Digital Commons Network^™

The Environmental Cost Of Intelligence: Regulating The Climate Impact Of Artificial Intelligence, Emilee Calvin

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Rearticulating Labor Rights, Stefan M. Mcdaniel

Journal Articles

From the Article

In principle, Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) guarantees most private-sector employees the right to be free from employer interference when they band together in pursuit of shared interests. In practice, most workers—especially the “pre-organizational” workers who have no contact with a union—cannot use their Section 7 rights because they do not know they exist. In 2011, the National Labor Relations Board (the Board), the agency which administers the NLRA, promulgated a Rule requiring employers to post notice of workers’ rights. The Rule happened to succumb to legal challenge but would, in any case, …

Designing A Victims’ Compensation System Amidst California’S Insurance Crisis: The Aftermath Of The 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires, Federica Simonelli

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Commentary will explore critical aspects necessary for creating victims’ compensation mechanisms capable of handling claims stemming from the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires from a theoretical perspective. Drawing from the successful examples of the 2020 PG&E Fire Victim Trust, the 2023 Maui Wildfires compensation schemes, and other forms of dispute resolution (such as mediation), this Commentary will demonstrate that the challenging fallouts of environmental disasters pose increased challenges and necessitate unique dispute system design to better respond to the need for fair and equitable solutions. These systems increasingly rely on settlement funds tailored to claimants’ specific needs and have proven …

Reconceptualizing Incomplete Attempt, Youngjae Lee

Faculty Scholarship

Incomplete attempt laws are typically explained as laws that exist to justify timely law enforcement intervention. Such explanations may well provide good reasons for the laws based on harm prevention rationales, but they do not address the question whether a person who has, say, “cocked and aimed the pistol” has actually attempted to kill and is blameworthy for having done so. It turns out that this question is notoriously difficult to answer. This Article describes the challenge of defining incomplete attempt and of identifying and articulating its wrongfulness as a general theoretical matter. This Article then argues in favor of …

Are A.I. Lawyers A Legal Product Or Legal Service?: Why Current Upl Laws Are Not Up To The Task Of Regulating Autonomous A.I. Actors, Sean Steward

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The rise of automation, particularly with the advent of large language models, presents a significant potential for the legal profession. While automation has traditionally focused on manual and repetitive tasks, A.I.'s evolution now allows machines to handle complex, thought-intensive work involving decision-making. This shift underscores a pressing issue: the American legal system lacks a clear definition of the practice of law. This becomes especially critical as A.l, an "autonomous actor," begins to take on roles that were previously exclusive to human practitioners. One company that exemplifies the advanced capabilities of modern A.I.-powered technology is Pactum Al Pactum's autonomous negotiation software …

The Hidden Cost Of Venture Capital, Emilie Aguirre

Faculty Scholarship

Founders, employees, consumers, and even funders increasingly expect businesses to pursue social goals alongside financial performance. Yet even the most committed firms have found it difficult to maintain social performance over time. Scholars in economics, management, and law have put forth several explanations for this “mission drift,” including inappropriate governance, poor management, lack of genuine commitment, and threat of takeovers. Puzzlingly, research to date primarily focuses on later-stage firms, even though the events and decisions that take place in a firm’s early stages can critically impact retention of its social performance.

Drawing from over five years of qualitative field research …

Samuel Williston And The Restatement Of Contracts: How The Formalism Of Classical Legal Thought Modernized Contract Law, Daniel P. O'Gorman

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Grading Machines: Can Ai Exam-Grading Replace Law Professors?, Jens Frankenreiter, Kevin L. Cope, Scott Hirst, Eric A. Posner, Daniel Schwarcz, Dane Thorley

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have achieved significant technical advances, such that legal-advocacy organizations are increasingly adopting them as complements to—or substitutes for—lawyers and other human experts. Several studies have examined LLMs' performance in taking law school exams, finding mixed results. Yet there have been no published studies systematically analyzing LLMs' competence at one of law professors' chief responsibilities: grading law school exams. This paper presents results of an analysis of how LLMs perform in evaluating student responses to legal analysis questions of the kind typically administered in law school exams. The underlying data come from …

When Hard Cases Make Bad Law: A Theory Of How Case Facts Affect Judge-Made Law, Sepehr Shahshahani

Scholarship@WashULaw

“Hard cases make bad law” is one of the most famous aphorisms in Anglo-American law. Its insight is that when strict application of a generally sound law would impose a special hardship on someone, a court may be tempted to distort the law to avoid the hardship. Scholars have long debated the meaning and truth of the aphorism, but the debate has suffered from an imprecise conceptualization of what makes a case “hard.” This lack of precision limits our ability to disentangle and work through the important questions the aphorism raises about how the facts of a particular case affect …

