Digital Commons Network^™

Common Good Gun Rights, Darrell Miller

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No abstract provided.

The Comparative Constitutional Of Democratic Backsliding: A Report On The State Of The Field, Aziz Huq, Tom Ginsburg

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No abstract provided.

Rulemaking 3.0: Incorporating Ai And Chatgpt Into Notice And Comment Rulemaking, Stephen M. Johnson

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Technological innovations since the turn of the century have created opportunities to increase public participation in notice and comment rulemaking, increase the efficiency of the process, and increase the quality of the rules adopted by agencies. For some rules, online rulemaking and social media have facilitated increased public participation, but have not necessarily facilitated improvements in the quality of public comments. In addition, in some cases, the transformation of the process has created new challenges for government agencies by making it easier for supporters or opponents of rules to flood agencies with duplicative and potentially false comments to which the …

The Long Hand Of Anti-Corruption: Israeli Judicial Reform In Comparative Perspective, Tom Ginsburg

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There are many ways in which to examine the current Israeli constitutional crisis. This article uses the lens of anti-corruption, a global movement which has changed politics in many countries. The long empowerment of the legal system in Israel arguably has its origins in policing corruption, which may be a particularly powerful motivator for the current governing coalition’s efforts to assert more control over the Supreme Court. The dynamics of anti-corruption in Israel are somewhat distinct from those of other countries in ways that may bode well for the Court in its confrontation with the government.

Against Political Theory In Constitutional Interpretation, Christopher S. Havasy, Joshua C. Macey, Brian Richardson

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Judges and academics have long relied on the work of a small number of Enlightenment political theorists—particularly Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone—to discern meaning from vague and ambiguous constitutional provisions. This Essay cautions that Enlightenment political theory should rarely, if ever, be cited as an authoritative source of constitutional meaning. There are three principal problems with constitutional interpretation based on eighteenth-century political theory. First, Enlightenment thinkers developed distinct and incompatible theories about how to structure a republican form of government. That makes it difficult to decide which among the conflicting theories should possess constitutional significance. Second, the Framers did not write …

Strategic Subdelegation, Brian D. Feinstein, Jennifer Nou

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Appointed leaders of administrative agencies routinely record subdelegations of governmental authority to civil servants. That appointees willingly cede authority in this way presents a puzzle, at least at first glance: Why do these appointees assign their power to civil servants insulated by merit protection laws, that is, to employees over whom they have limited control? This article develops and tests a theory to explain this behavior. Using original data on appointee-to-civil servant delegations and a measure of the ideological distance between these two groups of actors, we show that appointees are more willing to vest power in civil servants when …

Textualism And The Administrative Procedure Act, Kristin Hickman

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In recent years, the Supreme Court occasionally has applied a more limited approach to textualist reasoning that, if applied to the APA, could expand the perceived gulf between textualism and existing administrative law doctrine. Our purpose with this Essay is to explore the implications of this trend for APA interpretation, particularly as it might apply to agency rulemaking. We do not purport to address critics of textualism as an interpretive methodology; we speak primarily to those who are persuaded of textualism’s merits. We also will not try to resolve all the many disagreements about textualism’s variations or the APA’s meaning. …

Mitigating Citation Errors In The Interlibrary Loan System, Scott Dewey, David Zopfi-Jordan

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Journal articles from most academic disciplines have long shown high rates of citation errors. American law reviews, with their careful cite-checking, are a rare exception to the overall rule. Incorrect citations are especially costly and problematic for interlibrary loan librarians. This article offers practical suggestions to address the problem.

Ai Tools For Lawyers: A Practical Guide, Daniel Schwarcz

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This Article provides practical and specific guidance on how to effectively use AI large language models (LLMs), like GPT-4, Bing Chat, and Bard, in legal research and writing. Focusing on GPT-4—the most advanced LLM that is widely available at the time of this writing—it emphasizes that lawyers can use traditional legal skills to refine and verify LLM legal analysis. In the process, lawyers and law students can effectively turn freely available LLMs into highly productive personal legal assistants.

