Digital Commons Network^™

Artificial Bias: The Ethical Concerns Of Ai-Driven Dispute Resolution In Family Matters, Wensdai Brooks

Journal of Dispute Resolution

From the global positioning systems (GPS) that guide our morning commute to the more complex machine learning systems used to build Spotify’s curation algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a central part of the way that society functions efficiently. AI has become increasingly integrated into our daily lives, permeating consumer and corporate worlds alike. Despite a reputation for being slow to adopt new technology, the legal field has been particularly forward in embracing the use of AI to increase docket speeds, optimize case management, and fill gaps in access to justice. An impressive array of programs now exists, creating a …

Quality And Transparency, Christopher J. Smiley Dds

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

In a recent JDR Clinical & Translational Research report, the American Dental Association's clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) were determined to offer high-quality guidance for the dental profession. The study employed the AGREE II tool to validate the ADA's guidelines’ methodological rigor and transparency, ensuring their quality. This external review is promising for the profession, as it indicates that the ADA has developed reliable CPGs that support advocacy and implementation. However, the article raises questions about consumer-targeted quality scores for dentist providers, such as DentaQual by P&R Dental Strategies LLC. It suggests that for such scoring systems to be credible, they …

Bringing Predictability To The Chaos Of Punitive Damages, W. Kip Viscusi, Benjamin J. Mcmichael

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Punitive damages remain unique in the American legal system. Awarded in the civil context with none of the protections offered in criminal law, courts levy punitive damages to punish and deter. The Supreme Court of the United States has clearly stated that courts may only seek to achieve these two goals when imposing punitive damages. A closer reading of the Court's punitive damages jurisprudence, however, reveals another goal that has largely been ignored: predictability. Unlike punishment and deterrence, predictability is not a purpose for which to award punitive damages. Instead, the Court requires that, when awarded, the level of punitive …

The Humanities Strike Back: (E)Esg And Justice Strine Challenge Gamer Shareholder Primacy, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Leo E. Strine, Jr. is closing in on Blair and Stout for the undisputed title of all-time top-scoring stakeholderist.³ I don't intend to squander this opportunity to roast and toast him by weighing the pros and cons of basketscoring primacy. Instead, my aim is to surface an overlooked argument in the debate over shareholder primacy and stakeholderism, the case for which has been recently reinvigorated by Strine's work. My argument is this: one underappreciated aspect of shareholder primacy's appeal is that it creates a competition with a single endpoint, basically a game, and that the exhilarating tournament that results, …

Blockchain Land Transfers: Technology, Promises, And Perils, Vincent Ooi, Kian Peng Soh, Jerrold Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The blockchain’s apparent immutability has attracted significant interest on whether it may be relied on for registering and transferring land. Proponents of blockchain-based land systems point toward data security, automated transacting, and improved accessibility as key benefits; critics raise concerns over structural vulnerabilities, such as majority attacks, and inconsistencies with existing legal frameworks. The literature, however, tends to conceptualise blockchain as one monolithic data structure invariably built on the same mechanisms powering Bitcoin. This paper seeks to situate the debate on a closer understanding of the range of blockchain implementations possible. To this end, we provide a detailed technological survey …

Legal And Regulatory Issues On Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, And Big Data, Wai Yee Wan, Michael Tsimplis, Keng Siau, Wei T. Yue, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Gabriel M. Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Technological innovation creates numerous opportunities for businesses, organizations, and societies. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and big data provide opportunities for developing self-controlling systems emulating human intelligence. In some instances, these systems surpass the performance of humans. The relationship of innovative technology with the law is an important underpinning factor that is often overlooked. Law may encourage innovation but may also inhibit its development and application by adopting stringent regulatory provisions and liability regimes. This article examines the legal and regulatory issues related to new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and big data.

Arbitral Analytics: How Moneyball Based Litigation/Judicial Analytics Can Be Used To Predict Arbitration Claims And Outcomes, Benjamin Davies

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

This paper reviews, discusses, and advances the field of artificial intelligence in the field of litigation analytics and its application to arbitrations. To better explain the weight an attorney, judge, arbitrator, or the public should have towards artificial intelligence and its utilization in the legal field, this paper reviews current AI publications in the litigation analytics field, historical examples, ethical considerations for analytics, and issues surrounding the accumulation of litigation data. Thereafter, this combined knowledge and experience is applied to Federal Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration awards with a novel AI program designed to scrape, index, and analyze these awards …

Student Self-Grading Form, Brett Whysel

Open Educational Resources

This is a word document that students use at the beginning, midpoint, and end of a semester to set relevant goals, measure progress towards goals, and self-grade. It is intended to build motivation, metacognition, and accountability. Instructors may use it on its own or to supplement other assessment tools, and improve the accuracy, validity, and fairness of final grades.