A New Deepfake Detection Method With No-Reference Image Quality Assessment To Resist Image Degradation, Jiajun Jiang, Wen-Chao Yang, Chung-Hao Chen, Timothy Young

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Deepfake technology, which utilizes advanced AI models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), has led to the proliferation of highly convincing manipulated media, posing significant challenges for detection. Existing detection methods often struggle with the low-quality or compressed press, which is prevalent on social media platforms. This paper proposes a novel Deepfake detection framework that leverages No-Reference Image Quality Assessment (NRIQA) techniques, specifically, BRISQUE, NIQE, and PIQUE, to extract quality-related features from facial images. These features are then classified using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) with various kernel functions. We evaluate our method under both intra-dataset and cross-dataset settings. For …

Three Essays On Sustainability Economics, Hélène Flore Nguemgaing

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As global economies face increasing resource dependencies and supply chain challenges, it becomes essential to understand the vulnerabilities that threaten economic stability. This dissertation investigates three empirical issues in agribusiness and critical minerals using econometric models to estimate the following: 1) the impact of supply chain disruptions on stock market returns during COVID-19; 2) the extraction of rare earth elements from acid mine drainage treatment by investigating the impacts of ownership and legislation in West Virginia and Pennsylvania; 3) China-to�FOBb (Free-on-Board) price transmission in rare earth elements markets: a copula-based dynamic tail dependence analysis.

The first essay evaluates how events …

Algorithmic Lawmaking, Moral Judging, And Free Will, Jacob Eisler

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Across The Bitter Divide: A Proposal To Improve Certainty In Patent Eligibility, Ian M. Adams

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ai Lawyering Skills Trainers: Transforming Legal Education With Generative Ai, Alexandria Serra

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

The integration of generative AI (GenAI) tools in legal education is not just an innovation—it's a transformative shift redefying how law students acquire and refine advocacy skills. This article examines AI’s critical role in modernizing legal education, emphasizing its potential to offer personalized, one-on-one coaching that enhances student learning and engagement. As AI reshapes the legal profession, law schools must evolve to prepare students for an AI-driven future.

Serving as a practical guide, this article provides a step-by-step framework for educators and institutions to develop AI tools that simulate real-world courtroom scenarios and provide continuous, personalized feedback. It also highlights …

Overcoming Judicial Innumeracy: A Proposal To Bring The Venerable Process Of Peer Review To The Enduring Problem Of Courts’ Scientific Illiteracy, David L. Faigman

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers are not known for their proficiency in math and science. Most of us who went to law school reached a point in our math and science studies when we realized that neither medicine nor engineering were likely to be successful career paths. It is these lawyers who become judges. Yet, the United States Supreme Court has increasingly put the burden for deciding complex scientific and technical questions in the hands of judges. This Article explores this trend of putting greater responsibility for deciding scientific and technical issues on judges, particularly in the areas of evidence law, administrative law, and …

On Emerging Technologies: The Old Regime And The Proactivity, Ran Xi

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Nowadays, emerging technologies are revolutionizing nearly every facet of human life, shaping legal, cultural, political, and technological landscapes. Despite various breakthroughs, emerging technologies have also brought to society legal and regulatory challenges, such as the pacing problem, regulatory silos, and the black box issue. However, existing state-centric regulation on emerging technologies results in fragmented, inconsistent, and ineffective statutes and policies. The traditional regulatory regime, due to its reactive mindset, incremental approaches, and tools of modest efficacy, fails to mitigate associated risks and harms, sometimes even impeding technological innovation. To tackle this dilemma, this Article proposes a proactive law approach with …

Language Models' Verbatim Copying: Copyright Infringement Analysis Through The Lens Of The New York Times Co. V. Microsoft Corp., Openai, Inc. Et Al., Tian "Tony" Chen

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

In their high-profile suit in late 2023, The New York Times Company ("The Times") alleged that OpenAI's Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) language models might output "near-verbatim" copies ("memorizations") of the works of The Times based on certain user prompts and thus might have infringed on The Times's exclusive rights over its content. One of the central issues is whether the embodiment of unauthorized reproductions of Times content in the GPT models constitutes a copyright infringement. This comment argues that OpenAI might have a colorable fair use affirmative defense despite the plaintiff's prima facie copyright infringement claim.

Existing literature on the …

A Critical Juncture: The Convergence Of Natural Resource Management And Tribal Sovereignty, Anna Aleta Butterfield

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This portfolio reflects the work I’ve done in my four years as a dual degree student, pursuing a Master of Science in Environmental Studies and a juris doctorate degree, and focuses on policies and laws surrounding natural resource management. It touches on how those policies relate to and expand or constrict the exercise of sovereignty by indigenous populations.

