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When Should An 1115 Medicaid Expansion Experiment be Approved? Considering The Case Of Georgia Pathways
No full textHistorically, demonstration waivers have been used to expand eligibility, improve delivery, increase benefits, and otherwise improve the Medicaid program. The waivers granted during the Trump administration were a departure from both Republican and Democratic administrations’ determinations as to the merits of state waiver proposals. Georgia’s proposed demonstration, known as Georgia Pathways, merited especially close scrutiny: a Medicaid “expansion” for low-income adults in name only, with exclusionary conditions on enrollment and coverage already proven to cause major harm when attempted in other states. In addition to the legal issues raised, the Georgia case raises deeper policy questions about when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should use its considerable section 1115 powers
Ethical AI Development: Evidence from AI Startups
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence startups use training data as direct inputs in product development. These firms must balance numerous trade-offs between ethical issues and data access without substantive guidance from regulators or existing judicial precedence. We survey these startups to determine what actions they have taken to address these ethical issues and the consequences of those actions. We find that 58% of these startups have established a set of AI principles. Startups with data-sharing relationships with high-technology firms; that were impacted by privacy regulations; or with prior (non-seed) funding from institutional investors are more likely to establish ethical AI principles. Lastly, startups with data-sharing relationships with high-technology firms and prior regulatory experience with General Data Protection Regulation are more likely to take costly steps, like dropping training data or turning down business, to adhere to their ethical AI policies
Data Vu: Why Breaches Involve the Same Stories Again and Again
Get PDFIn the classic comedy Groundhog Day, protagonist Phil, played by Bill Murray, asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” In this movie, Phil is stuck reliving the same day over and over, where the events repeat in a continual loop, and nothing he does can stop them. Phil’s predicament sounds a lot like our cruel cycle with data breaches.
Every year, organizations suffer more data spills and attacks, with personal information being exposed and abused at alarming rates. While Phil eventually figured out how to break the loop, we’re still stuck: the same types of data breaches keep occurring with the same plot elements virtually unchanged.
Like Phil eventually managed to do, we must examine the recurring elements that allow data breaches to happen and try to learn from them. Common plotlines include human error, unnecessary data collection, consolidated storage and careless mistakes. Countless stories involve organizations that spent a ton of money on security and still ended up breached. Only when we learn from these recurring stories can we make headway in stopping the cycle
Empathic Solidarity on the Frontline
Get PDFJacqueline Bhabha\u27s important article, The Imperative of Sustaining (Rather Than Destroying) Frontline Empathic Solidarity for Distress Migrants, highlights the pivotal role that frontline communities now play in international migration. Bhabha explores how frontline communities frequently lack the infrastructure, political will, and resources to respond adequately to distress migrants. Yet, she unearths the potential of empathic solidarity to counteract bias and, more optimistically, provide a welcoming and humanizing experience to migrants. Indeed, in this hopeful, ambitious article, Bhabha posits that empathic solidarity can play a significant generative role for migrants\u27 rights
Brief of Legal Scholars Defending Race-Conscious Admissions as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents, SFFA v. Harvard (20-1199) and SFFA v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (21-707)
Get PDFLegal Scholars Defending Race-Conscious Admissions uplift two underappreciated dynamics in the subject litigation challenging race-conscious admissions at Harvard and UNC:1) Petitioner Students for Fair Admissions (“SFFA”) conflates two discrete claims against Harvard: (a) an intentional discrimination (or “negative action”) claim alleging that anti-Asian bias benefits white applicants and (b) a standard affirmative action challenge. SFFA blurs these claims to scapegoat and stigmatize affirmative action as a practice that pits Asian Americans against other students of color. Yet, SFFA belies its own narrative. According to SFFA’s own expert, anti-Asian bias—to the extent it exists—is caused by colorblind components of the admissions process and benefits wealthy White applicants, not students of color.2) Race-conscious admissions policies ( RCAPs ) counter racial advantages that White applicants enjoy in purportedly “colorblind” components of the admissions process. Respondents’ RCAPs, in turn, are best characterized as essential antidiscrimination that promote the “fair appraisal of each individual’s academic promise” and constitute “no ‘preference’ at all.” By countering unearned racial advantages that benefit White applicants, Respondents realize a more individualized and “meritocratic” process that helps to desegregate and diversify their campuses.Universities’ RCAPs clearly satisfy strict scrutiny. But this backdrop also troubles the conclusion that strict scrutiny should apply to all “racial classifications.” As these cases highlight, strict scrutiny views with suspicion race-conscious practices that counter discrimination in the present—and thereby hinders universities from realizing Brown v. Board of Education’s fundamental aspiration of an America where race no longer matters. SFFA acknowledges that racism exists but urges the Supreme Court to ignore that reality and cripple Respondents’ ability to overcome it
Corporations in 100 Pages (3rd. Ed.)
No full textThis book is a primer on corporate law for law students and anyone else desiring a first course in corporate law. The book provides a self-contained, accessible presentation of the field’s essentials: what corporations are, how they are governed, their interactions with their investors and other stakeholders, major transactions (M&A), and parallels with alternative entities including partnerships; optional background chapters cover the investor eco-system, corporate governance, and corporate finance. The book’s exposition of doctrine and policy is nuanced and sophisticated yet short and simple enough for a quick read.https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/books/1339/thumbnail.jp
A Book Club with No Books: Using Podcasts Movies, and Documentaries to Increase Transfer of Learning, Incorporate Social Justice Themes, Create Community, and Bolster Traditional and Character-Based Legal Skills during a Pandemic
Get PDFIn the fall of 2020, students entered law school under extreme circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic led to isolation, depression, and restrictions on activities. A new hybrid learning environment was created. Social upheaval also caused unease. The 2020 national elections loomed, bringing divisive political discourse. The murder of George Floyd and other BIPOC, at the hands of police, led to a reckoning around the country. Additionally, with the COVID-19 pandemic came a rash of anti-Asian violence.