Deepfake 2024: Will Citizens United And Artificial Intelligence Together Destroy Representative Democracy?, Richard Painter

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Deepfakes – computer generated counterfeit videos and audios of people saying and doing things they never said or did – are proliferating on social media and increasingly will be used to target candidates in elections. Citizens United v. FEC, and cases decided in its aftermath, have opened the floodgates of dark money funded electioneering communications, and some of this money will be spent on deepfakes made and disseminated by persons unknown. Some deepfakes may originate outside the United States, as they become a new instrument for foreign interference in U.S. elections.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has been asked by …

The Value Of Understandable Consumer Insurance Contracts, Daniel Schwarcz, Kyle Logue, Brenda J. Cude

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Insurance consumers, the intermediaries who serve them, and the regulators who protect them all would benefit from understandable consumer insurance contracts. This article outlines the benefits of understandable insurance contracts, identifies the regulatory tools that are or can be used to ensure such comprehensibility, and reviews the existing literature about how well consumers comprehend their insurance policies within the context of personal lines insurance in the U.S. The article concludes by proposing an empirical research strategy to study consumers’ understanding of the terms of homeowners insurance policies and, even when they have not read their policies, their expectations about coverage.

From Constructive Ambiguities To Structural Contradictions: The Twilight Of The Good Friday Agreement, Chris O'Ralaigh

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The Good Friday Agreement contained a series of constructive ambiguities which were critical to ensuring that it received broad cross-political support. These ambiguities were reflective of the balance of political power of the time. Once institutionalized, they contained an immanent potential to morph in to structural contradictions as the re-balancing of demographic and political power in Ireland moved from latent to manifest status. As the Agreement reaches its 25th anniversary, three outstanding structural contradictions are manifesting, prompted by Brexit and the re-introduction of the ‘Irish question’ in to Irish-British relations. The constitutional status of the North of Ireland, the raison …

International Law Publishing Trends: What Journals Print, Bianca Anderson, Kathleen Claussen

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No abstract provided.

Twilight-Zone Originalism: The Peculiar Reasoning And Unfortunate Consequences Of New York State Pistol & Rifle Association V. Bruen,, Albert Alschuler

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No abstract provided.

A Meditation On The Thirteenth Amendment And Constitutional Redemption, Darrell Miller

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No abstract provided.

On The Modelling Of Short And Intermediate Water Waves, Rossen I. Ivanov

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The propagation of water waves of finite depth and flat bottom is studied in the case when the depth is not small in comparison to the wavelength. This propagation regime is complementary to the long-wave regime described by the famous KdV equation. The Hamiltonian approach is employed in the derivation of a model equation in evolutionary form, which is both nonlinear and nonlocal, and most likely not integrable. Possible implications for the numerical solutions are discussed.

Witness Hide-And-Seek: Why Federal Prosecutors Should Record Pretrial Interviews, Christina Frohock, Jeffrey E. Marcus

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This Article pays long-overdue attention to a federal appellate court's warning against "playing hide-and-seek" with witnesses. Specifically, prosecutors should record interviews. While courtroom cameras dominate the topic of judicial transparency, cameras can play a critical role in a sleepier corner of criminal proceedings: pretrial witness interviews. The Article first tracks the history of open judicial proceedings as a tradition of our Anglo- American jurisprudence. Next, the Article identifies the normative thread running through that history. Fairness may suffer when cameras transform public proceedings into publicized proceedings. Finally, the Article argues that this same issue of fairness applies to pretrial witness …

The Next 100 Years Of International Intellectual Property: Integrating Human Rights And Corporate Social Responsibility, J. Janewa Osei-Tutu

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No abstract provided.

