Law Commons^™

Consensus Ad Artificialis: Contract Theory Meets The Genai Mind, Katie Szilagyi, Marina Pavlovic´

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The advent of generative AI (GenAI) has generated shockwaves across industries. Many established professions are grappling with how GenAI’s functionality transforms their daily activities, staying power, and raison d’eˆtre. GenAI’s newfound facility with words and language has rapidly encroached upon the purview of lawyers, whose trade has long been expertise with words. While some worry about lawyers’ place in a GenAI-oriented future economy, others are optimistic about the transformative potential GenAI offers as a tool to the practicing lawyer. Legal service providers have been quick to adopt GenAI tools in the name of efficiency, harnessing its generative power for tasks …

Tokenized Real Estate: The Law And Tech Of Digital Deeds, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of blockchain technology has generated bold claims that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can fundamentally transform real estate. Proponents assert that digital assets can tokenize real property interests: the concept of using digital tokens to represent ownership rights in physical property. Their goal is to allow buyers and sellers to transfer real estate through simple blockchain transactions, thereby eliminating traditional intermediaries, reducing costs, and accelerating deal velocity. This Essay provides the first comprehensive legal analysis examining whether American law actually supports such a direct tokenization of real estate rights.

Our investigation reveals a stark disconnect between technological capability and legal …

Scraping Bad: The Case For A Unified Scraping Framework, Eunchong Moses Park

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores the growing legal and regulatory landscapes of web scraping in the United States and argues that web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework tailored to its unique technological and economic realities. Web scraping allows organizations to collect massive amounts of data essential to their operational needs—often without the consent of data holders. Thus, web scraping has become a powerful engine of innovation used across virtually every sector of the economy but with a serious risk to privacy and property interests. Yet the current U.S. legal framework lacks a coherent regulating structure. Courts and litigants …

A Real Account Of Deep Fakes, Benjamin L.W Sobel

Michigan Law Review

Laws regulating pornographic deepfakes are written to prohibit “digital forgeries,” “false” images, or media “indistinguishable” from “authentic” recordings. Yet the typical anti-deepfake law covers materials that aren’t forgeries, aren’t false, and that reasonable observers can easily distinguish from authentic recordings. Though drafted as if they regulate statements of fact, anti-deepfake laws actually target certain outrageous depictions per se—and rightly so, because pornographic deepfakes cause harm irrespective of their truth or falsity. However, the inapposite language of facts results in statutes with crucial ambiguities. Moreover, because anti-deepfake laws ban outrageous depictions irrespective of the factual assertions they make, they differ fundamentally …

Judicial Underreach: Tiktok Inc. V. Garland'S Implications For National Security And Free Speech, Olivia Sharp

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

The Domestic Mirror: Tiktok V. Garland, Data Privacy, And Meaningful Free Expression, Olivia Sharp

Colorado Law Student Scholars

No abstract provided.

We Robot 2025: Connecting Global Robotics And Ai Governance Experts In Canada, Kristen Thomasen, Suzie Dunn

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This special We Robot issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Technology is particularly ‘‘special” to us for a variety of reasons. It presents an important opportunity to highlight the interdisciplinarity required to meaningfully engage with robotics and artificial intelligence (‘‘AI”) regulation. It highlights the growing international connections among law and technology scholars. And it features many of the cutting-edge papers from one of the world’s premier law and robotics conferences, We Robot.

The thirteenth annual We Robot 2025 conference was held at the University of Windsor in April 2025. This conference marked the first ever in-person gathering of …

To Smile Or Not To Smile? What Policymakers Need To Know About The Interplay Between Expressive Robotics And Public Perception, Adeline Schneider, Waseq Billah, Naomi T. Fitter

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The growing presence of autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) in public spaces has introduced new challenges regarding public perception, safety, and policy regulation. While ADRs provide a convenient, contactless delivery solution, there has been little research exploring how their design influences public acceptance and regulatory concerns. This study investigates the impact of expressive robotic features on perceptions of ADRs through a between-subjects online survey comparing two ADR models: the expressive Dax robot and the more widely deployed Starship robot. Participants answered questions about the robots’ expressivity and policy-relevant perceptions surrounding the robot. Findings showed a mix of enhancements from added robot …

Interoperable Ai Regulation, Jennifer Raso

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article explores ‘‘interoperability” as a new goal in AI regulation in Canada and beyond. Drawing on sociotechnical, computer science, and digital government literatures, it traces interoperability’s conceptual genealogy to reveal an underlying politics that prioritizes harmony over discord and consistency over plurality. This politics, the article argues, is in tension with the distinct role of statutory law (as opposed to regulation) in a democratic society. Legislation is not simply a technology through which one achieves the smooth operation of governance. Rather, legislation is better understood as a ‘‘boundary object”: an information system through which members of different communities make …

Generating Personal Data And The Gdpr Conceptualizing, Analyzing, And Recognizing Generated Personal Data, Hideyuki Matsumi

