Digital Commons Network^™

Buying Blind: Corruption Risk And The Erosion Of Oversight In Federal Ai Procurement, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The United States is accelerating toward a corruption crisis of its own making. In its race to rapidly acquire artificial intelligence (AI), current policy risks undermining longstanding procurement integrity safeguards. This article examines how AI increases traditional corruption risks and introduces new vulnerabilities that current oversight mechanisms are ill-equipped to address.

Recent federal AI policies have accelerated adoption while simultaneously narrowing regulatory oversight, effectively leaving “regulation by contract” as the primary—and profoundly inadequate—mechanism for embedding safeguards. The consequence of these policies is that the government is “buying blind,” acquiring AI technologies without adequate transparency, audit rights, or testing requirements. These …

Ethnonationalism By Algorithm, Spencer A. Overton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the United States, artificial intelligence (“AI”) policy has become a critical arena for ethnonationalism—an ideology that defines national belonging through shared ancestry, culture, and language. Amid rapid demographic change and cultural anxiety, the second Trump Administration has harnessed federal AI governance to advance its broader agenda of dismantling diversity—most notably through Executive Order 14,179, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” and related legal directives. By eliminating safeguards against algorithmic bias and recasting equity as an ideological threat to innovation, the policies facilitate exclusion under the guise of neutrality. These moves are not merely deregulatory; they represent a …

Transportation Law’S Congestion Problem, Sara C. Bronin

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Transportation law has a congestion problem: our federalist system of government allows federal and state actors to stymie innovative, locally driven projects that aim to reduce driving. This problem is illustrated in the decades-long legal battles over New York City’s plan to impose “congestion pricing” to toll drivers entering certain parts of Manhattan. Overcoming grandstanding elected officials, lawsuits resting on state and federal supremacy, and even a federal legislative override, congestion pricing was finally launched in January 2025. New Yorkers and suburbanites alike almost immediately started benefiting from cleaner air, faster commutes, safer roads, and increased economic activity and productivity—plus …

Restorative Restitution, Lula Hagos

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

How to best meet the needs of crime victims while also furthering the imperative of decarceration has long vexed advocates and scholars alike. This dilemma comes into sharp focus when one examines two developments in criminal procedure that, until now, have been analyzed separately: victim restitution and restorative justice.

Criminal restitution, the monetary payments ordered from defendants to victims, often fails both groups. Because most defendants are indigent, restitution obligations lengthen defendants’ involvement with the criminal legal system without delivering meaningful compensation to victims, making restitution more symbolic than restorative. At the same time, interest in restorative justice has surged …

Common Schemes, Real Harm: Examining Fraud In Medicare And Medicaid, Hearing Before The United States House Of Representatives Committee On Energy And Commerce, Subcommittee On Oversight And Investigations, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The testimony argues that effective Medicare and Medicaid program integrity requires clear definitions, sustained oversight capacity, and incentives aligned toward prevention rather than retrospective recovery. It stresses that “fraud” is a legal determination and should not be conflated with broader measures of improper payments or documentation deficiencies, because that confusion distorts risk assessments and policy responses. It evaluates the current enforcement ecosystem across CMS, HHS-OIG, DOJ, GAO, and state partners, emphasizing coordination, stable resourcing, and accountability in managed care as central to deterrence. It also highlights how advanced analytics and generative AI can both amplify fraud schemes and strengthen detection, …

Feature Comment: Twenty-Five Cent Ai: The Hidden Costs Of Promotional Ai Deals, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative offers federal agencies access to leading AI platforms—including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot, and Perplexity—at promotional prices ranging from free to one dollar per agency. This Feature Comment examines how these nominal price points function as the procurement equivalent of loss-leader pricing: low enough to accelerate adoption while obscuring lifecycle costs, operational dependency, and diminished negotiating leverage at renewal. Drawing on the Federal Acquisition Regulation’s buying-in framework (FAR 3.501), switching-cost theory, and publicly available reseller pricing data, the Comment demonstrates that the gap between promotional and post-promotional pricing can be substantial—and that most renewal …