The 30x30 Program: A Federal Land Grab?, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

In January 2021, the Biden Administration issued a climate policy executive order.[2] [or EO].[3] Section 216 of the Biden climate EO, Conserving & Protecting our Nation’s Lands & Waters, directed the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Commerce (which includes NOAA, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) to prepare a report “recommending steps that the United States should take, working with state, local, tribal and territorial governments, agricultural and forest landowners, fishermen and other key stakeholders to achieve the goal of conserving at least 30% of our lands and waters …

Graduate-Level Distance Learning: Enhanced Student Experience, Significant Scalability Challenges: A Multiyear Case Study, Karen D. Thornton, Steven L. Schooner, Markus Speidel

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Equitable, Affordable And Climate-Cognizant Housing Construction, Shelby D. Green

Arkansas Law Review

In this Article, I recount some of the history of unwise and improvident land use policy and practices that have led to gross inequities and to the climate-exposed state, not only in terms of where people were assigned spaces to live, but how. I go on to suggest that communities should be designed with intent, with regard for the threats of climate change as well as accessibility to those historically excluded.

Construction Law: Its Historical Origins And Its Twentieth Century Emergence As A Major Field Of Modern American And International Legal Practice, Philip L. Bruner

Arkansas Law Review

“Construction Law” is a rapidly emerging “capstone” legal field that over the past century has subsumed principles from many traditional fields of law and has contextually created new implied rights and obligations unknown to such traditional fields. Construction law’s emergence has been driven by the extraordinary modern growth in global construction activity, which in 2020 accounted for 13% (US$10.7 trillion) of the global gross domestic product and which by 2030 is expected to grow by another 42%. This growth in construction activities engages millions of firms and persons and has increased considerably the technical complexity and rapidity of changes in …

Innovation’S Hidden Externalities, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

BYU Law Review

When commentators discuss innovation’s externalities, they often classify them into one of two categories. On the positive externalities, or “spillovers” side, legal and economics scholars often speak of the benefits innovation confers on other innovators. Future innovators profit from past innovation as they “stand on the shoulders of giants” to develop progressively new and better innovation. Discussion of innovation’s negative externalities, on the other hand, has mainly focused on social harms not directly related to future innovation that particular advances impose on third parties—the classic example being pollution. Thus, the common understanding is that innovation’s spillovers positively impact innovation (among …

To Infinity And Beyond: Shifting The Space Regulatory Framework To Create Conservation-Minded Expansion, Brandon M.G. Dekema

Natural Resources Journal

The early days of American expansion were categorized by policies that emphasized resource extraction and utilization. In turn, these policies created major conflicts with overuse, ownership, and rehabilitation−, many of which continue to this day. Now, the United States has begun to shift its focus to the next untapped frontier: outer space. As resource extraction in space grows more feasible, the United States has begun to shape a regulatory framework. In doing so, the United States is copying early American resource policy, leaving open the same gaps for conflicts arising from overuse, ownership disputes, and restoration. This paper analyzes historical …

Actively Achieving Greater Racial Equity In Law School Classrooms, Catherine Bramble, Rory Bahadur

Cleveland State Law Review

2020 illustrated the ongoing pervasiveness of implicit and explicit racism in our society. Less well-acknowledged and recognized is the extent to which Socratic pedagogy also reflects those pervasive racist realities while simultaneously resulting in inferior learning based on a teaching method invented 150+ years ago. Despite this racist and outdated reality, the legal academy has been reluctant to alter the traditional method of teaching. Tangible, empirical evidence obtained from data-driven cognitive learning science research demonstrates that active learning not only improves learning outcomes for all students, but also mitigates the structural effects of racism in the classroom thereby increasing racial …

