized in narratives assuming that victims are female. Part of this is due to the irrefutable data that shows the overwhelming number of victims are female. The United Nations 1948 treaty known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide provided for a definition for genocide that purposefully included other forms of genocide, particularly genocidal rape and sexual violence. Yet the two most comprehensive genocidal tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), refrained from charging criminals with genocide …

It’S Not The Robot’S Fault! Russian And American Perspectives On Responsibility For Robot Harms, Bryant Walker Smith, Andrey Neznamov

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

As automated vehicles, personal robots, and other cyberphysical systems enter our world, law must confront important questions about civil liability for harms caused by these systems. Two legal scholars—one from Russia and one from the United States—come together to tackle these questions with an integrated approach that draws on the law of both countries.

The Rise Of Nationalism In International Finance: The Perennial Lure Of Populism In International Financial Relations, Federico Lupo-Pasini

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

Populism and nationalism are key drivers of current international economic relations, affecting almost all aspects of foreign economic policy. After almost four decades of cooperation in international financial relations, recent events suggest that we are now potentially entering a new phase of progressive disengagement. This new era would be dominated by the explicit need to safeguard domestic interests, in which regulatory barriers to cross-border finance will be more pronounced and curtailing the expansion of global financial markets will no longer be considered a policy taboo. This Article presents a brief history of financial nationalism and discusses some of its more …

Understanding The (Ir)Relevance Of Shareholder Votes On M&A Deals, James D. Cox, Tomas J. Mondino, Randall S. Thomas

Duke Law Journal

Has corporate law and its bundles of fiduciary obligations become irrelevant? Over the last thirty years, the American public corporation has undergone a profound metamorphosis, transforming itself from a business with dispersed ownership to one whose ownership is highly concentrated in the hands of sophisticated financial institutions. Corporate law has not been immutable to these changes. Current doctrine now accords to a shareholder vote two effects: first, the vote satisfies a statutory mandate that shareholders approve a deal, and second and significantly, the vote insulates the transaction and its actors from any claim of misconduct incident to the approved transaction. …

Alaska’S Constitution And Felony Disenfranchisement: A Historical And Legal Analysis, Jc Croft

Alaska Law Review

A disproportionately high segment of Alaska’s incarcerated population is non-white, placing many of these citizens under the purview of the state’s felony disenfranchisement statute. This Article argues that the Alaska legislature has impermissibly broadened the scope of the felony disenfranchisement provision over time. This provision, expressly included in the Alaska Constitution and specifically debated during the convention, permits the revocation of voting rights for a person convicted of a felony involving “moral turpitude.” Rather than leave the definition of this provision to the courts, the Alaska legislature has toyed repeatedly with identifying the crimes that involve moral turpitude. Not only …

Note From The Editor

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Better Kind Of Frozen Food: Using State And Federal Law To Bring School Farming And Other Community Agriculture To Rural Alaska Communities, Charles Kidd

Alaska Law Review

Despite a seeming abundance of nourishment in the state, with folklore of Alaska rivers so full of salmon that one can walk across to the opposite shore without getting one’s feet wet, Alaska is a very food-insecure state. As of 2014, 15% of Alaskans were found to be food insecure. This rate is part of an increasing trend; from 1998 to 2007, food insecurity increased to 3.7% in Alaska, the largest increase in the country. Further, because only 5% of the food consumed in Alaska is actually produced in-state, there is typically only a three to five-day supply of food …

Subsistence & Sturgeon: Federal Enforcement On Alaska’S Rivers, Elliot Louthen

Alaska Law Review

In March 2019, the United States Supreme Court decided Sturgeon v. Frost , unanimously holding navigable waters within Alaska’s national parks are exempt from the Park Service’s normal regulatory authority. The result of the Court’s holding has stifled federal law enforcement in Alaska. An overly cautious interpretation of Sturgeon could jeopardize federal enforcement in its entirety on the thousands of miles of navigable rivers in Alaska. However, considered in the broader context of the history of Alaskan subsistence rights and corresponding jurisprudence, there is ample legal footing in the Sturgeon opinion to provide federal law enforcement personnel with authority to …

The Road Goes Ever On And On: A Path Through The Wilderness On R.S. 2477 Litigation In Alaska, Michelle Jackson

Alaska Law Review

Seeking to encourage people to settle the public domain, the federal government established the R.S. 2477 right of way, a grant to construct highways over land in the public domain. There are now thousands of miles of highway across the Western United States constructed pursuant to the authority in R.S. 2477, but most of these rights of way were never documented by any formal process. Alaska has made it a priority to document existing R.S. 2477 rights of way in an effort to manage and develop public lands. Identifying existing R.S. 2477 rights of way is essential for economic development, …

Journal Staff

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Sturgeon Ii On Alaska Subsistence Management: A Chance For Peace In The Jurisdiction Wars, Craig Jones

Alaska Law Review

In Sturgeon v. Frost, the Supreme Court addressed the status of navigable waters in Alaska’s conservation system units. In holding that these waters are not “public lands” for the purposes of ANILCA, the Court limited the ability of the federal government to regulate them. In a footnote, Sturgeon preserved the longstanding Katie John trilogy of Ninth Circuit precedent regarding subsistence rights. This new jurisdictional framework has the potential to cause problems for subsistence management in Alaska. This Note addresses these potential consequences and proposes possible steps to create a more harmonized subsistence management system through greater cooperation between the federal …

Crisis Construction In Contract Boilerplate, Emily Strauss

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Risk-Averse Contract Interpretation, Aditi Bagchi

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Boilerplate And Party Intent, Gregory Klass

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

The Unpredictability Of Insurance Interpretation, Michelle E. Boardman

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Consumertarian Default Rules, Lior Jacob Strahilevitz, Jamie Luguri

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Law, Lawyers, And Self-Governance During The Heyday Of The London Stock Exchange, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Journal Staff

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

The Butterfly Effect In Boilerplate Contract Interpretation, John F. Coyle

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

The Butterfly Effect In Interpreting Insurance Policies, Christopher C. French

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Boilerplate No Contest Clauses, David Horton, Reid Kress Weisbord

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.