Policy Brief: The Occ's Unlawful Proposal To Preempt State Interest-On-Escrow Laws Reveals That The Agency's Ultimate Goal Is To Revive Its Illegal De Facto Field Preemption Regime For National Banks, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In December 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) issued a proposal to preempt all state laws that require national banks and federal savings associations to pay interest on borrowers’ funds held in mortgage escrow accounts. The OCC’s proposal is unlawful and must be rescinded. Under 12 U.S.C. § 25b and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Cuomo v. Clearing House and Cantero v. Bank of America, the OCC does not have authority to preempt state interest-on-escrow (IOE) laws.

The OCC’s proposal for a categorical, across-the-board preemption of state IOE laws violates three requirements set forth in 12 …

What Rights Do Ai Companies Have In Government Contracts?, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Anthropic-Pentagon dispute has generated widespread commentary but fundamental confusion about whether contractors can restrict the government's use of their products. This article argues the question is not novel. The scope of permissible restrictions depends on the acquisition pathway, the contract type, and the negotiated terms. The article surveys the principal pathways through which the federal government acquires AI and examines OpenAI's published Pentagon contract language, which adopts an "any lawful use" standard conditioned on existing legal authorities. A critical tension emerges: although the contract facially permits broad use, OpenAI's retained architectural control over its cloud-only deployment and safety infrastructure …

The Unacceptable Risks Of Uninsured Nonbank Stablecoins: Written Testimony Presented To The Uk House Of Lords' Financial Services Regulation Committee, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This written testimony was submitted to the Financial Services Regulation Committee of the United Kingdom House of Lords, in response to that Committee’s “Call for evidence” on the “Growth and proposed regulation of stablecoins in the UK,” https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/3845/. This testimony provides an overview of the global stablecoin market and the current leading uses of stablecoins. The testimony also describes the unacceptable dangers that uninsured nonbank stablecoins pose to financial stability, economic welfare, consumer protection, monetary policy, regulatory compliance, and law enforcement. The testimony presents the following policy recommendations:

(1) Stablecoins should be regulated in the same way as bank deposits. …

Justice Kagan’S Presidential Administration Article Twenty-Five Years Later, Richard J. Pierce Jr

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article is a contribution to a symposium on the durability of the famous article that Visiting Professor (now Justice) Kagan wrote in 2001 in her successful effort to obtain a tenured position on the Harvard faculty. The title of the article was “Presidential Administration.” Professor Kagan described the history of efforts to govern the administrative state and argued in support of the highly personal and overtly political approach taken by her former boss, President Clinton.

Professor Pierce begins by discussing at length agency adjudication--an important topic that Professor Kagan discussed in only a few paragraphs. He concludes that Professor …

Information Regulation As Antidiscrimination, Naomi Schoenbaum

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Employment discrimination law is under sustained retrenchment, nowhere more so than in hiring, the gateway to work and the foundation of equal employment opportunity. A recent executive order declared the disparate impact theory—a key doctrine of hiring equality—unconstitutional and barred its use by the federal government. The Supreme Court’s curtailment of race-conscious admissions has cast serious doubt on the future of affirmative action in employment. Enforcement agencies have redirected their efforts, abandoning disparate impact suits, scrutinizing employers’ diversity initiatives, and soliciting claims by white men. These developments further weaken a regime that has long struggled to redress discrimination at the …

The Promise Of Artificial Intelligence For Identifying And Interpreting The Sources Of International Law, Sean D. Murphy

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Sir Michael Wood’s remarkable career was deeply enmeshed in the pragmatics of international law; how to make it work as a part of the lawyering that occurs daily in foreign ministries, international organizations, and courts or tribunals. Yet that focus on practical lawyering did not allow him to eschew broader considerations of doctrine and even theory. While his work on the International Law Commission as Special Rapporteur for Identification of Customary International Law was motivated by a sense that national court judges struggled to understand the basic parameters of that source of law, the work necessarily entailed grappling with some …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Steven L. Schooner And Gregory C. Sisk In Support Of Petitioners' Combined Petition For Panel Rehearing And Rehearing En Banc In Syneren Technologies Corp., Et Al, V. United States (U.S. Federal Circuit), April 6, 2026., Steven L. Schooner, Gregory C. Sisk, Travis L. Mullaney

