Law and Society Commons^™

Regulating Police Robots, Farhang Heydari, Max Isaacs, Barry Friedman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Once considered a mere novelty, ground robots and aerial drones are quickly becoming a mainstream policing tool. Autonomous police robots, equipped with a panoply of cameras and sensors, have been sent into parks, schools, and train stations. Agencies across the country are piloting “Drone as First Responder” programs, which automatically dispatch drones in response to 911 calls. Police have used robots to disorient, immobilize, and use force against suspects.

Police robots may provide public safety benefits, but they may also carry real risks. The widespread adoption of highly mobile robots equipped with cameras, sensors, and analytics will only hasten the …

Rethinking Objectivity: The Problem Of Pretext In The Fourth Amendment, Monu S. Bedi

Indiana Law Journal

Pretextual encounters continue to erode the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Simply put, a police officer can act on personal bias or animus as long as the search or seizure is deemed “objectively reasonable.” Numerous scholars (e.g., Bennett Capers, Gabriel Chin, and David Harris) have critiqued this objective standard, contending it perpetuates discriminatory practices, particularly against communities of color. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself suggested that the Court might need to reconsider the legal precedent she helped establish. More recently, Orin Kerr has also argued that the Court’s reliance on objective determinations is inconsistent with …

Systemically Valuable Transaction Costs, Mitchell C. Johnston

Indiana Law Journal

Ronald Coase’s famous theorem tells us that in a world without transaction costs, legal entitlements would be distributed efficiently. It is often treated as a corollary of the Coase Theorem that reductions in transaction costs generate increases in welfare as barriers to efficiency-increasing transactions fall. To be sure, not all voluntary transactions are efficiency increasing (for example, some transactions create negative externalities). In such cases, scholars have noted that transaction costs may inhibit socially inefficient transactions. But the situation is more complex. Drawing on ideas from systems theory, this Article advances a more complete theory of when transaction costs support …

Information Law Pluralism, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Information-intensive activities are reshaping political, social, and economic institutions. As they respond to these shifts, legislators and regulators are embracing information as a regulatory device for tech. Far from limiting themselves to public disclosure, consumer notice, and other traditional mechanisms of fostering transparency and information flows, however, legislators are using other, more nuanced tools to incentivize regulated entities to obtain, generate, and share information.

This Article maps the landscape of the emerging information-based regimes for regulating tech and assesses their conceptual and practical implications. It canvasses an extensive set of recently enacted laws regulating the information economy and shows that, …

The Gamification Of Banking, Colleen Baker, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

Gamification is coming to banking. This phenomenon is already gain-ing ground in advertising, healthcare, manufacturing, and, more recently, with the GameStop and AMC meme stock saga in securities trading. The idea behind gamification is to make transactions seem fun, playful, and even casino-like in order to elicit habit-forming, addictive-like effects with consumers. This Article argues that the rise of financial technology (“fintech”) firms and their ever-growing business relationships with incumbent financial institutions has created the necessary conditions for gamification to take hold in the banking sector. In order to explore this observation, we undertake a study of current examples of …

27th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act (Powerpoint Slides) 08-01-2025, Attorney General State Of Rhode Island

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Middle Schoolers Explore The Rule Of Law At Second Annual Mandell-Boisclair Justice Camp 7-17-2025, Jordan J. Phelan

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Middle Schoolers Explore The Rule Of Law At Second Annual Mandell-Boisclair Justice Camp 07-17-2025, Jordan J. Phelan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Making The Margins Visible: Dignity At Work And The Promise Of Puttaswamy—Review Of Gendered Bodies And Worlds Of Labour: Reconceptualizing Dignity After Puttaswamy Vs Union Of India, Shreya Shree

National Law School Journal

This review examines Kalpana Kannabiran and Devi Jagani’s reimagination of dignity as a framework for securing justice in gendered labourscapes. By centering a broad and dynamic understanding of dignity as a right, an inherent characteristic, and an enabling condition for rights-talk, the book advances new ways of articulating rights-claims through an intersectional and interdisciplinary reading of the Indian Constitution. The review highlights the significance of this approach in renewing understandings of the worker, labour, discrimination, and rights, while exploring its possibilities and limits in confronting violence and injustices embedded in gendered labour relations within the domestic sphere and beyond.

