Law Commons^™

Analyzing The Potential For Universal Disarmament Of Autonomous Weapons Systems Or How I Learned To Stop Working And Love The Killer Robot, Frank Nicholas Kelly

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) have recently become the subject of debate among scholars, world leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the popular media. While the dangers of autonomous robotics have existed for decades in science fiction, technology has only recently made the implementation of robots capable of military combat a real possibility. With the advent of this technology, many government leaders, politicians, scientists, and business leaders are advancing the argument that just because autonomous weapons can exist does not mean they should. Some countries, however, have demonstrated a strong interest in the continued developing LAWS, making universal disarmament unlikely. This …

Integrating Machine Learning In Law: A Precis Of Best Practices For Initial Law Firm Adoption, J. Mark Phillips

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Much of the mystery surrounding machine learning lays not just in how it functions, but in how it is applied. This is especially true in the field of law, where the implementation of artificial intelligence has lagged other fields. This précis distills best practices of machine learning implementation and applies them succinctly to the unique environment of law. Guiding principles and considerations are provided for the technology team, the nature of law firm data, and the commitment level of the adopting law firm.

The Infinite Legal Acumen Of An Artificial Mind: How Machine Learning Can Permanently Capture Legal Expertise And Optimize The Law Firm Pyramid, J. Mark Phillips

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

As the legal industry gradually integrates artificial intelligence (AI) into its practice, the underlying technology continues to advance at a fever pitch. Machine learning platforms arguably represent the pinnacle of AI development, and this technology currently augments and replicates intelligent human tasks in ways never before conceived. The business applications of machine learning are bearing fruit across a spectrum of industries and professions. Yet despite machine learning’s demonstrated promise, its forays into the legal industry have been uneven. In fact, the most advanced forms of machine learning have been relegated primarily to lower-level attorney tasks such as e-discovery, due-diligence, and …

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Real Implications Of Blockchain In The Legal Industry, Justin Evans

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

Crow Indian Tribe V. United States, Hallee Kansman

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The protection status of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear continues to elicit debate and find its way into the courtroom. In Crow Indian Tribe v. United States, for the second time in the last decade, a court held the Service’s attempt to delist the Yellowstone Grizzly arbitrary and capricious. Specifically, the court found the Service’s evaluation of remnant populations, recalibration, and genetic health deficient. This case demonstrates the importance in and the resilient motivation behind preserving grizzly bear populations and genetics. As the practice of delisting a species under the Endangered Species Act continues, this case will provide important …

Lawyer As Soothsayer: Exploring The Important Role Of Outcome Prediction In The Practice Of Law, Mark K. Osbeck

Articles

Outcome prediction has always been an important part of practicing law. Clients rely heavily on their attorneys to provide accurate assessments of the potential legal consequences they face when making important decisions (such as whether to accept a plea bargain, or risk a conviction on a much more serious offense at trial). And yet, notwithstanding its enormous importance to the practice of law (and notwithstanding the handsome legal fees it commands), outcome prediction in the law remains a very imprecise endeavor. The reason for this inaccuracy is that the three principal tools lawyers have traditionally relied on to facilitate outcome …

Evolving Autonomous Vehicle Technology And The Erosion Of Privacy, Raquel Toral

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Rutabaga That Ate Pittsburgh: Federal Regulation Of Free Release Biotechnology, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Michael Vandenbergh

When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first approved a field test of a bioengineered microbe,' one EPA official remarked: "We're not expecting this to be the rutabaga that eats Pittsburgh.' 2 But regulators cannot afford to be wrong. Bioengineered microbes may serve many useful purposes, but they may also cause harm to the environment and to human health.3 Although the risks of an accident stemming from the deliberate release of bioengineered microbes into the environment may be low, the resulting damage could be substantial. This note examines the possible consequences of two recent trends in biotechnology-the development of bioengineered microbes …

Paul Baran, Network Theory, And The Past, Present, And Future Of Internet, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Paul Baran’s seminal 1964 article “On Distributed Communications Networks” that first proposed packet switching also advanced an underappreciated vision of network architecture: a lattice-like, distributed network, in which each node of the Internet would be homogeneous and equal in status to all other nodes. Scholars who have subsequently embraced the concept of a lattice-like network approach have largely overlooked the extent to which it is both inconsistent with network theory (associated with the work of Duncan Watts and Albert-László Barabási), which emphasizes the importance of short cuts and hubs in enabling networks to scale, and the actual way, the Internet …