Trade Policing, Kathleen Claussen

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At the core of U.S. economic governance, there is a novel and under-noticed phenomenon that challenges longstanding frameworks of international law and corporate compliance. This practice, which this Article terms the new "trade policing," has extraordinary reach. Recent regulatory makeovers and pathbreaking statutes empower our trade agencies to target, for the first time, companies, rather than foreign governments, as used to be their purview. Trade police now pursue companies wherever they may be in the world, not just for violating U.S. law but also for violating foreign law in areas as diverse as labor rights and environmental protections. Such a …

Reforming Shareholder Claims In Isds, Julian Arato, Kathleen Claussen, Jaemin Lee, Giovanni Zarra

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ISDS stands alone in empowering shareholders to bring claims for reflective loss (SRL) – meaning claims over harms allegedly inflicted upon the company, but which somehow affect share value. National systems of corporate law and public international law regimes generally bar SRL claims for strong policy reasons bearing on the efficiency and fairness of the corporate form. Though not necessitated by treaty text, nor beneficial in policy terms, ISDS tribunals nevertheless allow shareholders broad and regular access to seek relief for reflective loss. The availability of SRL claims in ISDS ultimately harms States and investors alike, imposing surprise ex post …

Enforcing Equity Joyce A. Hughes: A Celebration, Daiquiri J. Steele

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No abstract provided.

The Gross Injustices Of Capital Punishment: A Torturous Practice And Justice Thurgood Marshall’S Astute Appraisal Of The Death Penalty’S Cruelty, Discriminatory Use, And Unconstitutionality, John D. Bessler

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Through the centuries, capital punishment and torture have been used by monarchs, authoritarian regimes, and judicial systems around the world. Although torture is now expressly outlawed by international law, capital punishment—questioned by Quakers in the seventeenth century and by the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria and many others in the following century—has been authorized over time by various legislative bodies, including in the United States. It was Beccaria’s book, Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), translated into French and then into English as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767), that fueled the still-ongoing international movement to outlaw the death penalty. …

Discovering Child Sexual Abuse Material Creators’ Behaviors And Preferences On The Dark Web, Vuong Ngo, Rahul Gajula, Christina Thorpe, Susan Mckeever

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Background: Producing, distributing or discussing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) is often committed through the dark web in order to remain hidden from search engines and regular users. Additionally, on the dark web, the CSAM creators employ various techniques to avoid detection and conceal their activities. The large volume of CSAM on the dark web presents a global social problem and poses a significant challenge for helplines, hotlines and law enforcement agencies.

Objective: Identifying CSAM discussions on the dark web and uncovering associated metadata insights into characteristics, behaviours and motivation of CSAM creators.

Participants and Setting: We have conducted an …

Toward Inclusive Online Environments: Counterfactual-Inspired Xai For Detecting And Interpreting Hateful And Offensive Tweets, Muhammad Deedahwar Mazhar Qureshi, Muhammad Atif Qureshi, Wael Rashwan

Articles

The prevalence of hate speech and offensive language on social media platforms such as Twitter has significant consequences, ranging from psychological harm to the polarization of societies. Consequently, social media companies have implemented content moderation measures to curb harmful or discriminatory language. However, a lack of consistency and transparency hinders their ability to achieve desired outcomes. This article evaluates various ML models, including an ensemble, Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM), and Linear Support Vector Classifier (SVC), on a public dataset of 24,792 tweets by T. Davidson, categorizing tweets into three classes: hate, offensive, and neither. The top-performing model achieves a weighted …

Learnings From A National Cyberattack Digital Disaster During The Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic In A Pediatric Emergency Medicine Department, Fiona Leonard, Hugh O'Reilly, Carol Blackburn, Laura Melody, Dani Hall, Eleanor Ryan, Kate Bruton, Pamela Doyle, Bridget Conway, Michael Barrett