Artificial Intelligence: An Impetus To Amend The Aba Model Code Of Judicial Conduct, Davis G. Yee

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Notwithstanding the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence or AI in the legal field, Chief Justice Roberts recently predicted that “human judges will be around for a while.” The reason is that at this time, AI cannot perform judicial mental functions as well as human judges can in deciding cases. Yet, instead of having AI replace human judges, some have explored whether AI can be used to assist human judges with their adjudicative and administrative responsibilities.

This Article focuses on a judge’s ethical obligations when encountering AI on both sides of the bench. That is, what do judicial ethics call for …

Guide To Sec And Business Open Source Corporate Intelligence, Lawrence J. Trautman, Brian Elzweig, Neal F. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

An agency of the U.S. intelligence community observes, "The explosion of open source intelligence (OSINT) in recent years has transformed how governments and people around the world consume and process information about society and global issues." It is likely that "We all use open-source and probably don't even realize it, but we also use it for different reasons. You might use open-source information to do a credibility check and to find out more about the person selling you something on Facebook marketplace." Others "may research someone… met on a dating app or before hiring someone for a job." Every use …

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

Target(Ed) Advertising, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Targeted advertising—using data about consumers to customize the ads they receive—is deeply controversial. It also creates a regulatory quandary. Targeted ads generate more money than untargeted ones for apps and online platforms. Apps and platforms depend on this revenue stream to offer free services to users, if not for their financial viability altogether. However, targeted advertising also generates significant privacy risks and consumer resentment. Despite sustained attention to this issue, neither legal scholars nor policymakers have crafted interventions that address both concerns, and existing regulatory regimes for targeted advertising have critical gaps.

This Article makes three key contributions to the …

Normalizing Facial Recognition Technology And The End Of Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Judy Hyojoo Rhee

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that facial recognition technology is the most dangerous surveillance tool ever invented. Given the unique threats this morally suspect tool poses to privacy, civil liberties, human flourishing, and democracy, the only appropriate response is a ban. To justify our position, we explain why facial recognition is distinctive among biometrics, clarify how even seemingly benign and positive uses of the technology can trigger dangerous normalization dynamics, and pinpoint why current United States laws (with reverberations in the EU’s AI Act) are designed to accelerate a slippery slope that makes mass surveillance nearly inevitable. Our most fundamental contribution lies …

Policing Gender: The Interest Convergence Of Women's And Transgender Rights, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

The social, political, and legal landscape has seen a resurgence of gender fundamentalism, seeking to reinforce archaic notions of what it means to be a woman. Social media movements run in tandem with this resurgence of gender fundamentalism. For instance, the “tradwife” phenomenon that romanticizes a domestic, subservient role for women.¹ Alabama Senator Katie Britt most infamously reflected the convergence of these trends when she delivered her response to the State of the Union from a kitchen table and proclaimed that her message was “a direct appeal” to her “fellow moms.”² Meanwhile, executive orders and state laws have …

Ai Ethics, Law, And Policy, Pauline Kim, Ryan Durrie

Scholarship@WashULaw

AI technologies promise many benefits, but they can also have significant negative impacts on human health, safety, well-being, and fundamental rights. This chapter explores the different governance tools that have been considered for guiding developments in AI in socially beneficial ways, examining the relevance of ethics, law, and policy. Each of these approaches offer tools to address these concerns; however, each has limitations, and none provides a complete solution in itself. Statements of ethical principles can articulate high-level values and goals to guide behavior but are usually quite vague and difficult to operationalize. They also lack any enforcement mechanism. In …

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

Law School News: Transforming Adversity Into Advocacy 9-4-2024, Andrew Clark, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Office Of Attorney General: Peter F. Neronha, Attorney General: Access To Public Records Act ; Open Meetings Act (Powerpoint Presentation), Office Of The Attorney General Of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Machine Speech: Towards A Unified Doctrine Of Attribution And Control, Brian Sites