Bots, Bias And Big Data: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithmic Bias And Disparate Impact Liability In Hiring Practices, Mckenzie Raub

Arkansas Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using The Engagedmd Multimedia Platform To Improve Informed Consent For Ovulation Induction, Intrauterine Insemination, And In Vitro Fertilization, Jody L. Madeira, Jennifer Rehbein, Mindy S. Christianson, Miryoung Lee, J. Preston Parry, Guido Pennings, Steven R. Lindheim Md

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Objective: To study patient and provider feedback on how a multimedia platform (EngagedMD) helps patients to understand the risks and consequences of in vitro fertilization (IVF), ovulation induction (OI), and intrauterine insemination (IUI) treatments and the impact of the informed consent process.

Design: Prospective survey study.

Setting: IVF units in the United States.

Patient(s): Six-thousand three-hundred and thirty-three patients who viewed the multimedia platform before IVF or OI-IUI treatment at 13 U.S. IVF centers and 128 providers.

Intervention(s): Quantitative survey with 17 questions.

Main Outcome Measure(s): Assessment of the impact of a multimedia platform on patient anxiety, comprehension, and satisfaction …

Populist Placemaking: Grounds For Open Government-Citizen Spatial Regulating Discourse, Michael N. Widener

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Halted Innovation: The Expansion Of Federal Jurisdiction Over Medicine And The Human Body, Myrisha S. Lewis

Faculty Publications

Modern medical innovations are blurring the line between medical practice and medical devices and drugs. Historically, many techniques have been developed in medicine, without any interference from the federal government, as medical practice is (and has historically been) an area of state jurisdiction. Over the past two decades, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been exerting jurisdiction over the human body and the practice of medicine by targeting new medical techniques for oversight and subjecting the continued use of those treatments to onerous and legally questionable regulatory requirements that hinder the use of those treatments in practice. …

How Google Perceives Customer Privacy, Cyber, E-Commerce, Political And Regulatory Compliance Risks, Lawrence J. Trautman

William & Mary Business Law Review

By now, almost every business has an Internet presence. What are the major risks perceived by those engaged in the universe of Internet businesses? What potential risks, if they become reality, may cause substantial increases in operating costs or threaten the very survival of the enterprise?

This Article discusses the relevant annual report disclosures from Alphabet, Inc. (parent of Google), along with other Google documents, as a potentially powerful teaching device. Most of the descriptive language to follow is excerpted directly from Alphabet’s (Google) regulatory filings. My additions about these entities include weaving their disclosure materials into a logical presentation …

Digital Gold: Cybersecurity Regulations And Establishing The Free Trade Of Big Data, Victoria Conrad

William & Mary Business Law Review

Data is everywhere. With more than ten billion Internetenabled devices worldwide, each day individuals create a flood of information that is transferred onto the Internet as big data. Businesses that have the resources to capture and utilize data can better understand their consumers, allowing for reinforcement of customer relationship management, improvements to the management of operational risk, and enhancement of overall firm performance. However, big data’s advantages come with high costs. The cost of organization and storage coupled with the fact that no legal principle allows for any sort of property rights in big data creates a “digital divide” between …

“Fly Home Ye Ravens!”: How The Fcc’S Abandonment Of Broadband Regulation Will Harm Music Diversity, Batty, Luke

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

“Fly Home Ye Ravens!”: How the FCC’s Abandonment of Broadband Regulation Will Harm Music Diversity

I, Copyright, Huson, Garrett

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

I, Copyright

From Bits To Atoms: Does The Open Source Software Model Translate To Open Source Hardware?, Beldiman, Dana

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

From Bits to Atoms: Does the Open Source Software Model

Translate to Open Source Hardware?

