Computer Law Commons^™

Algorithmic Adjudication And Constitutional Ai—The Promise Of A Better Ai Decision Making Future?, April G. Dawson

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Algorithmic governance is when algorithms, often in the form of AI, make decisions, predict outcomes, and manage resources in various aspects of governance. This approach can be applied in areas like public administration, legal systems, policy-making, and urban planning. Algorithmic adjudication involves using AI to assist in or decide legal disputes. This often includes the analysis of legal documents, case precedents, and relevant laws to provide recommendations or even final decisions. The AI models typically used in these emerging decision-making systems use traditionally trained AI systems on large data sets so the system can render a decision or prediction based …

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Neither Here Nor There: Redefining “Presence” For A Virtual Criminal Justice System, Brandon M. Draper

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic dramatically altered how the criminal justice system operated by adding virtual options to traditionally in-person proceedings. The impact of the criminal justice system’s failure to include virtual jury trials among these options was shocking, but not surprising: jury trial rates across the country dropped close to zero percent and several in-custody defendants died from COVID-19 before a jury could determine their guilt or innocence. After the pandemic, criminal courts across the country made many of these virtual options permanent, but only for non-evidentiary proceedings and other non-jury trial settings. The failure to include criminal jury trials …

Computers, Credit, And Human Dignity, Jonathan Weinberg

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Credit scores determine a person’s life chances. The credit scores we’re all used to, calculated by Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, take as inputs a person’s payment history, loans, current debt, and similar financial information. But that world is changing. Modern alternative data models for credit scoring can go so far as to include an individual’s educational record, criminal history, shopping behavior, or telephone patterns. Activists, regulators, and scholars have expressed serious concerns about these new credit systems. Do they classify applicants on unfair or arbitrary grounds? Do they perpetuate, or even amplify, bias and pre-existing inequality?

Participants in this conversation …

Generative Ai In The Attorney-Client Relationship: An Exercise In Critical Revision And Client Management, Michael L. Smith

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Discussions of generative AI in legal practice and education often assert that this technology will lead to a sea change in legal writing, research, and revision. While some of the more breathless proclamations deserve skepticism, there’s little doubt that this technology may generate new forms of headaches for those in the legal field—particularly once it’s in the hands of clients or opposing counsel who wish to use this technology to save the time, money, and effort required for complex legal tasks.

This essay proposes an exercise template for law students that illustrates how generative AI technology may be misused or …

Al In International Humanitarian Law: Distinction And Accountability, Frank Rosenblatt, Ira Rushing

Journal Articles

With the advent of recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, national militaries have become some of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters. India, for instance, announced in 2022 the formation of an Artificial Intelligence Military Council along with substantial funding for related initiatives. 1 Many other nations, including the United States and China, have similarly pursued military applications of AI with gusto. Much ink has been spilt over ethical issues and concerns with AI. We concern ourselves here specifically with some specific implications of military AI in the field of international humanitarian law, also known as the law of …

How To Get The Property Out Of Privacy Law, Jane R. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

For the last ten years, American rhetoric and state lawmaking has attempted to provide consumers with greater and stickier property interest in their personal information. But the impracticalities of the sticky property model are becoming evident, and will be impossible to ignore as AI becomes more prevalent and useful. This Article critiques the property framework in privacy law, and explains how a risk-based approach can be modernized and implemented instead. An enduring system of privacy laws will manage risks rather than bestowing rights to control and delete information. To do this, data practices should be categorized into safe harbor practices …

The Jawboning Cases End With A Bang Disguised By A Whimper, Derek E. Bambauer

UF Law Faculty Publications

Jawboning is government enforcement through informal channels, where the underlying authority is in doubt. Government actors at all levels have increasingly deployed this tactic to pressure Internet platforms to suppress disfavored speech. Internet jawboning debuted at the Supreme Court in two cases (National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo and Murthy v. Missouri) in 2023. Although the Court disposed of both cases on procedural and standing grounds, rather than offering a new methodology for evaluating jawboning, the opinions offer examples of what a successful jawboning claim looks like and what an unsuccessful claim lacks. Thus, jawboning as a …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Balancing Interests: Ai, Business & Human Rights, And The Legal Landscape In An Era Of Disruption, Jena Martin, Ritu Narula