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This is an amicus brief in support of a petition for rehearing (and rehearing en banc) in Syneren Technologies Corp., et al, v. United States (No. 2024-1424). Amici are law professors interested in ensuring that bedrock principles of administrative law, including Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) standards, are applied to ensure that federal agencies act with integrity, accountability, and engage in fair and regular processes that do not subject contractors to arbitrary and capricious government action.

The brief advocates for U.S. Federal Circuit en banc rehearing on the issue of whether a federal agency can unilaterally, and without leave of the …

The Gsa’S Draft Ai Clause Is Governance By Sledgehammer, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The General Services Administration's proposed contract clause, GSAR 552.239-7001, attempts to embed AI governance into federal procurement through a single default instrument applied across GSA's commercial buying channels. The clause addresses real gaps in federal AI acquisition, including inadequate transparency, weak exit rights, insufficient testing authority, opaque supply chains, and unchecked vendor dependency. But it responds by aggregating buyer protections, operational control, sourcing mandates, and politically derived performance conditions into one overburdened clause. This essay examines what the draft gets right, where it overreaches, and why the federal government's rapid shift from an AI governance vacuum to a sweeping, politically …

Chapter 2: Do We Still Believe In Process? Democracy And The Fundamental Value Of Dialog Across Difference, Paul S. Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay surveys a few of the many ways to understand what democracy actually is and how to evaluate when it exists and when it is lost. Ultimately, I argue for a pluralist vision that emphasizes both democracy and law's potential ability to bring multiple communities and differing worldviews into dialog with each other. But no conception of democracy can survive unless people are willing to embrace the idea that a fair process can lead to an undesired outcome and that, therefore, even those who lose in a process can have sufficient faith in that process to abide by and …

Taking Stock Of Comparative Law Teaching In U.S. Legal Education, Francesca Bignami, Irene Calboli

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For over 25 years, U.S. law schools have sought to globalize their curricula, reflecting the increasing interconnectedness and international scope of legal practice. Although there have been efforts to take stock of the impact of globalization on law schools, the vast majority have focused on international law, not comparative law. This U.S. National Report, written for the International Academy of Comparative Law’s 2026 Congress, fills the knowledge gap. In summer and fall 2024, we conducted a survey that examined course offerings, requirements, and opportunities for JD students. The survey was supplemented by interviews and a literature review of law schools …

Taking Legal Pluralism Seriously: Federalism, Diversity Jurisdiction, And The Erie Doctrine, Paul S. Berman, Emma Bjeldanes

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The U.S. Supreme Court’s watershed decision in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins is sometimes read to require federal judges hearing claims based on federal diversity jurisdiction to apply state law, essentially as if the case were being decided in a state court. The doctrine therefore appears to create a categorical rule disempowering federal courts from ever departing from state law, despite the Constitution’s grant of federal jurisdiction. However, as the Court’s 2026 Erie case, Berk v. Choy, makes clear, sometimes the Erie analysis is used to empower federal courts to override clear state policy choices embodied in state law simply …

The Evolving Procurement Fraud Landscape: Emerging Risks For Government Contractors, Jessica Tillipman, Sarah Needham

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Briefing Paper examines the evolving procurement fraud enforcement landscape and identifies emerging risk areas that government contractors should monitor. While procurement fraud has long been an enforcement priority across administrations, the current Department of Justice has aggressively expanded its use of the False Claims Act (FCA) and related authorities, embedding fraud enforcement into the contractor compliance infrastructure through new task forces, mandatory contract clauses, Federal Acquisition Regulation deviations, and disclosure obligations aligned with current policy priorities including cybersecurity, anti-discrimination, and trade compliance.

