Law and Society Commons^™

Large Language Models: Ai's Legal Revolution, Adam Allen Bent

Pace Law Review

This article contemplates and advocates for the use of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) through Large Language Models (“LLM”) in legal practice. The author ultimately addresses the need to orient LMMs within varying legal contexts including academia, private practice, as well as the U.S. court system. Additionally, the author emphasizes the inevitability of AI and LLM systems infiltrating legal practice, and the reality that the industry must acknowledge and accept these systems to regulate and to provide better while still ethical legal services. Large Language Models: AI’s Legal Revolution, begins by walking the reader through the history of technological innovation of AI, …

Destroying Defamation, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Fake News is destroying defamation. The recent proliferation of rushed journalism, online conspiracy theories that almost every news story is, in fact, “Fake News,” have created a desert of veracity. Widespread public skepticism about even the most mainstream Internet reporting means plaintiffs will have difficulty convincing jurors that third parties believed any reported statement to be true. Without such proof, it is almost impossible for a plaintiff to prove the elements of defamation.

To establish defamation, a plaintiff must show defendant published an assertion of fact that is false and damages the plaintiff's reputation Hyperbolic language or other indications that …

Commercialization Of Separated Human Body Parts - Unpacking Instrumentalization Approach, Arseny Shevelev, Georgy Shevelev

Pace International Law Review

The principle of non-commercialization, which prohibits trade in separated human body parts, has long been firmly embedded in many European legal orders and has become an integral part of them. However, many new uses for human biomaterials have now been discovered, and the need for them has reached a historical climax. This paper aims to explain the main tenets of non-commercialization theory, including such principles as human dignity and need to protect human’s health, and to show that these categories have so far been understood in a very one-sided and visceral way, and largely in contradiction to their true spirit. …

Pink Tax And Other Tropes, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Law reform advocates should be strategic in deploying tax tropes. Through an examination of five common tax phrases—the “nanny tax,” “death tax,” “soda tax,” “Black tax,” and “pink tax”—this Article demonstrates that tax rhetoric is more likely to influence law when used to describe specific economic injustices resulting from actual government duties, as opposed to figurative inequalities. In comparison, slogans describing figurative taxes are less likely to influence law and human behavior, even if they have descriptive force in both popular and academic literature as a short-hand for group-based disparities. This Article catalogues and evaluates what makes for effective tax …

Social Media Harms And The Common Law, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article finds fault with the judiciaries' failure to create a set of common law norms for social media wrongs. In cases concerning social media harms, the Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently adhered to traditional pre-social media principles, failing to use the power of the common law to create a kind of Internet Justice.

Part I of this article reviews social media history and explores how judicial decisions created a fertile bed for social media harm to blossom. Part II illustrates social media harms across several doctrinal disciplines and highlights judicial reluctance to embrace the realities of social …

Confronting State Violence: Lessons From India's Farmer Protests, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In December 2021, following a year of sustained mass protests, farmers in India forced the repeal of three controversial Farm Laws that attempted to deregulate India’s agricultural sector in service of corporate interests. Farmers feared that the laws would dismantle price supports for key crops, jeopardize their livelihoods, and facilitate a corporate takeover of India’s agrarian economy. This Article situates India’s historic farmer protests in the context of the country’s longstanding agrarian crisis and the corporate capture of agriculture worldwide. I argue that the protests arose in response not only to the Farm Laws, but also to decades of state-sponsored …

Fine-Tuning: The Emergent Order-Maintenance Architecture Of Local Civil Enforcement, Brendan M. Conner

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Emergency Next Time, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article offers a new conceptual framework to understand the connection between law and violence in emergencies. It is by now well-established that governments often commit state violence in times of national security crisis by implementing excessive emergency measures. The Article calls this type of legal violence “Emergency-Affirming Violence.” But Emergency Violence can also be committed through governmental non-action. This type of violence, which this Article calls, “Emergency-Denying Violence,” has manifested in the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Article offers a taxonomy to better understand the phenomenon of Emergency Violence. Using 9/11 and COVID-19 as examples, the Article proposes …

An Emoji Legal Dictionary, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer, Ashley Cangro

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article is the first to provide a legal emoji dictionary. We have reviewed over 100 cases to provide a legal definition of emojis as interpreted by U.S. case law. Our Article will have three parts. Part I offers a brief overview of the history of emojis and their increasing prevalence in U.S. case law, Part II highlights cases that have wrestled with emoji interpretation; and finally, Part III presents a detailed database of the emojis parties have introduced in courts of law with their legal interpretations--largely through context.

