Digital Commons Network^™

An Introduction To The Collection [Get In Good Trouble: A Collection Of Essays By Millennial Law Scholars], Verónica C. Gonzales

Faculty Scholarship

Get in Good Trouble: A Collection of Essays by Millennial Law Scholars Introduction by Verónica C. Gonzales-Zamora with essays by Kinda Abdus-Saboor, Ernestine Chaco, Marcus Gadson, Verónica Gonzales-Zamora, Camilo Romero, Lysette Romero Córdova, Morenike Saula, Joseph Schremmer, and Hon. Roshanna Toya. Afterword by Marcus Gadson. In response to the global pandemic, legal education in the United States shifted almost immediately to new tools and methods of delivery. Unsure of the lasting impact of these shifts, law faculty and law students around the country remain in limbo preparing for different scenarios when instruction resumes. Millennial law professors and scholars, with decades …

Irena At 10: Post Paris Transitions And Energy Diplomacy Beyond Opec, The Energy Charter Treaty, And The Coronavirus, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Re-Reading Anita Bernstein's The Common Law Inside The Female Body From The Bottom Of The Well: Analysis Of The Central Park Five, Border Drownings, The Kavanaugh Confirmation, And The Coronavirus, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

America's New Covenant With Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Human Rights And Democracy Act Of 2019, Jason Buhi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

#Metoo And The Myth Of The Juvenile Sex Offender, Cynthia Godsoe

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Replicability Crisis In Patent Law, Janet Freilich

Faculty Scholarship

There is a “replicability crisis” in the scientific literature. Scientists attempting to redo experiments in reputable, peer-reviewed journals have found that staggering numbers of these experiments—up to 90%—do not work. Patents, like scientific articles, contain experiments. These experiments often form the backbone of the patent and provide crucial support for patentability. Patent examiners use these experiments to evaluate whether the invention works, and thus whether the patent should be granted. The replicability crisis in the scientific literature is therefore of utmost importance to the patent system. Transferring the insights of the replicability crisis to patents begs the question of whether …

Gdpr And The Importance Of Data To Ai Startups, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Lydia Reichensperger, Robert Seamans

Faculty Scholarship

What is the impact of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regime (“GDPR”) and data regulation on AI startups? How important is data to AI product development? We study these questions using unique survey data of commercial AI startups. AI startups rely on data for their product development. Given the scale and scope of their business models, these startups are particularly susceptible to policy changes impacting data collection, storage and use. We find that training data and frequent model refreshes are particularly important for AI startups that rely on neural nets and ensemble learning algorithms. We also find that firms …

Uk & Ksa Vats: A Cutting-Edge Proposal – Mini-Blockchain And Vatcoin, Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Musaad Alwohaibi, Mike Cheetham

Faculty Scholarship

This paper develops, extends, and clarifies themes introduced in five prior papers dealing with blockchain, and VATCoin in the context of both (a) the new VATs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and (b) the mature VATs in the EU. Five additional papers on VAT technology advances in Fiji, with blockchain and VATCoin applications to New Zealand’s approach to online sales platforms (the Netlix Tax) are similarly referenced and extended. The GCC VAT papers were exploratory. For the most part, they were composed before any GCC jurisdiction had implemented a VAT, and in three instances even before the GCC Framework …

Little Power Struggles Everywhere: Attacks On The Administrative State At The Securities And Exchange Commission, Roberta S. Karmel

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Breath: A Call For Economic Justice, Verónica C. Gonzales

Faculty Scholarship

In Part I of this essay I interpret this unique moment in history through a retelling of the folk story La Llorona in order to identify the monsters and ghosts of the past and the present. Domino Renee Perez describes her own critical reflection of La Llorona as reinforcing 'a valuable lesson about power and authority' because her family’s 'storytelling circle was more than simply an arbitrary setting; it was a safe place for them to create, however problematically, a world of words, where they faced the dangers and challenges of life, embodied by a woman, and survived.' The lore …

Distinguishing Moral Hazard From Access For High-Cost Healthcare Under Insurance, Christopher Robertson, Andy Yuan, Wendan Zhang, Keith Joiner

Faculty Scholarship

Health policy has long been preoccupied with the problem that health insurance stimulates spending (“moral hazard”). However, much health spending is costly healthcare that uninsured individuals could not otherwise access. Field studies comparing those with more or less insurance cannot disaggregate moral hazard versus access. Moreover, studies of patients consuming routine low-dollar healthcare are not informative for the high-dollar healthcare that drives most of aggregate healthcare spending in the United States.
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/="/">We test indemnities as an alternative theory-driven counterfactual. Such conditional cash transfers would maintain an opportunity cost for patients, unlike standard insurance, but also guarantee access to …

Independent Creation In A World Of Ai, Clark Asay

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long debated whether the outputs of AI systems should be subject to copyright. On the one hand, the automated nature of many AI systems may make copyright unnecessary as an incentive for the creation of those AI systems’ outputs, in which case society would be better off withholding copyright protections from them. On the other hand, those outputs often exhibit sufficient creativity to merit copyright protection, and without copyright, parties that use AI systems to create such outputs may lack the necessary incentives to do so.

