Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Educating Deal Lawyers For The Digital Age, Heather Hughes

Fordham Law Review

Courses and programs that address law and emerging technologies are proliferating in U.S. law schools. Technology-related issues pervade the curriculum. This Essay presents two instances in which new technologies present challenges for deal lawyers. It explores how exposing students to closing opinions practice can prepare them to engage these challenges. Both examples involve common commercial contexts and lessons relevant to students of business associations and of the Uniform Commercial Code. The first, which deals with enforceability opinion letters, presents technical legal difficulties arising from recent developments in law and technology. The second, involving complex doctrines at the heart of financial …

The Legal Imitation Game: Generative Ai’S Incompatibility With Clinical Legal Education, Jake Karr, Jason Schultz

Fordham Law Review

In this Essay, we briefly describe key aspects of [generative artificial intelligence] that are particularly relevant to, and raise particular risks for, its potential use by lawyers and law students. We then identify three foundational goals of clinical legal education that provide useful frameworks for evaluating technological tools like GenAI: (1) practice readiness, (2) justice readiness, and (3) client-centered lawyering. First is “practice readiness,” which is about ensuring that students have the baseline abilities, knowledge, and skills to practice law upon graduation. Second is “justice readiness,” a concept proposed by Professor Jane Aiken, which is about teaching law students to …

Fairness And Fair Use In Generative Ai, Matthew Sag

Fordham Law Review

Although we are still a long way from the science fiction version of “artificial general intelligence” that thinks, feels, and refuses to “open the pod bay doors,” recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) have captured the public’s imagination and lawmakers’ interest. We now have large language models (LLMs) that can pass the bar exam, carry on (what passes for) a conversation about almost any topic, create new music, and create new visual art. These artifacts are often indistinguishable from their human-authored counterparts and yet can be produced at a speed and scale surpassing human ability.

“Generative AI” …

Ai, Algorithms, And Awful Humans, Daniel J. Solove, Hideyuki Matsumi

Fordham Law Review

A profound shift is occurring in the way many decisions are made, with machines taking greater roles in the decision-making process. Two arguments are often advanced to justify the increasing use of automation and algorithms in decisions. The “Awful Human Argument” asserts that human decision-making is often awful and that machines can decide better than humans. Another argument, the “Better Together Argument,” posits that machines can augment and improve human decision-making. These arguments exert a powerful influence on law and policy.

In this Essay, we contend that in the context of making decisions about humans, these arguments are far too …

If We Could Talk To The Animals, How Should We Discuss Their Legal Rights?, Andrew W. Torrance, Bill Tomlinson

Fordham Law Review

The intricate tapestry of animal communication has long fascinated humanity, with the sophisticated linguistics of cetaceans holding a special place of intrigue due to the cetaceans’ significant brain size and apparent intelligence. This Essay explores the legal implications of the recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), specifically machine learning and neural networks, that have made significant strides in deciphering sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) communication. We view the ability of a being to communicate as one—but not the only—potential pathway to qualify for legal rights. As such, we investigate the possibility that the ability to communicate should trigger legal …

Legal Hypergraphs, Corinna Coupette, Dirk Hartung, Daniel Martin Katz

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Complexity science provides a powerful framework for understanding physical, biological and social systems, and network analysis is one of its principal tools. Since many complex systems exhibit multilateral interactions that change over time, in recent years, network scientists have become increasingly interested in modelling and measuring dynamic networks featuring higher-order relations. At the same time, while network analysis has been more widely adopted to investigate the structure and evolution of law as a complex system, the utility of dynamic higher-order networks in the legal domain has remained largely unexplored. Setting out to change this, we introduce temporal hypergraphs as a …

Bounded Entities And (Some Of) Their Discontents, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Articles

In his new article An Organizational Theory of International Technology Transfer, Professor Peter Lee offers two richly detailed accounts at once. One is a novel theoretical framework of "bounded entities" that generalizes both from the classic theory of the firm and, of more recent vintage, from the knowledge-based theory of the firm to specify a broader notion of organizations that are bounded in the sense of robust internal integration through corporate or contractual means. In short, such entities are not firms but resemble them in consequential ways. The other account is a practical elaboration of bounded entities that are multinational …

Downstreaming, Rachel Landy

Articles

Spotify and its competitors all offer the same product at the same price. Why? Scholars have argued that relationships can be designed in a way that naturally promotes innovation. By “braiding” certain formal contracting practices with informal enforcement norms, parties develop a frame-work that supports trust and positive, long-term collaboration. This Article takes on this consensus and shows that not all braiding is good. Using the multibillion-dollar subscription music streaming business as an illustration, it demonstrates just how industry forces can, and do, overcome braiding’s positive slant. In that industry, the major record labels (Universal, Warner, and Sony) weaponize braiding …

Researcher Access To Social Media Data: Lessons From Clinical Trial Data Sharing, Christopher J. Morten, Gabriel Nicholas, Salomé Viljoen

Faculty Scholarship

For years, social media companies have sparred with lawmakers over how much independent access to platform data they should provide researchers. Sharing data with researchers allows the public to better understand the risks and harms associated with social media, including areas such as misinformation, child safety, and political polarization. Yet researcher access is controversial. Privacy advocates and companies raise the potential privacy threats of researchers using such data irresponsibly. In addition, social media companies raise concerns over trade secrecy: the data these companies hold and the algorithms powered by that data are secretive sources of competitive advantage. This Article shows …