The Illegally Traded Elephant In The Room: Species Terrorism & Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade, Áine Dillon

Pace International Law Review

The illegal wildlife trade has been a dilemma for decades

and remains prevalent globally – international intervention is

required now. While most countries participate in the Convention

on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (“CITES”), not all countries have the same approaches

to combating the illegal wildlife trade. Unique approaches

can be beneficial because each illegally traded species

requires a different response, and countries with limited resources

can also participate. However, the lack of a unified response

hinders the global fight against the illegal wildlife trade.

While traditional methods to combat crime, such as passing

laws, …

Teaching With Feminist Judgments, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This chapter, part of Integrating Doctrine and Diversity: Inclusion and Equity in the Law School Classroom (Carolina Academic Press 2021), provides an overview of the U.S. Feminist Judgments Project, a collaboration of feminist scholars and lawyers who rewrite significant judicial opinions using feminist methods and reasoning. One of the primary goals of the series of Feminist Judgments books is to demonstrate that the law has a vast, but often unrealized, potential for social justice. The feminist judgment methodology requires the authors of rewritten opinions to act as judges in following the rules of precedent and custom—and to be bound by …

Of Sex Crimes And Fencelines: How Recognition Of Environmental Justice Communities As Crime Victims Under State And Federal Law Can Help Secure Environmental Justice, Joshua Ozymy, Melissa L. Jarrell

Pace Environmental Law Review

Environmental justice communities throughout the United States continue to face disproportionate health burdens from living near industrial sources of pollution. Such burdens were caused by historically racist public policies and continue to be perpetuated by inadequate regulatory responses at the federal and state level. State and federal law has increasingly recognized an emerging set of rights afforded to victims of crime in court proceedings. We argue that members of environmental justice communities should be viewed as crime victims and have the same rights applied as other victims of violent crime. Using case examples under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act …

Unveiling The “Trojan Horses” Of Gentrification: Studies Of Legal Strategies To Combat Environmental Gentrification In Washington, D.C. And New York, N.Y., Sarena Malsin

Pace Environmental Law Review

No abstract provided.

America's Newest Boogeyman For Deviant Teen Behavior: Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, Joseph C. Alfe, Grant D. Talabay

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Are violent video games harming America’s youth? Is it possible a series of interconnected circuit boards can influence children (or even adults) to become, themselves, violent? If so, how should our society-- and government-- respond?

To properly answer this last query, violent video games must be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. Simply put: do games depicting grotesque acts of depravity so profound as to negatively influence the psyche warrant the full constitutional protections ordinarily guaranteed under the mantle of free speech and expression? Are these guarantees without limit? If not, how far may the government go in …

From Public Health To Public Wealth: The Case For Economic Justice, Barbara L. Atwell

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines how we can overlay the principle of serving the common good, which undergirds public health law, onto financial well-being. It suggests that we apply public health law principles to corporate law and culture. In matters of public health, we view quite broadly states' police power to protect the public good. Government is also empowered to protect the general welfare in matters of financial well-being. Using the “general welfare” as a guidepost, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom that corporations exist solely to maximize profit and shareholder value to the exclusion of virtually everything else. It proposes two …