This piece first considers the effects of plastic on salmon populations and those indigenous groups that rely on salmon for subsistence and cultural purposes. The remaining three pieces focus on various aspects of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes - Montana Water …

Ai And Tribal Court Practice, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Articles

American Indian tribal court practice resides at the intersection of two difficult legal problems. First, because tribal justice systems are usually very young and dynamic, awareness and analysis of tribal law is underdeveloped. Second, because tribal nations are not governed by state or federal law, tribal law is culturally unique. Tribal court practitioners often find that even routine legal matters will involve questions of first impression in the jurisdiction. All of this is to say tribal court jurisprudence is intensely jurisgenerative.

Because tribal law is often unsettled or indeterminate, the costs of discovering and applying this law are occasionally high. …

Clinicians In The Loop Of Medical Ai, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

As medical AI begins to mature as a health-care tool, the task of governance grows increasingly important. Ensuring that medical AI works, works where it’s used, and works for the patient in the moment is a challenging, multifaceted task. Some of this governance can be centralized—in review by FDA or by national accreditation labs, for instance. Some must be local, performed by the hospital or health system about to use the product in their own, unique environment. But a large amount of governance is left to the individual provider in the room, the human in the loop who presumably knows …

Do Specialized Medical Llms Demand A Radically New Approach Under The Eu's Medical Device Regulation, Hannah Louise Smith, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

We examine the arguments made by Onitiu and colleagues concerning the need to adopt a “backward-walking logic” to manage the risks arising from the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) adapted for a medical purpose. We examine what lessons can be learned from existing multi-use technologies and applied to specialized LLMs, notwithstanding their novelty, and explore the appropriate respective roles of device providers and regulators within the ecosystem of technological oversight.

Al Assisted Inventing And Its Impact On The Patent System, Ben Gross

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note examines the challenges posed by AI-assisted inventing to the patent system, particularly focusing on the "black box" nature of AI, which obscures the inventive process and complicates patent requirements such as inventorship and disclosure.

Corporate Climate Targets: Science, Discretion, And Climate-Washing, Nadav Orian Peer

Publications

The use of corporate climate targets has exploded in recent years and now encompasses many of the world's largest and most profitable companies. In a corporate climate target, a company voluntarily commits to reducing its emissions in line with climate science and the Paris Agreement. The broad adoption of these targets raises important questions: are these commitments truly aligned with science in the way they are advertised, or do they raise "climate-washing" concerns; i.e., do they exaggerate the benefits and significance of the climate targets? This Article investigates the role that science actually plays within targets and explores different types …

Fingerprints Of Injustice: The Truth Behind Artificial Intelligence And Algorithmic-Driven Evidence,, Aubrey Butler

Chapman Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) has steadily grown in prominence, reaching into nearly every aspect of daily life, and the legal system is not immune from its influence. As various forms of machine evidence have been admitted in court, there has been an accompanying rise in concerns from researchers, judges, and defense attorneys as to the trustworthiness and reliability of this new category of evidence.

Though AI and machine evidence takes various forms, this Note focuses on some of the most prominent programs being used in courtrooms today, namely the probabilistic genotyping software TrueAllele and the recidivism rate prediction software COMPAS. The …

Generative A.I., Virtual Child Pornography, And The First Amendment: Time To Reconsider Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition?, Seth Atisha

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

The End Is Still To Come: How The Law’S Interaction With Digital Replicas And Derivative Digital Replicas Will Shape The Future, Spencer Kweskin

Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intellectual Property, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The year is 2031. You just got up. Your smartwatch has registered the movement, and the coffee maker is on. After your shower, you pick up your phone or read the latest news on the New York Times app on your VR goggles or palm. Except for a few remaining columnists, the news is all written by AI machines. At work, you are responsible for a report on a new product for your company, and you use Al to design the product and prepare the pitch, including the visuals and text of your presentation to the C-suite. The Al system …

Structural Tax Reform And The Next Reit Revolution, Sloan G. Speck

Publications

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This report by the United States Copyright Office addresses the legal and policy issues related to artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright as outlined in the Office’s August 2023 Notice of Inquiry (NOI).

The report will be published in several parts each one addressing a different topic. This part addresses the copyrightability of works created using generative AI. The first part, published in 2024, addresses the topic of digital replicas—the use of digital technology to realistically replicate an individual’s voice or appearance. A subsequent part will turn to the training of AI models on copyrighted works, licensing considerations, and allocation of …

United States Environmental Protection Agency Scientific Integrity Policy

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

US EPA SIP