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Objective: The primary objective was to analyze the impact of the national cyberattack in May 2021 on patient flow and data quality in the Paediatric Emergency Department (ED), amid the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: A single site retrospective time series analysis was conducted of three 6-week periods: before, during, and after the cyberattack outage. Initial emergent workflows are described. Analysis includes diagnoses, demographic context, key performance indicators, and the gradual return of information technology capability on ED performance. Data quality was compared using 10 data quality dimensions. Results: Patient visits totaled 13 390. During the system outage, patient experience times …

Understanding The Interplay Between Immigrant Nascent Entrepreneurship And Cross-Cultural Adaptation, Lucia Walsh, Thomas M. Cooney

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Purpose – All entrepreneurs face challenges during their venture start-up process, but immigrant entrepreneurs face additional and distinctive challenges due to their contextual newness. This paper focuses on understanding the intertwined journeys of nascent entrepreneurship and cross-cultural adaptation of immigrants in a small Western European country where immigrant entrepreneurship is still a relatively new phenomenon.

Design/methodology/approach – The induction-driven, 18-month longitudinal empirical inquiry focused on six early-stage nascent entrepreneurs. Qualitative methods included participant observation during an enterprise program, qualitative interviews and ongoing informal communication.

Findings – The data uncovered the interplay between the nascent immigrant entrepreneurship and crosscultural adaptation. This …

On The Modelling Of Short And Intermediate Water Waves, Rossen Ivanov

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Most of the model equations for water waves are approximations for the long-wave propagation regimes, since most of the energy of the wave motion is concentrated in these waves. Long waves (or shallow-water waves) are defined usually as the depth to wavelength ratio δ = h/λ < 0.05. Several famous integrable nonlinear equations, like the K d V equation [1,2], are models for long waves of small amplitude. The short waves (or waves over deep water) are usually defined with δ > 0.5, and the intermediate waves (or transitional waves) - with 0.05 < δ < 0.5. The intermediate and short waves received a lot less attention, and one reason is perhaps the fact that the corresponding approximations lead to more complicated, nonlinear and nonlocal equations. In [3] an integral equation for surface waves has been proposed for arbitrary wavelengths and finite depth. The problem has been studied in [4] and model equations both for long and short waves are derived from the governing equations as well. The short-wave effects usually compete with the capillarity effects and then resonances can be observed — these have been studied quite a lot, see for example [5–12]. For the intermediate long waves or for waves on deep water the so-called Benjamin–Ono (BO) [13–15] and the Intermediate Long Wave Equation (ILWE) [16–18] are derived for the internal waves below a flat surface, which leads to some simplifications and these models are in fact integrable.

The Lagrangian Formulation For Wave Motion With A Shear Current And Surface Tension, Conor Curtin, Rossen Ivanov

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The Lagrangian formulation for the irrotational wave motion is straightforward and follows from a Lagrangian functional which is the difference between the kinetic and the potential energy of the system. In the case of fluid with constant vorticity, which arises for example when a shear current is present, the separation of the energy into kinetic and potential is not at all obvious and neither is the Lagrangian formulation of the problem. Nevertheless, we use the known Hamiltonian formulation of the problem in this case to obtain the Lagrangian density function, and utilising the Euler-Lagrange equations we proceed to derive some …

Commercially Reasonable Sales In The 21st Century, David G. Carlson

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It has been over 20 years since the 2000 amendments profoundly amended the foreclosure procedures in Article 9 of the UCC. This article reviews how the amendments have fared in the case law since then.

Title Theft, Stewart E. Sterk

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Real property owners across the country have been targeted by scammers who prepare deeds purporting to convey title to property the scammers do not own. Sometimes, the true owners are entirely unaware of these bogus transfers. In other instances, the scammers use misrepresentation to induce unsophisticated owners to sign documents they do not understand. Property doctrine protects owners against forgery and fraud—the primary vehicles scammers use in their efforts to transfer title. Owners enjoy protection not only against the scammers themselves, but generally against unsuspecting purchasers to whom the scammers transfer purported title. Recovery of title, however, involves costs and …