The Right Family, Noa Ben-Asher, Margot J. Pollans

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The family plays a starring role in American law. Families, the law tells us, are special. They merit, among others, tax deductions, testimonial privileges, untaxed inheritance, parental presumptions, and, over the course of the twentieth century, the Supreme Court has expanded individual rights stemming from familial relationships. In this Article, we argue that family matters as much for when it is ignored as for when it is featured. We shed light on the use of the family in the law by contrasting policies in which the family is the key unit of analysis with others in which it is not. …

Talking About Black Lives Matter And #Metoo, Bridget J. Crawford, Linda S. Greene, Lolita Buckner Inniss, Mehrsa Baradaran, Noa Ben-Asher, I. Bennett Capers, Osamudia R. James, Keisha Lindsay

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores the apparent differences and similarities between the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements. In April 2019, the Wisconsin Journal of Gender, Law and Society hosted a symposium entitled “Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Black Lives Matter and the Role of Intersectional Legal Analysis in the Twenty-First Century.” That program facilitated examination of the historical antecedents, cultural contexts, methods, and goals of these linked equality movements. Conversations continued among the symposium participants long after the end of the official program. In this essay, the symposium’s speakers memorialize their robust conversations and also dive more deeply into the phenomena, …

Queer Phenomenology In Law: A Critical Theory Of Orientation, Nick J. Sciullo

Pace Law Review

This Article argues for the application of phenomenology to legal understanding, specifically as a way to think about and through queer people’s interactions with law as well as queer theory in law. There are both pragmatic and theoretical justifications for this project. The pragmatic justifications include the need to better address the legal issues and experiences of queer people, recent political and legal decisions and debates that affect queer people specifically, the need to better provide epistemological resources for queer lawyers, law scholars, law students, and their allies, and the need to better understand how law affects minoritarian populations regardless …

Less Trust Means More Trusts, Bridget J. Crawford

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The word “trust” has multiple meanings. In everyday speech, it refers to a feeling of confidence associated with integrity, such as trusting that a friend will keep a secret. In the financial context, some law students, lawyers and lucky individuals also understand that a trust is a near-magical device that splits legal and equitable title. A trustee holds formal legal title to property for the benefit of a beneficiary simply because the grantor declares it to be so. By turning the spotlight on “trust,” in both senses of the word, one can discern fault lines in contemporary U.S. political and …

The U.S Constitution: The Original American Dream, Judith S. Kaye

Pace Law Review

Adapted from Remarks delivered at Law Day ceremonies May 1, 1996, at Court of Appeals Hall, Albany, New York.

Fourth & Inches: Marking The Line Of Athletes’ Free Speech (A Colin Kaepernick Inspired Discussion), Ryan J. Mcginty

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

This note addresses the ongoing controversial stance that was ignited when Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the national anthem in protest of what he deems are wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States. The scope of this note does not surround Kaepernick himself, but rather the professional NFL football player in general. Specifically, players are entitled to the full rights of free expression and free speech as human beings and public figures, up and until the line where that right is abused on the field or “on the job,” thereby threatening an increase …

The Untold Story Of The Justice Gap: Integrating Poverty Law Into The Law School Curriculum, Vanita S. Snow

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Address At The Lincoln Charter Of The Forest Conference, Bishop Grosseteste University: The Charter Of The Forest: Evolving Human Rights In Nature, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This conference is a singular event, long over due. It has been 258 years since William Blackstone celebrated “these two sacred charters,”1 Carta de Foresta and Magna Carta, with his celebrated publication of their authentic texts. In 2015, the Great Charter of Liberties enjoyed scholarly, political and popular focus. The companion Forest Charter was and is too much neglected.2 I salute the American Bar Association, and Dan Magraw, for the ABA’s educational focus of the Forest Charter, as well as Magna Carta. Today we restore some balance with this conference’s searching and insightful examination of the Forest Charter’s significance.

Does Hard Incompatibilism Really Abolish ‘Right’ And ‘Wrong’? Some Thoughts In Response To Larry Alexander, John A. Humbach Mr.