Faced with these unprecedented realities, we, as legal educators, struggled with how to adapt our curriculum to this new normal. These realities forced us to re-examine how we taught. We considered how to instruct on basic legal skills with the ultimate goal of ensuring that students would be able to transfer these skills to real life practice. Further, we sought to create a community during these isolated times and give students an outlet to explore social justice issues in a meaningful way. As a result, the Book Club with No Books was formed.
The Club used various forms of media-including a podcast, a documentary, and a movie-to engage students outside of our 1L Lawyering Skills classrooms. Consistent with established learning principles, the Club utilized engaging stories in an effort to deepen, or scaffold, long term memories. It also helped to build community and reduce stress, and injected themes of systemic and racial inequities into the 1L curriculum. We ultimately sought to improve student learning and enhance the holy grail of skills teaching-transfer of learning.
We offer this blueprint to other law professors who wish to accomplish similar goals. Part I of the article explores the specifics of the Club, including a description of the different media we used, the issues we explored during our meetings, the structure and logistics of the meetings, and the goals we sought to achieve. Part H discusses established learning principles and how we sought to enhance transfer through our choice of material, creation of a small group setting, and particular discussion questions. Part III discusses how the Club injected social justice themes into the 1L curriculum and why doing so is critical per the ABA\u27s recent proposal that law schools add training in anti-racism into their curricula,\u27 student desires, and the ideal mission of a 1L skills classroom. Part IV reflects on the success of the Club, including student feedback and potential modifications based on that feedback. Finally, the article details our proposal to expand the Club into a pass/fail elective class for all 1L students at Boston University School of Law
The Cost of Ethical AI Development for AI Startups
No full textArtificial Intelligence startups use training data as direct inputs in product development. These firms must balance numerous tradeoffs between ethical issues and data access without substantive guidance from regulators or existing judicial precedence. We survey these startups to determine what actions they have taken to address these ethical issues and the consequences of those actions. We find that 58% of these startups have established a set of AI principles. Startups with data-sharing relationships with high-technology firms or that have prior experience with privacy regulations are more likely to establish ethical AI principles and are more likely to take costly steps, like dropping training data or turning down business, to adhere to their ethical AI policies. Moreover, startups with ethical AI policies are more likely to invest in unconscious bias training, hire ethnic minorities and female programmers, seek expert advice, and search for more diverse training data. Potential costs associated with data-sharing relationships and the adherence to ethical policies may create tradeoffs between increased AI product competition and more ethical AI production
Should Labor Abandon Its Capital? A Reply to Critics
Get PDFSeveral recent works have sharply criticized public pension funds and labor union funds (“labor’s capital”). These critiques come from both the left and right. Leftists criticize labor’s capital for undermining worker interests by funding financialization and the growth of Wall Street. Laissez-faire conservatives argue that pension underfunding threatens taxpayers. The left calls for pensions to be replaced by a larger social security system. The libertarian right calls for them to be smashed and scattered into individually-managed 401(k)s. I review this recent work, some of which is aimed at my book, The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, and some of which is aimed at labor’s capital more broadly. I argue that while critics of labor’s capital make some reasonable points, none justify a retreat by labor from implementing capital strategies. None justify either wholesale abandonment of the current pension regime, or the smashing and scattering of pensions into individually managed-401(k)s. Leftist structuralist critiques underestimate new opportunities to advance labor’s capital created by the ideological retreat of shareholder primacy and a newly-emboldened stakeholderism. They also overlook serious but curable errors by unions in permitting their capital to be used against them. They tend to critique labor’s capital in a vacuum, making heroic assumptions about offstage policy preferences like a comprehensive new social security system or macrofinancial reform, though labor obtained neither when it was more powerful than it is today. Moreover, social security systems, important as they are, do not give workers voice in markets the way pensions do. At the other end of the spectrum, laissez-faire rightist critiques overstate the underfunding threat, which has subsided as markets have recovered from the Great Recession of 2008 and as forty-nine states have revised their funding formulas. They also exaggerate the risks to taxpayers of underfunding and fail to articulate any plausible reason why taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook to pay-in-full for services rendered by public servants.Properly organizing its capital to advance worker interests remains a critically important and attainable goal for labor in the 21st century
The Surprising Virtues of Data Loyalty
Get PDFLawmakers in the United States and Europe are seriously considering imposing duties of data loyalty that implement ideas from privacy law scholarship, but critics claim such duties are unnecessary, unworkable, overly individualistic, and indeterminately vague. This paper takes those criticisms seriously, and its analysis of them reveals that duties of data loyalty have surprising virtues. Loyalty, it turns out, can support collective well-being by embracing privacy’s relational turn; it can be a powerful state of mind for reenergizing privacy reform; it prioritizes human values rather than potentially empty formalism; and it offers solutions that are flexible and clear rather than vague and indeterminate. We propose five contexts in which specific rules should supplement a general duty of data loyalty: collection, personalization, gatekeeping, influencing, and mediation. Loyalty can be a key policy tool with which to take on the related problems of information capitalism, platform power, and the use of personal data to manufacture consent to objectionable data practices. In fact, loyalty may well be the critical missing piece of the regulatory toolkit for privacy