Open Source Perfume, Amanda Levendowski

Cardozo Law Review

Perfume is a powerful art and technology, but its secrets are closely held by a privileged few by some counts, there are more astronauts than there are perfumers. As critics have noted increasingly since 2020, those select few perfumers often share similar backgrounds. The Western perfume industry prizes perfumers with elite pedigrees, which often precludes marginalized perfumers. It also perpetuates non-Western cultures, that push some marginalized perfumers into teaching themselves perfumery. But teaching oneself through recreating and remixing existing fragrances presents a different challenge. As interviews with American, British, and French perfumemakers reveal, intellectual property (IP) plays a complicated role …

Digital Footprints: Technology, Race, And Justice, Cassandra Jones Havard

Cardozo Law Review

Data aggregation is ubiquitous. To widen credit access, lenders now use nonconventional sources of personal technological information to measure borrower creditworthiness. Alternative data credit scoring is touted as a useful solution for borrowers with little or no credit history or “thin credit files.” The supposedly neutral algorithm provides a predictive analysis of the borrower’s ability to repay, thus allowing the borrower to obtain credit within the formal banking network.

Alternative data has the potential to expand access to financial services for underserved populations and make credit markets more competitive. Machine learning, or predictive behavioral analytics, collects and sorts the borrower’s …

The Lack Of Responsibility Of Higher Education Institutions In Addressing Phishing Emails And Data Breaches, Muxuan (Muriel) Wang

Duke Law & Technology Review

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are highly susceptible to cyberattacks, particularly those facilitated through phishing, due to the substantial volume of confidential student and staff data and valuable research information they hold. Despite federal legislations focusing on bolstering cybersecurity for critical institutions handling medical and financial data, HEIs have not received similar attention. This Note examines the minimal obligations imposed on HEIs by existing federal and state statutes concerning data breaches, the absence of requirements for HEIs to educate employees and students about phishing attacks, and potential strategies to improve student protection against data breaches.

Olivia Greer: Weil Gotshal And Privacy Practice And Insights, Cardozo Data Science Law Society

2023–2024 Flyers

No abstract provided.

The Wild, Wild West Of Laboratory Developed Tests, John Gilmore

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Since the 1950’s, scientists have built novel technologies to screen for genetic diseases and other biological irregularities. Recently, researchers have developed a method called “liquid biopsy” (as opposed to a standard tissue biopsy) that uses a liquid sample (e.g., blood) to non‑invasively spot biomarkers indicating different types of cancers in the patient’s body. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fully cleared a small number of liquid biopsy tests under its rigorous and expensive review process, most biotech companies have instead followed a less restrictive regulatory path through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which label …

Techno-Legal Solutionism: Regulating Children's Online Safety In The United States, Maria P. Angel, Danah Boyd

Scholarly Works

Convinced that social media is directly harming children, policymakers have started to introduce legislation that requires technology companies to be safe by design through “duty of care” provisions. Unlike regulations that focus on product safety, these bills incorporate technosolutionist logics into regulation by presuming that technology companies can remedy complex harms like mental health duress and bullying if their products were only designed better. In this paper, we unpack the theory of change at the center of the “duty of care” included in the “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA). We argue that techno-legal solutionism is both ineffective as a framework …

Do Patents Drive Investment In Software?, James Hicks

Northwestern University Law Review

In the wake of a quartet of Supreme Court decisions which disrupted decades of settled law, the doctrine of patentable subject matter is in turmoil. Scholars, commentators, and jurists continue to disagree sharply over which kinds of invention should be patentable. In this debate, no technology has been more controversial than software. Advocates of software patents contend that denying protection would stymie innovation in a vital industry; skeptics argue that patents are a poor fit for software, and that the social costs of patents outweigh any plausible benefits. At the core of this disagreement is a basic problem: the debate …

The Unregulated World Of Your Most Personal Of Personal Information: A Proposal For A Federal Biometric Information Privacy Law, Isabel M. Vuyk

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Why Outlaw Laws?: An Argument For A Probationary Period For Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Under Meaningful Human Control., Katherine E. Vuyk

The University of Cincinnati Intellectual Property and Computer Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Wyoming V. Environmental Protection Agency, Ayden D. Auer

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Wyoming v. EPA consolidated two petitions for review of a portion of Wyoming’s plans to reduce visibility impacts from two powerplants, Wyodak and Naughton. First, the Tenth Circuit held EPA was incorrect to disapprove Wyoming’s best available retrofit technology determination for Wyodak because EPA based its disapproval on noncompliance with guidelines that are optional to determine the best available retrofit technology for Wyodak. These same guidelines are nonbinding on Naughton as well, and the court held the petitioners failed to persuade the court that EPA’s approval of Naughton was arbitrary and capricious because the petitioners did not establish why Wyoming’s …

Legal And Ethical Challenges Raised By Advances In Brain-Computer Interface Technology, Colin Conrad, Carla Heggie

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) consist of hardware and software that allow humans to control computers with their brain signals alone. Though these technologies are not new, existing approaches to BCI are either very limited in their capabilities or require highly invasive surgery. However, BCI has recently received increased attention due to advances that enable enhanced usability with less invasive approaches. Such advances could radically change the acceptance of the technology and BCI might become commonplace in the coming decades. In this article, we provide a technology scholar’s perspective on how these recent advances in BCI present new legal and ethical considerations. …