In this Essay, prepared as part of the Florida International University Law …

Aga Institute Rapid Recommendations For Gastrointestinal Procedures During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Perica Davitkov, Yngve Falck-Ytter

Faculty Scholarship

Multiple questions have been raised regarding the GI and liver manifestations of COVID-19 infection and the implications of SARS-CoV-2 infection on GI endoscopy. A joint society statement by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA), the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the American College of Gastroenterology, and the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy on March 15, 2020 highlighted the potential for SARS-CoV-2 transmission through droplets, an established mode of transmission, and possibly fecal shedding, and the associated risk for transmission to endoscopy personnel during GI endoscopy procedures. In this document, we seek to summarize the data and provide evidence-based …

The Cognitive And Psychological Effects Of Youtube Video Captions And Subtitles On Higher-Level German Language Learners, Peter Yang

Faculty Scholarship

This study reviews the psychological and cognitive role of using videos, YouTube videos and modes of text support in foreign language learning, with a focus on the effect that captioning and subtitling YouTube videos have on intermediate-high and advanced German language learners. The results of the study found that enhanced captioning plays a more positive role on the intermediate-high and advanced German learners’ motivation likely due to more efficient language processing; more specifically the videos are able to provide linguistic integrity, which allows the language learners to focus their incidental attention effectively. The findings provide useful insights into and enthusiasm …

The Evolution Of Offshore: From Tax Havens To Ifcs, Andrew P. Morriss, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past 70 years, many smaller jurisdictions have evolved intro international financial centres (IFCs). Although different in their historic origins and in the financial products and services they offer, IFCs share a common development path. Understanding that evolution can shed light on what the next decade is likely to bring.

Gallucci's Commentary On Dürer’S 'Four Books On Human Proportion': Renaissance Proportion Theory, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

In 1591, Giovanni Paolo Gallucci published his Della simmetria dei corpi humani, an Italian translation of Albrecht Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion. While Dürer’s treatise had been translated earlier in the sixteenth-century into French and Latin, it was Gallucci’s Italian translation that endured in popularity as the most cited version of the text in later Baroque treatises, covering topics that were seen as central to arts education, connoisseurship, patronage, and the wider appreciation of the studia humanitatis in general.

The text centres on the relationships between beauty and proportion, macrocosm and microcosm: relationships that were not only essential to …

Data And The Social Obligation Norm Of Property: An Essay In Honor Of Professor Gregory S. Alexander, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

In the age of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal and sundry other data breaches at Under Armour, Target, and Best Buy, the issue of security and privacy in consumer data has become increasingly important. For much of the modern era, the development of technology has gone relatively unchecked, with the United States having ceded much of the policymaking terrain to Silicon Valley. This has resulted in the unbridled creation of vast amounts of consumer data. Users who engage with tech platforms generate bits and bytes about themselves based on their activities, preferences, and habits. This information — “data” — is then …

Access To Algorithms, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Federal, state, and local governments increasingly depend on automated systems — often procured from the private sector — to make key decisions about civil rights and civil liberties. When individuals affected by these decisions seek access to information about the algorithmic methodologies that produced them, governments frequently assert that this information is proprietary and cannot be disclosed.

Recognizing that opaque algorithmic governance poses a threat to civil rights and liberties, scholars have called for a renewed focus on transparency and accountability for automated decision making. But scholars have neglected a critical avenue for promoting public accountability and transparency for automated …

Have Problem-Solving Courts Changed The Practice Of Law?, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

Thirty years after the start of the first drug court, it is a good time to examine what the problem-solving court movement has contributed to our criminal legal system overall. It is also a good time to ask what it would look like if these courts had made "monumental change" in our criminal legal system. This article will start with a discussion of mass incarceration and offer some reasons why problem-solving courts did not prevent, or lessen, mass incarceration. Next this article will discuss how problem-solving courts work, including by looking at the roles of the professionals, the judges and …

The Algorithmic Divide And Equality In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In the age of artificial intelligence, highly sophisticated algorithms have been deployed to provide analysis, detect patterns, optimize solutions, accelerate operations, facilitate self-learning, minimize human errors and biases and foster improvements in technological products and services. Notwithstanding these tremendous benefits, algorithms and intelligent machines do not provide equal benefits to all. Just as the digital divide has separated those with access to the Internet, information technology and digital content from those without, an emerging and ever-widening algorithmic divide now threatens to take away the many political, social, economic, cultural, educational and career opportunities provided by machine learning and artificial intelligence. …

Automation In Moderation, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

This Article assesses recent efforts to encourage online platforms to use automated means to prevent the dissemination of unlawful online content before it is ever seen or distributed. As lawmakers in Europe and around the world closely scrutinize platforms’ “content moderation” practices, automation and artificial intelligence appear increasingly attractive options for ridding the Internet of many kinds of harmful online content, including defamation, copyright infringement, and terrorist speech. Proponents of these initiatives suggest that requiring platforms to screen user content using automation will promote healthier online discourse and will aid efforts to limit Big Tech’s power.