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In 2014, to fight the littering problem, an environmental group posted portraits of potential litterbugs on public streets. The group extracted DNA from tossed cigarettes, coffee cups, or condoms, and generated the possible likeness of individuals whose DNA was found from these items in public. Similarly, in 2017, detectives working on a cold case sent DNA found at the crime scene of a homicide and sexual assault victim from 1990 to a company that claims it ‘‘can turn DNA into a face”. Subsequently, detectives published the ‘‘predicted face” in an attempt to solicit tips from the public. In 2020, they …

R-Ai-Sing Questions: Exploring The Ethical And Legal Landscape Of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Media Of Medicalized Children, Kristen Thomasen, Gregorio Zuniga-Villaneuva, Muhammed Mukadam, David Lysecki

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

When it comes to complex medical care for children, even in a country like Canada with many publicly funded healthcare services, much of the necessary research and holistic support for children and families is financed through private donations. Fundraising campaigns for children’s hospitals and services are common, often featuring movie stars, professional athletes, and many child patients. A range of important charitable activities, providing comfort, services, and necessities such as food and accommodation to children and families, are carried out through fundraising and donations. Fundraising for children’s services is a multibillion-dollar global undertaking. What’s more, it is largely dependent on …

Game Face: Legal Tackle On Facial Recognition And Privacy Rights At Nfl Games, Shanthi E. Senthe

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The unprecedented rapid uptake of facial recognition technology (‘‘FRT”) in commercial and public spaces for data capture and surveillance has entrenched every aspect of our daily lives from mundane tasks, such as grocery store shopping to family and experiential moments, such as participation in spectator sports. As such, the rapid adoption and integration of FRT into sports security is reshaping aspects of sporting events and fan experiences, often without adequate consideration of privacy and ethical implications. Professional sports leagues, specifically the NFL, are in the process of adopting the use of this type of technology to enhance security measures, streamlining …

Augmented Advocacy: Ethical Constraints And Regulatory Gaps In Ai-Driven Legal Practice, Molly M. Rowlands

West Virginia Law Review

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and particularly generative AI (“Gen AI”) is reshaping the legal profession in unprecedented ways. AI-powered tools enhance efficiency, improve accuracy in legal analysis, and expand access to justice by automating research, contract review, litigation support, and predictive analytics. However, these benefits come with significant ethical, regulatory, and procedural challenges, including competency concerns and AI “hallucinations,” data confidentiality risks, algorithmic bias, and the environmental impact of AI-driven computing. This Note critically examines the evolving role of AI in legal practice and evaluates the inadequacies of existing regulatory frameworks—such as Rule 11 of the Federal …

Slurry-As-A-Service: A Modest Proposal On Scalable Pluralistic Alignment For Nutrient Optimization, Rachel Hong, Yael Eiger, Jevan Hutson, Os Keyes, William Agnew

Articles

Pluralistic alignment has emerged as a promising approach for ensuring that large language models (LLMs) faithfully represent the diversity, nuance, and conflict inherent in human values. In this work, we study a high-stakes deployment context—mulching—where automated systems transform selected individuals into nutrientrich slurry for the dual purposes of food security and aesthetic population management. Building on recent pluralistic alignment frameworks, we introduce ValueMulch™, a reproducible training, deployment, and certification pipeline for aligning mulching models (MMs) to a wide range of community norms. Through a real-world testbed spanning 32 communities, we show that ValueMulch™ improves distributional agreement with community mulching preferences …

A Legal Transplant Failure In The Ai Age, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Thailand positions itself as the new AI-driven innovation hub in the Southeast Asia region as Big Tech companies invest billions in building new data centers to power the AI transformations in all sectors in Thailand. An integral part of Thailand’s new ambition is the legal transplant of personal data protection law from Europe. The transplant, however, is of form, not substance, as this Article illustrates the failure through in-depth analysis of Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act and provides evidence of rampant violations and noncompliance by the largest ecommerce conglomerate and SMEs. This Article offers suggestions for Thailand to realign its …

Online Safety (Relief And Accountability) Bill: Further Experiments In Balancing Rights And Responsibilities, Siyuan Chen, Zavier Yu Wu, Jie Ting Lee

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore’s latest legislation to address online harms, the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Bill, was passed in Parliament in November 2025. The legislation, which takes a complainant-centric approach, provides the Commissioner of Online Safety a broad range of powers so that timely redress can be given for reports of online harms such as image abuse, sexual harassment, doxxing, and stalking. Various torts that impose duties on administrators and platforms have also been created. Legislation of this nature invariably raises issues about whether an appropriate balance between freedom and responsibility has been struck. This Legislative Comment analyses some of the more …

Law, Conflict, And Hybrid Warfare: A Teaching Imperative For A Changing World, Cynthia Alkon, Andrea K. Schneider