The Paper begins by mapping the federal fraud enforcement taxonomy, distinguishing among criminal fraud provisions under Title …

Erie And The Constitution's Constraints On General Law, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Constitution of 1787 was the instrument by which the people of the States made a partial and conditional transfer of sovereign authority to a new federal government. To preserve the States’ residual sovereignty, the Constitution established a system of conditional federal supremacy. Specifically, it made the federal government’s ability to displace of state law contingent on compliance with specific structural and procedural safeguards. The Supremacy Clause identifies only three sources of “the supreme Law of the Land”—the Constitution, laws enacted pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority. For each of these sources of law, the Constitution specifies …

Misinformation In Parental Alienation Discourse Can Mislead Courts And Endanger Children, Joan S. Meier

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Common social science assertions by parental alienation proponents – in expert opinions, judicial trainings and scholarship – can persuade judges that parental alienation is both so real and so destructive that it requires the draconian remedies of removal of children from a loving, physically safe parent and/or forcing them into contact with a parent they fear. These assertions are typically stated as though they are research-based or well-established. Review of cited or other relevant research, however, shows that these assertions are misinformation, unsupported by and/or contrary to established research. This article explores two such claims: first, that children’s fear or …

Clickwrap Accountability, Alicia Solow-Niederman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Picture a public-facing generative AI chatbot on a government website that can answer questions about benefits eligibility.  Systems like these expose a sociotechnical-legal divide: they route around the standard due process framework, because there has been no formal government determination, yet they induce reliance from users, above and beyond past rounds of automated legal guidance.  Moreover, if there is an error, current doctrine on government errors and equitable estoppel makes relief unlikely.

This Essay focuses on government deployment of public-facing generative AI chatbots and critically assesses the front-end power dynamics that determine who is filtered out of government programs before …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professor Steven L. Schooner In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellees And Affirmance In Epa Et Al. V Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Inc. Et Al., (U.S. Fourth Circuit, 25-1808), May 19, 2026., Steven L. Schooner, David Livshiz, Nathaniel Castellano, Jayna Rust, Catherine Katz, Miguel Serrano

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This is an amicus brief in support of affirmance in EPA et al. v Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, Inc. et al., (D.C. Md. 1:25-cv-01096).  Amicus is interested in ensuring that contractors, grantees, and others who do business with the Government and/or participate in Government funded programs are treated fairly when pursuing their rights and remedies and also ensuring that public institutions (particularly the courts) appreciate and account for the many ways that Congressional mandates, public contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and other funding mechanisms impact  the public's quality of life.

The brief asserts that the Government errs and does a …

Selective Prosecution In The Age Of Trump: The Presumption Of Regularity Problem, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

After taking office for the second time in January 2025, President Donald J. Trump repeatedly and openly called for then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, which she led, to investigate and prosecute Trump’s perceived enemies. At the same time, several of Trump’s current and former cabinet members, who allegedly had committed similar or worse criminal acts, were not prosecuted, raising concerns that the Department of Justice is not administering justice fairly.

Even though the prosecutor’s charging discretion is broad, it is not supposed to be unfettered. One way that prosecutorial charging discretion can be checked is …

Promoting Firearm Industry Accountability For Civil And Human Rights Abuses In The United States Through Strategic Transnational Litigation, Arturo J. Carrillo, Jonathan E. Lowy, Emily Fallin

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) have made substantial in-roads across a range of industries, but the firearm industry is not one of them. The United States is the largest producer of firearms for civilian acquisition in the world, yet U.S. firearm manufacturers, sellers, and distributors remain generally impervious to regulation. Moreover, federal and state legislation provides unique legal protections for firearm industry actors, rendering them largely shielded from accountability for contributing to gun deaths and injuries. This creates a paradox that fuels the endemic gun violence crisis in the United States and throughout the …