University of Miami Law Review

Like many courts across the country in 2023, courts in the Eleventh Circuit were met with novel claims challenging ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools. These cases raise common questions: How should courts treat the speech of machines? When a machine generates allegedly defamatory material, who is the speaker—mortal or machine? When a machine generates expressive creations, who is the artist, and does that shape copyright eligibility? When a machine makes assertions about reality through lab analyses and other forensic reports, who is the accuser, and how does the answer impact a defendant’s rights at trial? Should those answers stem …

The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha

Faculty Scholarship

Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible. Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …

Are Handguns A Matter Of Privacy?, Bret N. Bogenschneider

St. Mary's Law Journal

The thesis developed in this Article is that the Heller and Bruen cases involved primarily right-to-privacy concerns. By its terms, the Second Amendment involves the collective right to bear Arms in connection to regulated militia service and does not mention handguns. Handguns were not “ordinary military weapons” employed by a militia at the time of the American revolution under the originalist view. The Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments are more appropriate sources for an individual privacy right related to the possession of handguns for private purposes, such as for self-defense or suicide. However, a prohibition of handguns under this approach would …

Office Of Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, Attorney General: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act, Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

25th Annual Open Government Summit: Your Guide To The Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, Peter F. Neronha, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Asking For It: Gendered Dimensions Of Surveillance Capitalism, Jessica Rizzo

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Advertising and privacy were once seen as mutually antagonistic. In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans went to court to fight for their right to be free from the invasion of privacy presented by unwanted advertising, but a strange realignment took place in the 1970s. Radical feminists were among those who were extremely concerned about the collection and computerization of personal data—they worried about private enterprise getting a hold of that data and using it to target women—but liberal feminists went in a different direction, making friends with advertising because they saw it as strategically valuable.

Liberal feminists argued that in …

Standing Up To Hackers: Article Iii Standing For Victims Of Data Breaches, Kendall Coffey

University of Miami Law Review

Despite the increasing amount of data breaches, there is no liability for parties who do not adequately protect victim’s information. In federal court, plaintiffs must show that their injury was concrete, particularized, and imminent. But, when plaintiffs’ information has been stolen, but not yet criminally used, they may be unable to establish a right to relief. Victims face challenges when seeking damage for this future harm, because despite their destroyed privacy, they may not have evidence of a perpetrator’s actual misuse of purloined data. This Article analyzes multiple court decisions, generally in the setting of class-actions, and discusses outcomes of …

Hanging In The Balance: An Assessment Of European Versus American Data Privacy Laws And Threats To U.S. National Security, Dara Paleski

American University National Security Law Brief

Social media has quickly become an integral part of modern-day life, keeping the world connected to friends, family and current events. Social media, and the data collected from it, also play a crucial role in intelligence gathering and the safeguarding of national security. It is estimated that about 80-95% of information that is collected for intelligence missions is found freely throughout the internet or other publicly available sources. This type of information has been dubbed SOCMINT (Social Media Intelligence) and it has become a crucial tool within the intelligence community. After the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013 revealed a global …

Inadequate Privacy: The Necessity Of Hipaa Reform In A Post-Dobbs World, Katherine Robertson

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Comment will provide an overview of HIPAA and the legal impacts of Dobbs. Part II will discuss the anticipatory response to the impacts of Dobbs on PHI by addressing the response from (1) the states, (2) the Biden Administration, and (3) the medical field. Part III will discuss the loopholes that exist in HIPAA and further address the potential impacts on individuals and the medical field if reform does not occur. Finally, Part IV will argue that the reform of HIPAA is the best avenue for protecting PHI related to reproductive healthcare.

An Essay About Privacy, Ronald Griffin

Journal Publications

Jessye Norman was an American opera singer. She died on October 1, 2019. On October 2, 2019, my wife got a grim diagnosis that put me in a stupor and reminded me, now more than ever, that my generation (that did so much good in the world) stands in line waiting for the Grim Reaper’s call. In a seventy-years (that have gone by too fast) I have watched my peers run from the realms of privacy, spaces where people implemented life plans uninterrupted by neighbours that were discernible, palpable, and real to everybody, to a realm where there is none. …