Computer Law Commons^™

Role-Reversibility, Ai, And Equitable Justice — Or: Why Mercy Cannot Be Automated, Stephen E. Henderson, Kiel Brennan-Marquez

Faculty Articles

A few years ago, we developed the concept of “role-reversibility” in AI governance: the idea that it matters whether a party exercising judgment is reciprocally vulnerable to the effects of judgment. This idea, we argued, supplies a deontic reason to maintain certain spheres of human judgment even if (or when) truly intelligent machines become demonstrably superior in every utilitarian sense. While computer science remains far from that holy grail, generative AI is raging through systems as diverse as healthcare, finance, advertising, law, and academe, making it imperative to further shore up our claim. We do so by situating role-reversibility within …

Cyber Sit-Ins: Bringing Protest Online By Modernizing The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, Blair V. Robinson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

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. …

Jewish Ethics, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Essays on Jewish Ethics in:

Chapter 2 Introduction to Ethical Approaches in Data Science

Chapter 4 Machine Models in Court

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Securing Patent Law, Charles Duan

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

A vigorous conversation about intellectual property rights and national security has largely focused on the defense role of those rights, as tools for responding to acts of foreign infringement. But intellectual property, and patents in particular, also play an arguably more important offense role. Foreign competitor nations can obtain and assert U.S. patents against U.S. firms and creators. Use of patents as an offense strategy can be strategically coordinated to stymie domestic innovation and technological progress. This Essay considers current and possible future practices of patent exploitation in this offense setting, with a particular focus on China given the nature …

Natural Language Processing In Legal Tech, Jens Frankenreiter, Julian Nyarko

Scholarship@WashULaw

Natural language processing techniques promise to automate an activity that lies at the core of many tasks performed by lawyers, namely the extraction and processing of information from unstructured text. The relevant methods are thought to be a key ingredient for both current and future legal tech applications. This chapter provides a non-technical overview of the current state of NLP techniques, focusing on their promise and potential pitfalls in the context of legal tech applications. It argues that, while NLP-powered legal tech can be expected to outperform humans in specific categories of tasks that play to the strengths of current …

Common Sense Recommendations For The Application Of Tax Law To Digital Assets, Linda M. Beale, Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Samuel D. Brunson, Luís Calderón Gómez, Bryan Camp, Adam Chodorow, Mark Cochran, Lin William Cong, Matthew Foreman, Phil Gaudiano, I. Richard Gershon, Nathan C. Goldman, Jillian Grennan, Megan Justice, Young Ran (Christine) Kim, Herbert I. Lazerow, Tao Li, Lawrence Lokken, Omri Y. Marian, Orly Mazur, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon, Tyler Menzer, Matt Metras, Ann M. Murphy, Henry Ordower, Amanda Parsons, Daniel Rabetti, Alex Raskolnikov, Tracey M. Roberts, Kerry A. Ryan, Edward A. Zelinsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In response to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s July 2023 request for comments on application of various Internal Revenue Code sections on digital assets, we propose a consistent set of rules to apply current law to digital assets. We highlight that the underlying economics and characteristics of transactions should be the primary concern for the application of rules and the valuation of digital assets. We believe any digital asset rules should (1) treat classes of digital assets with unique characteristics differently based on their economics, (2) minimize incentives for users to engage in tax-motivated structuring of transactions, and (3) allow …

The Failure Of Market Efficiency, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

Recent years have witnessed the near total triumph of market efficiency as a regulatory goal. Policymakers regularly proclaim their devotion to ensuring efficient capital markets. Courts use market efficiency as a guiding light for crafting legal doctrine. And scholars have explored in great depth the mechanisms of market efficiency and the role of law in promoting it. There is strong evidence that, at least on some metrics, our capital markets are indeed more efficient than they have ever been. But the pursuit of efficiency has come at a cost. By focusing our attention narrowly on economic efficiency concerns—such as competition, …

Mfns In Digital Distribution: Anticompetitive Effects Examined Through Modern Gaming Distribution, Ryan Wolff