In fact, however, the …

Can Algorithms Promote Fair Use?, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In the past few years, advances in big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence have generated many questions in the intellectual property field. One question that has attracted growing attention concerns whether algorithms can be better deployed to promote fair use in copyright law. The debate on the feasibility of developing automated fair use systems is not new; it can be traced back to more than a decade ago. Nevertheless, recent technological advances have invited policymakers and commentators to revisit this earlier debate.

As part of the Symposium on "Intelligent Entertainment: Algorithmic Generation and Regulation of Creative Works," this Article …

Patent Shopping, Janet Freilich

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, scholars have identified many entities who use the patent system in ways that differ from the traditional model of patent use — entities such as patent assertion entities, patent aggregators, or owners of large patent portfolios. This Article presents a model that explains the behavior of some of the biggest and most controversial entities in the patent system. This Article argues that such entities are engaged in “patent shopping” where the plaintiff makes a strategic choice of patent in order to obtain the best facts and substance in a case and thereby maximize the chance of …

Externalities And The Common Owner, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Due to the embrace of modern portfolio theory, most of the stock market is controlled by institutional investors holding broadly diversified economy-mirroring portfolios. Recent scholarship has revealed the anti-competitive incentives that arise when a firm’s largest shareholders own similarly sized stakes in the firm’s industry competitors. This Article expands the consideration of the effects of common ownership from the industry level to the market-portfolio level, and argues that diversified investors should rationally be motivated to internalize intra-portfolio negative externalities. This portfolio perspective can explain the increasing climate change related activism of institutional investors, who have applied coordinated shareholder power to …

Comments On Preliminary Draft 5 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg, June M. Besek

Faculty Scholarship

We appreciate the considerable work that has gone into PD5, and believe that several of its provisions and Comments accurately quote or state and explain the law. Nonetheless, PD5 manifests several of the earlier drafts’ shortcomings. We remain particularly concerned that the relationship of this draft to the statute remains highly inconsistent, not to say erratic. We are not sanguine that our oft-repeated calls that the Reporters and ALI devise a consistent and transparent methodology for restating a statute will finally be heeded. (To the extent there is a guiding principle behind this Restatement, and PD5, it often appears to …

Teaching Professional Responsibility Through Theater, Michael Millemann, Elliott Rauh, Robert Bowie Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about ethics-focused, law school courses, co-taught with a theater director, in which students wrote, produced and performed in plays. The plays were about four men who, separately, were wrongfully convicted, spent decades in prison, and finally were released and exonerated, formally (two) or informally (two).

The common themes in these miscarriages of justice were that 1) unethical conduct of prosecutors (especially failures to disclose exculpatory evidence) and of defense counsel (especially incompetent representation) undermined the Rule of Law and produced wrongful convictions, and 2) conversely, that the ethical conduct of post-conviction lawyers and law students helped to …

An Empirical Study Of Political Control Over Immigration Adjudication, Catherine Y. Kim, Amy Semet

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Developmental Justice And The Voting Age, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Several municipalities have lowered the voting age to 16, with similar bills pending in state legislatures and one considered by Congress. Meanwhile, advocates for youth are trying to raise the ages of majority across an array of areas of law, including ages for diverting criminal conduct into the juvenile justice system (18 to 21); buying tobacco (18 to 21); driving (16 to 18); and obtaining support from the foster care system (18 to 21). Child welfare advocates are fighting the harms of Adultification, meaning the projection of adult capacities, responsibilities, and consequences onto minors. In legal and social history, seeing …

Arcing Towards Justice: Dr. King’S 2020 Vision, Sonia Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Gipson Rankin discusses the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s journey, the experiences that shaped his worldviews, and how we can use these ideas to create a strong future for everyone. She connects Dr. King’s work to artificial intelligence and equality.

If the media player is not working, go directly to the video on the Sandia National Laboratories Mediasite.

The Invested In Diabetes Study Protocol: A Cluster Randomized Pragmatic Trial Comparing Standardized And Patient-Driven Diabetes Shared Medical Appointments, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Shared medical appointments (SMAs) have been shown to be an efficient and effective strategy for providing diabetes self-management education and self-management support. SMA features vary and it is not known which features are most effective for different patients and practice settings. The Invested in Diabetes study tests the comparative effectiveness of SMAs with and without multidisciplinary care teams and patient topic choice for improving patient-centered and clinical outcomes related to diabetes. Methods: This study compares the effectiveness of two SMA approaches using the Targeted Training for Illness Management (TTIM) curriculum. Standardized SMAs are led by a health educator with …