The Future Of Governance, Richard J. Pierce Jr

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this contribution to a symposium, Professor Pierce describes the traditional ways in which we have governed the federal regulatory process and then describes the major changes in the legal and political environment that require us to create a new regulatory governance structure. He concludes that we need to take three steps: (1) change the primary election process in every state from a closed primary to either an open primary or a bipartisan primary; (2) defend the rulemaking process from the many attacks on it; and (3) be prepared to abandon the traditional structure of agency adjudications in favor of …

The Union Gospel Mission Cases, Church Autonomy, And Co-Religionist Hiring: A Response To Professor Esbeck, Robert W. Tuttle, Peter J. Smith

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Courts have increasingly applied a doctrine of church autonomy to resolve claims involving religious organizations. A recent decision of the Ninth Circuit invoked the doctrine to permit religious employers to favor co-religionists in hiring, even for non-ministerial positions. Professor Carl Esbeck has written a thoughtful critique of the court’s decision. This essay responds to Esbeck and, more broadly, provides a criticism of church autonomy doctrine and a roadmap for decision when the Ninth Circuit’s opinion is reviewed en banc. In our view, courts should apply a doctrine of ecclesiastical abstention, which prevents them from resolving specifically religious questions. But we …

Prediction Of Psychological Alienation From Psychological Capital Among Mothers Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder In The Sultanate Of Oman, Azhaar Saif Saud Al Basami, Muna Abdullah Al-Bahrani, Ali Mahdi Kazem

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

The aim of the current study is to examine the prediction of psychological alienation through psychological capital, while also measuring the levels of psychological capital and psychological alienation among mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.”. The study applied a descriptive predictive methodology and the sample consisted of 432 mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder, who were accessed using the convenience sampling method. The Psychological Capital Scale developed by Luthans et al. (2007) and the Psychological Alienation Scale developed by Dean (1961) were used in this study.The study found several results, including the low level of psychological capital among …

The Soft Target Curriculum: Using Nigeria's 2026 Cascading Breaches To Teach Foundational Cybersecurity Failures, Chinedum Amaechi, Doris Asogwa, Samuel Alade

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

SourceURL:file:///home/amaechi/Documents/ *Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice (JCERP)*. **Title:** The Soft Target Curriculum: Using Nigeria's 2026 Cascading Breaches to Teach Foundational Cybersecurity Failures.docx

Background: Between March and April 2026, a single threat actor allegedly compromised four Nigerian institutions across banking, payment infrastructure, government registry, and power distribution sectors. The breaches exposed millions of records and disrupted critical services, yet all four exploited elementary vulnerabilities taught in introductory cybersecurity courses. Objective: This pedagogical case study analyzes the four breaches as a unified phenomenon of "normalized negligence" and provides ready-to-use teaching materials for cybersecurity educators. Methods: Using open-source intelligence analysis of …

Schelling & Spinoza, Michael Vater

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

Schelling is notorious for having a fluid vision of systematic philosophy and its methods. In an age where philosophy is expected to result in one or two books, not years of discussions with students and colleagues--and certainly not a distillation of one’s way of life--Schelling’s thought has been called protean or restless, or in Hegel’s snarky verdict “an education pursued in public.” The same could be said of Socrates. But there is a truth in these comments; it is difficult to find in fifty-six years of publications, addresses and abandoned manuscripts the single argument that is Schelling’s philosophy. What provokes …

Most Utahns Support Affirming Rights Of Great Salt Lake, Sarah A. Woodbury, Kirsten Vinyeta, Jessica D. Ulrich-Schad, Darren Parry

Utah People and Environment Poll (UPEP)

A combination of water diversions and climate change-related shifts have led to record low water levels and increasing salinity at Great Salt Lake (GSL) (1, 2).  Low water levels not only impact those directly dependent on the lake—brine shrimpers and migratory birds, for example—but also the millions of individuals living along the Wasatch Front. Increasing toxic dust levels from exposed lakebed and potential shifts to snowpack in the region are of primary concern. Children and marginalized communities are especially vulnerable to the respiratory health impacts of toxic dust (3, 4). According to the 2023 Utah People & Environment Poll (UPEP), …