Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Data Governance And The Elasticity Of Sovereignty, Roxana Vatanparast

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Traditionally, the world map and territorially bounded spaces have dominated the ways in which we imagine how states govern, make laws, and exercise their authority. Under this conception, reflected in traditional international law principles of territorial sovereignty, each state would have exclusive authority to govern and make laws over everything concerning the land within its borders. Yet developments like the proliferation of data flows, which are based on divisible, mobile, and interconnected components of data, are not territorially bounded. This presents a challenge to the traditional bases for territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction under international law, which some scholars claim is …

Human-Machine Teaming And Its Legal And Ethical Implications, Jim Q. Chen, Thomas Wingfield

Military Cyber Affairs

Humans rely on machines in accomplishing missions while machines need humans to make them more intelligent and more powerful. Neither side can go without the other, especially in complex environments when autonomous mode is initiated. Things are becoming more complicated when law and ethical principles should be applied in these complex environments. One of the solutions is human-machine teaming, as it takes advantage of both the best humans can offer and the best that machines can provide. This article intends to explore ways of implementing law and ethical principles in artificial intelligence (AI) systems using human-machine teaming. It examines the …

Introduction, Rick Applegate

Public Land & Resources Law Review

No abstract provided.

Asarco Llc V. Atlantic Richfield Co., Llc, Taylor A. Simpson

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2009, Asarco reached a settlement agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency for the arsenic-contaminated East Helena lead smelting facility. As part of the settlement, Asarco was responsible for $111.4 million in cleanup and remediation expenses. Following this payment, Asarco brought a contribution claim under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act against Atlantic Richfield. Finally, in 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Asarco’s remediation expenses of $111.4 million were not eligible for contribution because the costs were not fully incurred. The Ninth Circuit stated that only incurred or concrete, non-speculative future costs can be eligible …

Compulsory Licensing Of Climate Engineering Patents: How Embracing Technology- And Research-Sharing Strategies Brings Us One Step Closer To Solving Climate Change, Buzz Hardin

Arkansas Law Review

The impact of climate change spans the globe and includes increasingly severe and dangerous climate events, including coastal flooding, extreme heat and wildfires, reduced crop yield, and decreased food security. In the United States, if the proper steps toward mitigating or reversing the effects of climate change are not taken, it is very likely that the United States will experience substantial damage to its economy, the health of its citizens, and the environment. In response to the challenges presented by climate change, the number of inventions in the field of climate engineering, or “geoengineering,” has skyrocketed over the past several …

The Ftc And Ai Governance: A Regulatory Proposal, Michael Spiro

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Commercializing Cannabis: Confronting The Challenges And Uncertainty Of Trademark And Trade Secret Protection For Cannabis-Related Businesses, John Mixon

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Over the last couple of decades, society has become more accepting of recreational cannabis and an ever-growing number of states have passed pro-cannabis legislation. With this change, the cannabis industry has, to some extent, exploded into a booming enterprise in states that have legalized marijuana. Nonetheless, cannabis' status as a Schedule I banned substance under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 remains unchanged. As a result, businesses in the cannabis industry face the unique challenge of having to toe the line between "legally" operating under state law and violating federal law, which trumps state law. One particular situation in which …

Law Enforcement’S Use Of Facial Recognition Software In United States Cities, Samantha Jean Wunschel

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Facial recognition software is something we use every day, whether it’s a suggested tag on our Facebook post or a faster way to unlock our phones. As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in our lives, law enforcement has adapted to utilize the new tools available in accessory to their investigations and the legal process.

Ethical Testing In The Real World: Evaluating Physical Testing Of Adversarial Machine Learning, Kendra Albert, Maggie Delano, Jonathon W. Penney, Afsaneh Rigot, Ram Shankar Siva Kumar

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper critically assesses the adequacy and representativeness of physical domain testing for various adversarial machine learning (ML) attacks against computer vision systems involving human subjects. Many papers that deploy such attacks characterize themselves as “real world.” Despite this framing, however, we found the physical or real-world testing conducted was minimal, provided few details about testing subjects and was often conducted as an afterthought or demonstration. Adversarial ML research without representative trials or testing is an ethical, scientific, and health/safety issue that can cause real harms. We introduce the problem and our methodology, and then critique the physical domain testing …

International Moots And The Demands Of Modern Legal Practice: Relooking The Role Of Firms, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The demands of modern legal practice are such that the young law graduate is expected to be as practice-prepared as possible right off the bat: able to analyse, research, draft, write, advise, and even advocate on complex issues that do not always present clear demarcations in doctrines, jurisdictions, and cultures – and this is without mentioning other important soft skills required to thrive in practice. International moot competitions used to be the main means to bridge the school-versus-practice and theory-versus-application divides, but that landscape has transformed radically in the past decade. Considering too the competitiveness of the legal market today …

Governance Of Emerging Technologies As A Wicked Problem, Gary E. Marchant

Vanderbilt Law Review

Governance of emerging technologies . . . presents a conundrum. No single optimum solution exists, but rather a collection of second-best strategies intersect, coexist, and—in some ways—compete. This situation seems unsatisfactory until it is observed through the lens of the “wicked problem” framework. The wicked problem concept recognizes there is often no single, optimal solution to such a problem, but rather a mix of substandard solutions that must “satisfice.” That is the best that can be done with a wicked problem. This also may be the best solution for the governance-of-emerging-technologies problem.