Faculty Articles

On October 30, 2023, the Biden Administration issued a sweeping executive order espousing a policy to advance the development and use of artificial intelligence ("Al") while also establishing safeguards across the federal government. The Executive Order marked the U.S. government's largest move forward related to the regulation of Al. The Order also represents the government's latest effort to advance equity, privacy, and national security in the use of AI systems. Moreover, the Order comes at a time when governments around the world are wrestling with the impact of AI and its disruptive effect, not just on markets, but on society …

Election Integrity And The First Amendment: A Statutory Analysis Of States' Regulations Of Election Deepfakes, Steven Carver

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Exacerbated Power Imbalance: The Danger In Allowing Ai To Render Arbitral Awards In Employment Arbitration, Elizabeth G. Stein

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Meme-Manipulation: Towards Reinvigorating The Regulation Of Speculative Devices, John W. Bagby, Nizan Geslevich Packin

American University Law Review

As DJT shares skyrocket by thirty percent following the assassination attempt on now President Donald Trump, the financial world stands as a testament to how meme stocks and social media-driven speculation can create seismic market shifts, often blurring the lines between organic market activity and coordinated, systematic manipulation. In an era where memes dictate market movements and social media influencers wield unprecedented power, the fusion of meme stocks, SPACs, and cryptocurrency speculation has transformed financial markets into volatile arenas. This Article delves into the electrifying world of speculative trading, where viral online campaigns and cutting-edge technologies create seismic shifts in …

Trustless Trust And Antitrust: A Synthesis, Mateusz Blaszczyk

Scholarly Works

Authors have written of antitrust law’s demise in the face of blockchain, which, seemingly, achieves the pro-competitive ends of the law through technology and private ordering. Permissionless blockchains in particular are said to offer a vision of radical disintermediation and a break with the platform economy troubling the regulators today. At the same time, blockchain supposedly presents challenges to antitrust doctrine, from the most basic of concepts to the viability of enforcement and remedies. Finally, blockchain community governance is said to allow for private ordering of antitrust, i.e., enforcement of rules attempting to protect competition, which are at the same …

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations And Regulatory Competition: A Race Without A Cause, Mateusz Blaszczyk

Scholarly Works

Several states have enacted specialized limited liability company legislation in an attempt to attract decentralized autonomous organizations. In this way, the regulatory competition debate surrounding states such as Wyoming, Tennessee, and Vermont, attempting to dethrone Delaware, has found a new battleground. According to Professor Lynn LoPucki, this will entail a regulatory race to the bottom, that is, a race to “laxity.” I disagree. In fact, deregulation has already been achieved in the traditional limited liability company form. The decentralized autonomous organization limited liability company is no laxer or more attractive to investors, who will likely prefer the traditional limited liability …

Distinguishing Privacy Law: A Critique Of Privacy As Social Taxonomy, Maria P. Angel, Ryan Calo

Scholarly Works

What distinguishes violations of privacy from other harms? This has proven a surprisingly difficult question to answer. For over a century, privacy law scholars labored to define the illusive concept of privacy. Then they gave up. Efforts at distinguishing privacy came to be superseded at the turn of the millennium by a new approach: a taxonomy of privacy problems grounded in social recognition. Privacy law became the field that simply studies whatever courts or scholars talk about as related to privacy.

And it worked. Decades into privacy as social taxonomy, the field has expanded to encompass a broad range of …

Loot Boxes May Exploit Gamers, But Their Sale Does Not Constitute Unlawful Gambling, John J. Chung

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.