Three Questions That Will Make You Rethink The U.S.-China Intellectual Property Debate, 7 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 412 (2008), Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Commentators have attributed China’s piracy and counterfeiting problems to the lack of political will on the part of Chinese authorities. They have also cited the many political, social, economic, cultural, judicial, and technological problems that have arisen as a result of the country’s rapid economic transformation and accession to the WTO. This provocative essay advances a third explanation. It argues that the failure to resolve piracy and counterfeiting problems in China can be partly attributed to the lack of political will on the part of U.S. policymakers and the American public to put intellectual property protection at the very top …

The Political Economy Of Data Protection, Peter K. Yu

Peter K. Yu

Information is the lifeblood of a knowledge-based economy. The control of data and the ability to translate them into meaningful information is indispensable to businesspeople, policymakers, scientists, engineers, researchers, students, and consumers. Having useful, and at times exclusive, information improves productivity, advances education and training, and helps create a more informed citizenry. In the past two decades, those who collected or obtained access to a large amount of data began to explore ways to use the collected data as an income stream. Because the then-existing laws did not offer adequate protection for that particular purpose, they actively lobbied for stronger …

Unfair Misuse: How Section 512 Of The Dmca Allows Abuse Of The Copyright Fair Use Doctrine And How To Fix It, Matteson, Joel D.

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Unfair Misuse: How Section 512 of the DMCA Allows Abuse of the Copyright Fair Use Doctrine and How to Fix It

Model(Ing) Privacy: Empirical Approaches To Privacy Law And Governance, Barrett, Lindsey

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Model(ing) Privacy: Empirical Approaches to Privacy Law and Governance

Drones: Proposed Standards Of Liability, Harris, Kristopher-Kent ‘K-K’

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Drones: Proposed Standards of Liability

Liability Issue Of Domestic Drones, Sehrawat, Vivek

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Liability Issue of Domestic Drones

The Biosimilar Patent Dance- If You Don't Dance You're No Friend Of Mine, Ladonnikov, Alexej

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The Biosimilar Patent Dance- If You Don't Dance Your No Friend of Mine

The Business Of Ai Startups, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Robert Seamans, Lydia Reichensperger

Faculty Scholarship

New machine learning techniques have led to an acceleration of “artificial intelligence” (AI). Numerous papers have projected substantial job losses based on assessments of technical feasibility. But what is the actual impact? This paper reports on a survey of commercial AI startups, documenting rich detail about their businesses and their impacts on their customers. These firms report benefits of AI that are more often about enhancing human capabilities than replacing them. Their applications more often increase professional, managerial, and marketing jobs and decrease manual, clerical, and frontline service jobs. These startups sell to firms of different sizes, in different industries …

Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy: How A Government For The People, Failed The People, Jeffery Mark Sauer

University of Miami Law Review

Despite having the potential to significantly reduce the passage of many lethal diseases and devastating birth defects, mitochondrial replacement therapy—a controversial medical procedure in which mitochondrial RNA from a healthy female replaces the mitochondrial RNA from the intended mother in vitro—will have no place in the United States anytime soon. Under the guise of purported safety concerns and ethical dilemmas, the Republican Congress used its “power of the purse” to halt any and all research furthering mitochondrial replacement therapy, notwithstanding the fact that many leaders in the medical community have advocated for further research. Several developed countries have already implemented …

Regulating Fintech, William Magnuson

William J. Magnuson

The financial crisis of 2008 has led to dramatic changes in the way that finance is regulated: the Dodd-Frank Act imposed broad and systemic regulation on the industry on a level not seen since the New Deal. But the financial regulatory reforms enacted since the crisis have been premised on an outdated idea of what financial services look like and how they are provided. Regulation has failed to take into account the rise of financial technology (or “fintech”) firms and the fundamental changes they have ushered in on a variety of fronts, from the way that banking works, to the …

Western Organization Of Resource Councils V. United States Bureau Of Land Management, Seth Sivinski

Public Land & Resources Law Review

To what extent must the BLM analyze potential climate change impacts where millions of acres of public lands and federal mineral estates are being considered for coal development? Western Organization of Resource Councils v. BLM addresses this, setting the scope for NEPA-mandated environmental impact analysis and reasonable alternative consideration by federal agencies. Judge Brian Morris of the District of Montana eschewed BLM’s assertions that considering climate impacts would be speculative, instead requiring BLM to acknowledge scientific reality and include modern climate science in its NEPA review analysis.

Highway Culverts, Salmon Runs, And The Stevens Treaties: A Century Of Litigating Pacific Northwest Tribal Fishing Rights, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Isaac Stevens, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest during 1854 and 1855. A century and a half later in 2001, the United States joined 21 Indian tribes in filing a Request for Determination in the United States District Court for the District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged the State of Washington had violated those 150-year-old treaties, which remained in effect, by building and maintaining culverts under roads that prevented salmon passage. This litigation eventually reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in favor …