This Article discusses the advantages of using the …

Grown From The Shadows: How Technology And Taxes Can Bring Private Companies Into The Public Light, Alon Sugarman

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The initial public offering (IPO) has started to make a comeback, but in forms that require less oversight and at a later point in a company’s lifecycle. These new trends cut main street investors out of early-stage corporate growth and have imperiled the fortunes and retirement funds of a generation. One of the most significant precipitating factors in this new dynamic is electronic private markets that allow sophisticated investors to trade pre-IPO shares. These electronic private markets provide liquidity to institutional investors, which relieves institutional pressure on companies to go public. The current approaches to IPO reform are primarily deregulatory, …

Complex Societies And The Growth Of The Law, Daniel Martin Katz, Corinna Coupette, Janis Beckedorf, Dirk Hartung

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

While many informal factors influence how people interact, modern societies rely upon law as a primary mechanism to formally control human behaviour. How legal rules impact societal development depends on the interplay between two types of actors: the people who create the rules and the people to which the rules potentially apply. We hypothesise that an increasingly diverse and interconnected society might create increasingly diverse and interconnected rules, and assert that legal networks provide a useful lens through which to observe the interaction between law and society. To evaluate these propositions, we present a novel and generalizable model of statutory …

Brief For The Coalition Against Patent Abuse As Amicus Curiae In Support No Party, Charles Duan

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Perhaps unexpectedly, a case on the constitutionality of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has major significance to the pressing policy crisis of drug prices in the United States. Erroneously issued patents monopolize medical therapies, making them unaffordable or inaccessible to numerous Americans. The inter partes review proceedings that the Board conducts have repeatedly and successfully overcome such patents, enabling competition and dramatically lowering prices. This Court should ensure the continued viability of the Board and of inter partes review, by preserving the Board’s objectivity and independence from executive branch political influence.

Artificial Intelligence, The Law-Machine Interface, And Fair Use Automation, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

From IBM Watson's success in Jeopardy! to Google DeepMind's victories in Go, the past decade has seen artificial intelligence advancing in leaps and bounds. Such advances have captured the attention of not only computer experts and academic commentators but also policymakers, the mass media and the public at large. In recent years, legal scholars have also actively explored how artificial intelligence will impact the law. Such exploration has resulted in a fast-growing body of scholarship.

One area that has not received sufficient policy and scholarly attention concerns the law-machine interface in a hybrid environment in which both humans and intelligent …

National Cybersecurity Innovation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

West Virginia Law Review

National cybersecurity plays a crucial role in protecting our critical infrastructure, such as telecommunication networks, the electricity grid, and even financial transactions. Most discussions about promoting national cybersecurity focus on governance structures, international relations, and political science. In contrast, this Article proposes a different agenda and one that promotes the use of innovation mechanisms for technological advancement. By promoting inducements for technological developments, such innovation mechanisms encourage the advancement of national cybersecurity solutions. In exploring possible solutions, this Article asks whether the government or markets can provide national cybersecurity innovation. This inquiry is a fragment of a much larger literature …

Watching Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep: Immersive Technology, Biometric Psychography, And The Law, Brittan Heller

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Virtual reality and augmented reality present exceedingly complex privacy issues because of the enhanced user experience and reality-based models. Unlike the issues presented by traditional gaming and social media, immersive technology poses inherent risks, which our legal understanding of biometrics and online harassment is simply not prepared to address. This Article offers five important contributions to this emerging space. It begins by introducing a new area of legal and policy inquiry raised by immersive technology called “biometric psychography.” Second, it explains how immersive technology works to a legal audience and defines concepts that are essential to understanding the risks that …

No Longer Innocent Until Proven Guilty: How Ohio Violates The Fourth Amendment Through Familial Dna Searches Of Felony Arrestees, Jordan Mason

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court legalized DNA collection of all felony arrestees upon arrest through its decision in Maryland v. King. Since then, the State of Ohio has broadened the use of arrestee DNA by subjecting it to familial DNA searches. Ohio’s practice of conducting familial DNA searches of arrestee DNA violates the Fourth Amendment because arrestees have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information that is extracted from a familial DNA search and it fails both the totality of the circumstances and the special needs tests. Further, these tests go against the intention of the …

Forecasting Crime? Algorithmic Prediction And The Doctrine Of Police Entrapment, Mathew Zaia

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

As the Commissioners of Police in mid-19th century England illustrate above, the prevention of crime is an inherent function of public policing. To carry out their function of detecting and combating crime, police frequently endeavour to locate and use new tools enabling them to pre-empt criminal activity.2 Many conceptual policing models that drive law enforcement’s focus have been highlighted in scholarly literature: community, problem-oriented, CompStat- driven (short for computer statistics), harm-focused, and order maintenance policing. Developments in modern technology provide additional tools, allowing police forces to delve deeper into suspects’ behaviour and uncover previously unknown patterns of information. Such developments …

