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Role-Reversibility, Ai, And Equitable Justice - Or: Why Mercy Cannot Be Automated, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez
Role-Reversibility, Ai, And Equitable Justice - Or: Why Mercy Cannot Be Automated, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez
JCLC Online
A few years ago, we developed the concept of “role-reversibility” in AI governance: the idea that it matters whether a party exercising judgment is reciprocally vulnerable to the effects of judgment. This idea, we argued, supplies a deontic reason to maintain certain spheres of human judgment even if (or when) truly intelligent machines become demonstrably superior in every utilitarian sense. While computer science remains far from that holy grail, generative AI is raging through systems as diverse as healthcare, finance, advertising, law, and academe, making it imperative to further shore up our claim. We do so by situating role-reversibility within …
Hearings, Mark Spottswood
Hearings, Mark Spottswood
Faculty Working Papers
This article explores a constantly recurring procedural question: When is fact-finding improved by a live hearing, and when would it be better to rely on a written record? Unfortunately, when judges, lawyers, and rulemakers consider this issue, they are led astray by the widely shared—but false—assumption that a judge can best determine issues of credibility by viewing the demeanor of witnesses while they are testifying. In fact, a large body of scientific evidence indicates that judges are more likely to be deceived by lying or mistaken witnesses when observing their testimony in person than if the judges were to review …
Federal Circuit Patent Precedent: An Empirical Study Of Institutional Authority And Ip Ideology, David Pekarek-Krohn, Emerson H. Tiller
Federal Circuit Patent Precedent: An Empirical Study Of Institutional Authority And Ip Ideology, David Pekarek-Krohn, Emerson H. Tiller
Faculty Working Papers
In this paper, we aim to better understand the institutional authority of the Federal Circuit as a source of law as well as the influence of pro-patent and anti-patent ideological forces at play between the Supreme Court, Federal Circuit, and the district courts. Our specific focus is on the district courts and how they cite Federal Circuit precedent relative to Supreme Court precedent to support their decisions, whether they be pro-patent or anti-patent. Using a variety of citation approaches and statistical tests, we find that federal district courts treat the Federal Circuit as more authoritative (compared to the Supreme Court) …
The Macroeconomic Court: Rhetoric And Implications Of New Deal Decision-Making, Nancy Staudt, Yilei He
The Macroeconomic Court: Rhetoric And Implications Of New Deal Decision-Making, Nancy Staudt, Yilei He
Faculty Working Papers
Supreme Court scholars have long discussed and debated the dramatic shift in constitutional decision-making that took place in the late 1930s—a shift that led the Justices to presume the constitutionality of any and all commercial statutes no matter how "preposterous" they might seem. The conventional wisdom holds that the Supreme Court altered its decision-making calculus to avoid the consequences of President Roosevelt's "court-packing plan," but various other explanations have also emerged in the literature over time. In this Article, Professor Staudt and Ms. He investigate an explanation that scholars and commentators have largely ignored: the role of the economy itself. …
Methodological Advances And Empirical Legal Scholarship: A Note On The Cox And Miles' Voting Rights Act Study, Nancy Staudt, Tyler Vanderweele
Methodological Advances And Empirical Legal Scholarship: A Note On The Cox And Miles' Voting Rights Act Study, Nancy Staudt, Tyler Vanderweele
Faculty Working Papers
In this Response, we use Professors Cox and Miles' recent study of judicial decision-making to explore what is at stake when legal scholars present empirical findings without fully investigating the structural relationships of their data or without explicitly stating the assumptions being made to draw causal inferences. We then introduce a new methodology that is intuitive, easy to use, and, most importantly, allows scholars systematically to assess problems of bias and confounding. This methodology—known as causal directed acyclic graphs—will help empirical researchers to identify true cause and effect relationships when they exist and, at the same time, posit statistical models …
A New (And Better) Interpretation Of Holmes's Prediction Theory Of Law, Anthony D'Amato
A New (And Better) Interpretation Of Holmes's Prediction Theory Of Law, Anthony D'Amato
Faculty Working Papers
Holmes's famous 1897 theory that law is a prediction of what courts will do in fact slowly changed the way law schools taught law until, by the mid-1920s legal realism took over the curriculum. The legal realists argued that judges decide cases on all kinds of objective and subjective reasons including precedents. If law schools wanted to train future lawyers to be effective, they should be exposed to collateral subjects that might influence judges: law and society, law and literature, and so forth. But the standard interpretation has been a huge mistake. It treats law as analogous to weather forecasting: …
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Faculty Working Papers
Lay jurors are often legally and logically unprepared for trial. In response, it is recommended that jurors receive training in how to make better legal decisions. This chapter suggests that jurors should receive comprehensive training in critical legal doctrines and in how to reason with legal evidence. Jurors who cannot be trained to achieve minimal levels of competence (in the law or in basic reasoning) should be excused from jury service. Suggestions are given as to how policy makers and researchers who are interested in jury reform may wish to proceed.