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Most Favored Nation clauses and their place within digital distribution agreements is a problem that seems yet to be resolved. The argument that entities with large enough market share in their respective market can utilize these provisions to ensure that they remain on top is a contested topic that is actively being challenged in the courts. The lawsuit against Valve, the video game publisher and distributor, provides a lens through which the potential harms and advantages of these provisions can be examined. In analyzing the finer points of this situation potential solutions can be designed to, in a perfect world, …

How The Blockchain Undermined Digital Ownership, Aaron Perzanowski

Articles

The shift from a market built around the sale of tangible goods to one premised on the licensing of digital content and services has done significant and lasting damage to the notion of individual ownership. The emergence of blockchain technology, while certainly not necessary to reverse these trends, promised an opportunity to attract investment and demonstrate consumer demand for marketplaces that recognize meaningful digital ownership. Simultaneously, it offered an avenue for alleviating worries about hypothetical widespread reproduction and unchecked distribution of copyrighted works. Instead, many of the most visible blockchain projects in recent years—the proliferation of new cryptocurrencies and the …

Foreword: A Tipping Point For Antitrust Law, C. Paul Rogers Iii

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Data For Sale: Navigating The Role Of Data Brokers And Reproductive Health Information In A Post-Dobbs World, Heather Chong

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Data privacy is a growing concern in our fast-paced society, as it has become increasingly necessary to relay and retain information digitally. However, the United States trails behind its counterparts in terms of the strength of existing data protection legislation. Unlike the European Union and its General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) law, the United States has no similar comprehensive data protection act. This lack of legislation has led to the exploitation of people’s private data and allowed companies to utilize loopholes in current laws to access sensitive health information. Data brokers have been collecting and reselling consumers’ personal information, including …

Texas’S Water Future: Legal, Business, Environmental, And Regulatory Concerns, Robert Royce

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Around the world freshwater is increasingly scarce, and Texas is no different. Texas continuously operates at a shortage, where freshwater supply cannot meet demand. Projections show that this deficit will increase over the next decade, which would cause billions of dollars in losses for the Texas economy. But Texas is in a unique position to correct its water problems and take corrective measures to avoid such losses. Innovations around hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry, namely recyclable “produced water” and the burgeoning “water midstream” sector will play an important role in remediating Texas’ freshwater scarcity concern. Furthermore, the …

Houston Security Camera Ordinance: Reasonable Safety Measure Or Orwellian Surveillance, Clint Nuckolls

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

A new ordinance went into effect in Houston, Texas in July 2022, which looks to leverage technology and require certain businesses to install surveillance cameras at their own cost and turn footage over to the police on demand without a warrant. The ordinance specifically requires bars, nightclubs, convenience stores, sexually oriented businesses, and game rooms to install surveillance cameras, with accompanying lighting at all places where customers are permitted, keep the cameras running at all times, even when the business is closed, and store the footage for at least thirty days, all at the expense of the business owners. The …

Life, Liberty, And Data Privacy: The Global Cloud, The Criminally Accused, And Executive Versus Judicial Compulsory Process Powers, Rebecca Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

U.S. policymakers’ responses to a wave of global data privacy laws are creating a deep structural unfairness in the criminal legal system. In an era of cloud computing, when data about communications and activities occurring anywhere in the world can be stored on servers located anywhere else, access to such data can make the difference between convictions and acquittals. At the same time, new global data privacy laws risk cutting off cross-border access to digital evidence in criminal investigations. Recognizing the threat to law enforcement interests, U.S. policymakers enacted the CLOUD Act of 2018 to create special procedures for law …

Can Machines Commit Crimes Under Us Antitrust Laws?, Aslihan Asil, Thomas Wollmann

Faculty Scholarship

Generative artificial intelligence is being rapidly deployed for corporate tasks including pricing. Suppose one of these machines communicates with the pricing manager of a competing firm, proposes to collude, receives assent, and raises price. Is this a crime under U.S. antitrust laws, and, if so, who is liable? Based on the observed behavior of the most widely adopted large language model, we argue that this conduct is imminent, satisfies the requirements for agreement and intent under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and could confer criminal liability to both firms as well as the pricing manager of the competing firm.