Articles

Lawyers increasingly find themselves at the frontlines of the battlefield, just not in the traditional sense. Hybrid warfare is a conflict form that combines traditional military offensive measures with nontraditional methods, including the harnessing of legal systems to achieve strategic goals. Lawyers have always been at the frontline of typical legal risk assessment, thinking about a client’s risk of liability or regulation costs generally. Now, lawyers must stand at the ready for a lot more: lawyers must be prepared for cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns using artificial intelligence, the use of court systems to suppress reporting or shield bad actors, and so …

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

Faculty Scholarship

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 …

On Predicting And Stopping Dystopia, Evan Selinger, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Is it reasonable to be dystopian about how the future will likely unfold? We think so. For some time, we have been arguing that facial recognition technology is a perfect tool of oppression, and that its pernicious affordances are leading society down a slippery slope toward the evisceration of privacy by obscurity. This is a soft form of “determinism”—the notion that while technology is not an unstoppable force and the future is not preordained, there nevertheless are identifiable factors, such as the invitingness of affordances, human nature, and incentives that drive technology in certain directions and make some social outcomes …

Friend Or Foe? Generative Ai And Legal Writing, Peter Nemerovski

Maine Law Review

Much has been made in recent years of the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence ("Generative AI") programs in performing law-related tasks. We have learned, for example, that OpenAI's product, GPT-4, is capable of passing the Uniform Bar Exam with flying colors. ChatGPT also earned passing grades on the final exams in four different law school courses. Another study found that "AI assistance consistently induced large declines in the amount of time taken to complete tasks" like drafting complaints, contracts, and employee handbook sections. These and other success stories have led commentators to predict that Generative AI programs "will revolutionize what …

Governing Artificial Intelligence: A Dual-Board Solution To The Corporate Oversight Crisis, Harrison Carter

Brooklyn Law Review

Corporate governance structures have proven fundamentally inadequate for managing the unprecedented challenges of artificial intelligence development, as demonstrated by OpenAI's dramatic 2023 governance crisis and the broader failure of both traditional and hybrid corporate forms to balance massive capital requirements with public safety concerns. Current approaches create three critical failures: structural accountability gaps between boards and management, distorted power dynamics from concentrated capital needs, and an inability to enforce safety commitments against commercial pressure. While companies like Anthropic have attempted innovative private solutions through benefit corporation structures and specialized trusts, these voluntary mechanisms ultimately prove inadequate against the extraordinary pressures …

Police And Ai: When Abundantly Helpful Becomes Intrinsically Harmful, Landon Brickey

Brooklyn Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly crept into nearly all aspects of life, including in government, the criminal justice system, and policing. While Supreme Court Due Process jurisprudence has outlined certain boundaries for police interrogations, much police conduct is left for the states to regulate. Such regulation is sporadic and less restrictive than the public might assume, especially in the realm of police deception. Across jurisdictions, courts allow police to deceptively inform suspects that a witness identified the suspect of the perpetrator of a crime. That the suspect’s finger prints, DNA, or shoe prints were found at the scene of the …

Kodak To Deepfakes: Publicity Rights And Abuse Of Our Likenesses, Michael Goodyear

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Scaling Sustainable Propellants To Address Rocket Emissions: Lessons From The U.S. Aviation Industry, Zhizhou (Josie) Liu

Duke Law & Technology Review

The rapid growth of the U.S. commercial space industry has exposed a profound regulatory gap in addressing rocket emissions. By releasing greenhouse gases and particulates like black carbon, alumina, and water vapor, rocket launches not only contribute to climate change but also accelerate stratospheric ozone depletion. The U.S. aviation industry encountered similar environmental challenges decades ago, which eventually prompted legal and policy frameworks to curtail aviation emission through sustainable fuel technologies. Unlike aviation, however, the space industry now operates in a legal vacuum, with no binding international environmental standards or domestic regulations targeting rocket atmospheric pollution. As rocket emissions penetrate …

The Business Of Ai-Producing Startups: Evidence From A Worldwide Survey, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Robert Seamans

Faculty Scholarship

We report results from a multi-year, worldwide survey of artificial intelligence (AI)-producing startups to describe the types of technologies, frameworks, data protection, and partnerships nascent firms use to develop their AI products. Analyses of our survey findings also inform how startups gather the resources to commercialize their AI applications in alignment with their entrepreneurial strategies, address competitive barriers, and respond to regulations. These data provide initial evidence of the perceived impact of these products on their customers’ tasks and industries, suggesting that these firms’ AI products not only reduce labor costs but augment human capabilities.

The Mark Of Confusion: Untangling The Circuit Split In Trademark Infringement Jurisprudence, Amilcar Torres

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Giving Tree Approach: Balancing Transparency And The Deliberative Process In Judicial Review, Anteo W. Chevere

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Checkmate Or Stalemate: The Epa, California, And The Future Of Waivers Under The Clean Air Act, William B. Gale

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Human Problems: It’S Not Always The Technology’S Fault, Kevin Frazier, Brian L. Frye, Michael Goodyear, Jess Miers

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Data Is Nothing Like Oil: Dusting Off Copyright’S Originality Doctrine For The Ai Age, Carys Craig

All Papers

No abstract provided.