The Inequalities Of Innovation, Colleen Chien

Faculty Publications

Over the last few decades, the United States has become more innovative, but the gains have been distributed unequally. In 2020, over 50% of new U.S. patents went to the top 1% of patentees, and more than 50% of all patents of U.S. origin were generated by just five states, all coastal. Less than 13% of inventors were women. The economic, geographic, and demographic concentration of innovation highlight how the intersections between two traditionally discrete topics—innovation and inequality—have become increasingly relevant. But rather than any single inequality, this Article argues, multiple inequalities—of income, opportunity, and access—have relevance to innovation. Examining …

Innocent Until Proven Arrested: How Pretrial Juvenile Detention For Nonviolent Offenders In Ohio Inflicts Constitutional Violations, Taryn Schoenfeld

Et Cetera

When a juvenile is accused of committing a crime in Ohio, juvenile court judges must determine whether to detain the child pretrial in a juvenile jail or permit the child to go home to await trial. Whereas alleged adult offenders have the right to pay a monetary bond to be released from jail pretrial, juveniles have no such right. Thus, once a judge makes the decision to detain a juvenile pretrial—prior to being adjudicated delinquent of any crime—it is difficult for that decision to be undone. While incarcerated, juveniles suffer irreversible psychological, emotional, mental, and social harms, despite juvenile courts …

Entombed Writs' Effective Renaissance: Surveying And Sealing Federal Rule Of Civil Procedure 60(B)'S Interpretive Gaps, Amir Shachmurove

Cleveland State Law Review

For centuries, the hoary principle of finality and the Latin-denominated writs devised so as to mollify its obduracy cast fearsome shadows, unchallenged within the courts of the British Isles. In the United States, these expatiated doctrines stalked with equal aplomb from the time of Chief Justice John James Marshall to the advent of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For nearly 150 years, therefore, federal procedural law recognized only the skimpiest opportunities for renewed introspection afforded by these increasingly anachronistic constructs, ones nonetheless imbued with more and more of antiquity’s nearly sacerdotal sheen with each passing year.

In time, as …

Policing By Proxy: Interrogating Big Tech's Role In Law Enforcement, Claire Elizabeth

University Honors Theses

Predictive policing, sometimes referred to as data-driven or actuarial policing, is a method of policing that uses a risk-based approach to law enforcement. For-profit technology companies market proprietary risk assessment algorithms to law enforcement organizations as tools meant to proactively mitigate crime. Using data collected from a vast array of sources, both personal and public, police are able to "predict" the likelihood of criminal activity in a given area using these algorithms. Proponents claim that risk assessment tools have the potential to fight crime with unbiased accuracy and speed by predicting when, where, and whom to police by relying on …

Monetized Competitive Peer-To-Peer Skill-Based Game Play–An Introduction, Becky Harris, Bill Coley, Peter Gan, Anh-Vu Nguyen

International Gaming Institute Faculty Research

The COVID pandemic has changed the world in ways, both large and small, forever. One unexpected way the world changed was when live sports suddenly went dark and esports began experiencing attention from betting audiences that were suddenly starving for content.¹ Esports also received a second glance from gaming regulators. And, though not exactly suddenly (even though it felt like it), approvals for wagering on esports were granted in a variety of jurisdictions, most notably Colorado and Nevada.²

A subset of the larger esports environment, peer-to-peer (P2P) skill-based play is hardly a new concept. You can find it …

None Quiet On The Michigan Front: The Constitution & Michigan’S War On Tesla, David Stewart

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

“Locker Room Talk” Or Sexual Harassment? The Push For A Federal Modification Of The Severe Or Pervasive Standard, Janine Dayeh

Seton Hall Journal of Legislation and Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Examining Probation Lengths In Philadelphia, Pa, Madeline Grace Davis

Dissertations and Theses

One out of every 22 adults in Philadelphia, PA is under community supervision which is more than double the national average (Schiraldi, 2018). Even though probation has been seen as a more lenient alternative to prison it actually serves as a net-widener (Phelps, 2020). Probation can result in increased punishments for low-level offenses when failure to meet probation conditions results in jail or prison time when there was never a possibility of long-term incarceration at the time of sentencing (Phelps, 2020). This study uses public court information data from Philadelphia to analyze the effects different dosages of probation have on …

Analyzing Factors Impacting Time To Full Approval Of Innovative Drugs Via An Accelerated Approval Pathway In The United States, Eleanor Panico