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In a challenge to recent writings of Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso,3 Larry Alexander makes the following claim: If one accepts the Pereboom-Caruso “hard incompatibilist” view of choice, which regards blame and retributive punishment as morally unjustified because free will is an illusion, then “normativity completely disappears.” In making this claim, Professor Alexander appears to hold that the moral distinction between right and wrong conduct (“normativity”) cannot effectively exist unless those who do wrong “deserve” to receive blame and punishment in response to their misbehavior. This is not, however, necessarily so.

When Social Enterprises Fail, Jonathan Brown

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article identifies the conflicts between social enterprise legislation and bankruptcy law and presents a normative argument for a legal regime that would harmonize the two. Focusing on benefit corporations, the most widely adopted social enterprise form, this Article observes that existing law leaves uncertainty as to the role of directors at a time of financial distress and will produce outcomes that are at odds with the core goals of social enterprise legislation. Then, drawing on academic proposals for contract-based systems of bankruptcy, this Article argues that just as a firm may opt out of a corporate governance norm of …

The Elimination Of Child “Custody” Litigation: Using Business Branding Techniques To Transform Social Behavior, Elena B. Langan

Pace Law Review

This article discusses how rebranding principles, already being used to alter social behavior in other non-consumer contexts, could be utilized to accomplish the legislative goal to reduce litigation as well as diminish animosity in custody cases. Part II of this article discusses the impetus for a transformation in the way parents view custody disputes. Part III discusses basic branding principles and how companies establish a brand and can successfully change their branding. Part IV explores the evolution of the current custody brand, identifies eight states that have eliminated “custody” and, in some cases, “visitation” from their vernacular, and discusses, in …

Unequal Access To Justice: Solla V. Berlin And The Unprincipled Evisceration Of New York’S Eaja, Armen H. Merjian

Pace Law Review

Solla is noteworthy not merely in light of the baleful effects of its ruling, but because of its reasoning: it is categorically wrong. The decision wholly elides a cornerstone and settled principle of New York welfare law, namely, that in the administration of public assistance, the municipalities act as the agents of the State, while blatantly violating the most fundamental of agency principles, namely, that a principal is vicariously liable for the actions of its agent acting within the scope of its authority. Indeed, this principal/agent relationship is established both by statute and by decades of uniform state and federal …

Balancing National Public Policy And Free Trade, Diane A. Desierto

Pace International Law Review

In the wake of the impasse between the World Trade Organization (WTO) and India regarding the ratification of the Protocol to the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) that concluded during the Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali, Indonesia on December of 2013, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo admitted that while the WTO succeeds in resolving trade disputes and monitoring trade practices, it “has failed to deliver new multilateral results since its creation.” This systemic failure in the trade negotiations pillar of the WTO is evident to all of its 160 Members. It is evident from thirteen years of stalled negotiations under the …

Slaying The Dragon: How The Law Can Help Rehab A Country In Crisis, Samantha Kopf

Pace Law Review

Motor-vehicle-related deaths consistently topped the accidental death count in the United States for decades. In 2009, for the first time, drug poisoning took over as the number one accidental killer. In 1980, approximately 6,100 people died from drug overdose. In the past ten years, the drug overdose rate for males and females, regardless of race, ethnicity and age, increased. In 2000, 4.1 per 100,000 people died from unintentional drug overdose; in 2010, that number rose to 9.7 per 100,000. The drug overdose epidemic, now the leading cause of unintentional death in the United States, warrants national attention.

To reduce the …

Resolving The Conflict Between Fiduciary Duties And Socially Responsible Investing, William Sanders

Pace Law Review

Part I of this Article clarifies and strictly defines the frequently nebulous idea of socially responsible investing (“SRI”), explaining its history, trends, and current status. To give perspective and perhaps temper hype, Part II discusses the efficacy of SRI as a method of change, concluding that while SRI may not have much effect on air quality or oppressive foreign governments, there are situations where SRI is useful and even necessary. Part III looks at the conflict between SRI and the fiduciary duties of trustees, investment advisers, and broker-dealers. It shows the contractual nature of fiduciary duties and why this is …