Telehealth And Telework Accessibility In A Pandemic-Induced Virtual World, Blake Reid, Christian Vogler, Zainab Alkebsi

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

This short essay explores one dimension of disability law’s COVID-related “frailty”: how the pandemic has undermined equal access to employment and healthcare for Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing as healthcare and employment migrate toward telehealth and telework activities. This essay’s authors—a clinical law professor; a computer scientist whose research focuses on accessible technology; and a deaf policy attorney for the nation’s premier civil rights organization of, by, and for deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the United States—have collaborated over the past months on detailed advocacy documents aimed at helping deaf and hard of hearing patients …

Untag Me: Why Federal Judges Are Broadly Construing Illinois’S Biometric Privacy Law, Lisa P. Angeles

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Extended Collective Licensing As Rights Clearance Mechanism For Online Music Streaming Services In Canada, Lucie Guibault

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

According to the statistics compiled by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), online paid streaming is currently the fastest growing segment of the recorded music market, with a 33% global revenue increase in 2018. Subscription-based services offering legal online paid streaming of music have now reached all corners of the planet. Among the most well-known services are Apple Music, Amazon Prime, Deezer, Google Play, Soundcloud, and Spotify. The creation and continued functioning of such services are contingent on the capacity of the service exploiters to clear all copyrights in the offered music repertoire, for the territory of operation. …

Horizontal Collusions Organized By Uber: Time For A Change In Canada, Thanh Phan

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper argues that Uber’s ordinary operation should be characterized as organizing horizontal cartels among drivers that not only fix the fares of ride- hailing services using its platform but also allocate customers. Uber-led cartels, therefore, violate section 45(1) of the Competition Act5 of Canada. In doing so, this paper analyzes the relationships between Uber and drivers and argues that (i) Uber is the organizer of price-fixing and market allocation collusions among drivers, (ii) the collusions are horizontal, and (iii) they are per se illegal.

The first section discusses the general structure of peer-to-peer markets. The second section examines factors …

Richard Susskind, Online Courts And The Future Of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), David Cowan

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

There are times when the essential nature of something is simply viewed as ‘nice to have’ until a paradigmatic shift turns the essential into a necessity, and necessity in technological change is not so much the mother of invention as the parent of behavioural change. This point is made clear by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced courts to put online and remote working at centre stage. There is a natural yearning to go back to ‘normal,’ but questions arise as to whether online courts are a good idea and whether attempts to work online and remotely will survive the …

Surveying The Safety Culture Of Academic Laboratories, Emily Faulconer, Zachary Dixon, John C. Griffith, Hayden Frank

Publications

The university traditionally has been the foundation for young adults’ professional development, yet the proclivity toward safety culture has garnered less focus in higher education than in the workforce. A survey of faculty at a medium-sized, research-active, private institution revealed specific areas of policy noncompliance as well as specific safety attitudes that can be targeted for interventions. Albeit a snapshot view, the survey implies that safety needs better representation in the classroom, teaching laboratories, and research facilities at universities. Safety is not abandoned by any means, and there is a strong presence of safety-oriented individuals, but the data show barriers …

Law Library Blog (November 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

How Congress Can Help Raise Vaccine Rates, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Y. Tony Yang

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

2019 saw an unusually high number of measles cases, and other preventable disease outbreaks, at least in part linked to vaccines refusal. States are considering legislative responses. This Essay examines what role the federal government can fill in increasing vaccines rates. The Essay suggests that the federal government has an important role to fill in funding research, coordination, and local efforts. It also suggests that a federal school vaccine mandate is likely not the solution: first, such mandates can run into plausible constitutional challenges, and second, there are policy arguments against it. The policy contentions include the unfairness of imposing …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Government Tweets, Government Speech: The First Amendment Implications Of Government Trolling, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Seattle University Law Review

President Trump has been accused of using @realDonaldTrump to troll his critics. While the President’s tweets are often attributed to his personal views, they raise important Constitutional questions. This article posits that @realDonaldTrump tweets are government speech and, where they troll government critics, they violate the Free Speech Clause. I begin the article with an exploration of President Trump’s use of @realDonaldTrump from his time as a private citizen to President. The article then chronicles the development of the government speech doctrine and the Supreme Court’s factors that differentiate private speech from government speech. I argue that, based on the …

Preservation Requests And The Fourth Amendment, Armin Tadayon

Seattle University Law Review

Every day, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, ridesharing companies, and numerous other service providers copy users’ account information upon receiving a preservation request from the government. These requests are authorized under a relatively obscure subsection of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The SCA is the federal statute that governs the disclosure of communications stored by third party service providers. Section 2703(f) of this statute authorizes the use of “f” or “preservation” letters, which enable the government to request that a service provider “take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession” while investigators seek valid legal process. …