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Background and purpose of study: Pharmaceutical drugs are commonly used to treat various ailments and the pharmaceutical industry is increasingly leveraging expedited pathways to market, like the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway. Thus, these pathways are becoming more prevalent and thus more scrutinized for reliability. A consequence from this increased utilization is observed variability in time to reach full approval from the point accelerated approval was received. Variables that may impact time and ability to reach full approval should be further investigated. The purpose of this study was to explore, identify and predict variables that may influence time from accelerated approval …

Cafo’S Are A Public Health Crisis:The Creation Of Covid-19, Helena Masiello

University of Miami Law Review

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (“CAFO’s”) are largely unregulated by State or Federal Laws in the United States. As a result of this lack of oversight, they are a breeding ground for deadly infectious diseases. The COVID-19 epidemic has demonstrated the threat that diseases pose to the United State like H1N1, SARS, and Ebola.
The USDA needs to regulate CAFOs under the mandate given to them by congress in the AHPA to ensure that they are not the epicenter of the next wave of deadly infectious diseases. Scientists have been warning about the disease potential of CAFOs for the last decade, …

Session 4: Plunging Into Deep Water: An Immersion In Fintech, Defi (Decentralized Finance), & Web3, Joseph M. Vincent

SITIE Symposiums

This panel featured entrepreneurs providing their expert insight into the background, workings, and expected developments of the FinTech industry. Moderated by Adjunct Professor of Law Joseph M. Vincent, the panel features Ron Oliveira, Kory Hoang, and Jonathan Blanco.

The panelists provided insight on topics regarding: (1) the fundamental changes in financial services since the advent of FinTech; (2) background on the Stablecoin industry including a background of what Stablecoin is, and why it has been under recent scrutiny; and (3) the NFT market and the direction the NFT space is heading. In a Q&A session, the panelists also offered their …

Session 3: Deep Innovation Dive In Health Equity: Truveta (“Saving Lives With Data”), Steve Tapia, Dave Heiner

SITIE Symposiums

This session is a “deep dive” into health equity and research via a moderated discussion with Truveta, a new data partnership company poised for research breakthroughs in the healthcare sector. In it, Dave Heiner, General Counsel and Chief Policy Officer for Truveta, discusses the company’s healthcare-centered mission and the key role that data plays in the healthcare field.

Session 2: Diversity Perspectives: In-House Counsel, Debbie Akhbari

SITIE Symposiums

This expert panel addressed diversity perspectives in the legal field. Moderated by Debbie Akhbari, six panelists shared their stories. The panelists were Leticia Hernández, Bernadette Lopez, Elida Moran, Catherine Romero, Rachel Seals, and Katina Thornock. Each panelist's stories have been broken into its own section in the summary of proceedings.

Many diverse candidates have incorrect assumptions made about them, resulting in doors being closed by those in positions of power. This panel shared their personal stories and encouraged students and newer attorneys to keep “knocking on those doors” and for those in positions of power to open those doors. Through …

Session 1: Innovation In Legal Services, Steven W. Bender, Michael Cherry, Matthew Spencer

SITIE Symposiums

This panel featured two “disrupters” who detailed their experiences innovating in the legal services space. The first panelist spoke about data-driven regulatory reform and the other spoke as an entrepreneur whose product introduces artificial intelligence (AI) into the legal recruiting process. Two additional panelists provided commentary regarding the second panelist’s presentation.

The panel provided insight on the topics of: (1) the legal regulatory process at large; (2) how a data-driven and feedback-oriented sandbox provides an alternative regulatory process; (3) the legal hiring and recruiting process and (4) how AI allows law firms to consider alternative hiring metrics when assessing candidates …

Introduction To The 5th Annual Innovation And Technology Law Conference, Annette Clark

SITIE Symposiums

Seattle University School of Law’s then dean, now Dean Emerita, Annette Clark, opens the 5^th annual Innovation and Technology Law Conference, co-sponsored by the Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, and Innovation Law (SJTEIL) at Seattle University School of Law. Annette Clark has been involved with the planning and organization of the Innovation and Technology Law Conference since the conference’s inception. The theme of the 5^th annual 2022 conference is “deep innovation dives.”

Annette Clark explains that “This conference is part of our continuing efforts at Seattle [University] Law to expand educational opportunities for our students and community in …