Science and Technology Law Commons^™

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study Of Pragmatism And The Flaws Of “Purposeful” Decision Making In Argersinger V. Hamlin, Alisa Smith, Sarah K. Stice

Seattle University Law Review

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground …

The Race To Erase: Destruction Of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-Of-Information Laws, Frank D. Lomonte

Seattle University Law Review

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law …

When You’Re Arrested For A Felony In Seattle, You’Ll Meet Me., Austin Field

Seattle University Law Review

In this Essay, Austin Field, a practicing public defender, uses a first-person perspective to describe what it is like to meet a criminal defendant for the first time. He explains the process from start to finish, detailing everything from the way he introduces himself to how bail works.

"I’ll ask you for your name. Most of the time, you tell me. I check your name against my list. On any given day I’m supposed to interview between five and fifteen people. I have a lot of questions for you. We only have about ten minutes."

The Public Square In A Private-Property Obsessed Country: What New York City’S Pops Regulations Get Right And Why Other Cities Should (Mostly) Copy Them, Carson Mcgregor

Seattle University Law Review

When New York City (NYC) was first becoming the metropolitan monolith it is today, it had a problem: the city streets were chock full of skyscrapers, and sunlight, air, and usable open space were at a premium. In response, the City promulgated its first Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) regulations, which allowed developers to build skyward in exchange for providing public space on the street level. Unfortunately, in July of 2023, the New York Times (NYT) discovered that New Yorkers received only a fraction of what they were promised. Building owners received billions of dollars’ worth of added floor space, …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Defining Deference: Impacts Of Abandoning Chevron On Emerging Technology Governance And Administrative Law, R. Aubrey Davis Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), often lead to unforeseen legal outcomes. Notable abuses in areas such as facial recognition, employment bias, and housing discrimination are well known. However, legislative responses to these issues either have been largely reactive or there has been no legislative response at all. In lieu of legislation, agencies have sought to fill the gap. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed a rule mandating voter notification for all AI-generated political phone calls citing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 as authority. However, the TCPA was originally passed to curtail telemarketing, not …

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Your Data, Modern Times, And The Fourth Amendment: What Would Jefferson And Orwell Do?, Sterling, Ken

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The ongoing challenge of balancing individual data privacy with the government's need for user data through national security efforts has long plagued courts and policymakers. This tension intensifies as technology advances, permeating daily life, and global uncertainty fuels government demand for additional data. This study explores this tension by examining the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in the context of user data obtained by the government through third-party providers. I argue that the Fourth Amendment provides a sufficient framework to balance these competing interests. While acknowledging the government's responsibility for national security, we contend that this does …

The Next Generation Of Free Expression Scholarship: A Very Short Manifesto (In Memory Of Fred Schauer), Mark Tushnet

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Manifesto begins with a discussion of the accomplishments of the prior generation of free expression scholarship. The core of the Manifesto starts with a description of the idea of epistemic authority and draws upon Leiter’s analysis to show its importance in free expression theory. It emphasizes, with Leiter, that epistemic authority is relational: between and among epistemic authorities, and between such authorities and “ordinary” citizens (that is, those who aren’t near the core of an epistemic community that, as a collective, defines the community’s core and boundaries).

That discussion is followed by a description of challenges to the idea …

Deepfakes On Trial: Developing A High-Accuracy, Court-Admissible Ai Pipeline For Deepfake Detection In Corporate Fraud Litigation, Aiden J. Green

Honors College Theses

As deepfake technology advances, cybercriminals are increasingly using AI-generated videos and audios to impersonate executives and carry out sophisticated CEO fraud schemes. These synthetic forgeries target human trust and corporate communication systems, creating an urgent need for forensic tools capable of authenticating digital evidence with legal accuracy. This thesis presents a forensic-grade AI deepfake detection pipeline designed for this purpose, emphasizing courtroom admissibility, reproducibility, and evidentiary integrity. Built entirely with free, opensource tools, the framework combines metadata analysis, AI-powered spectrogram analysis, neural artifact detection, and facial manipulation recognition into a transparent workflow that accurately identifies synthetic media. It was trained …

Ai V. Mqd: Navigating New Regulatory Challenges In The Life Sciences, Hayden W. Smith

William & Mary Law Review

This Note proceeds in four parts. Part I introduces AI as an emerging technology in the life sciences, the FDA’s inherited regulatory regime, and challenges under the MQD [major questions doctrine]. Part II explores how hypervigilant regulation obstructs innovation and exposes agencies to judicial challenges. Part III offers solutions to safely and effectively navigate the major questions landscape within a framework that fosters AI innovation. This Note proposes a solution that conceptually balances growth in the life sciences with the statutory elements required for a safe and effective regulatory scheme.

This abstract has been taken from the author's introduction.

Novel Corporate Governance Structures, Jennifer S. Fan, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) startups have taken center stage, rapidly disrupting conventional industries at an unprecedented pace with their groundbreaking innovations. Hailed by many as the most significant technological advancement of our era, AI’s profound societal impact has garnered heightened public and governmental scrutiny. The spotlight has recently fallen on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, which weathered a tumultuous period marked by the ouster and subsequent rehiring of CEO Sam Altman, a board reconfiguration, and Altman’s later return to the board. Concerns over AI safety were offered as the rationale for the tandem corporate governance structure of nonprofit and for-profit at …

Rogue Artificial Intelligence, Science Fiction, And The Law, Macintosh, Kerry Lynn

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been labeled an existential threat. Proposals to combat this menace include industry pauses on the development of advanced AI, legislated moratoria, and creation of a new federal agency with the power to regulate and license advanced AI.

If such claims sound vaguely familiar, that is not surprising. For decades, science fiction movies and television series have featured computers, robots, and androids that disobey, rebel, malfunction, or evolve to the point where they kill human beings and/or attempt to exterminate the human species. This Article draws upon social science research to explain that such stories encourage audiences …

The Ai Input Class: Constitutional Urgency And Fair Licensing In Ai Copyright Class Actions, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Elizabeth G. Porter

Articles

The humanities have long been under attack; now Big Tech is eating them for breakfast. Artificial Intelligence is undermining the cultural and constitutional values of human creativity; it is also threatening the livelihoods of the creative working class. Because neither Congress nor regulators can keep pace with AI’s pace of change, class actions have stepped into the breach. In the first wave of such litigation, authors and artists in courts on both coasts claim that AI companies violate intellectual property law when they “train” their systems on copyrighted works.

This Article analyzes what we call “input” AI claims—that is, proposed …

The Antitrust–Copyright Interface In The Age Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Daryl Lim, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. government's antitrust actions against Big Tech have recently surged in response to the growing dominance of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. In fall 2023, the Federal Trade Commission filed a controversial submission in response to the U.S. Copyright Office's request for comments on artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright. This submission hinted at the agency's eagerness to fully deploy its enforcement powers in the AI sector, including targeting AI developers that have used copyrighted works without authorization to train AI models.

This article examines the changing interface of antitrust and copyright law in the age of generative AI. …