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A Roadmap to NIL and Taxation
Get PDFThe landscape of college sports has dramatically changed in recent years. What was once considered a place for amateur athletes pursuing education now partially mirrors, at least for some student-athletes, the structure and financial dynamics of professional leagues such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB. However, the collegiate sports ecosystem still remains distinct, shaped by unique regulatory frameworks governed by the NCAA. This article reviews and analyses the implications of these changes, and focuses on the tax considerations surrounding Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rights and how the evolving nature of college sports also presents certain tax implications, some of which are fairly technical, that can truly impact the economic outcomes for these student-athletes. The article aims to help student-athletes and other stakeholders better navigate this new and complex landscape by providing guidance on making informed decisions and understanding the potential tax consequences and pitfalls, ensuring they can maximize their opportunities while complying with applicable tax laws
Abortion Access in a Post-COVID and Post-Roe World
No full textThis chapter describes the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s momentous decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and legal and public health consequences of that decision in a post-COVID world. The COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities to both restrict and expand access to abortion care. During the height of the pandemic, the Supreme Court agreed to hear several cases on abortion rights, ultimately leading to the demise of the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization. This chapter analyzes the Dobbs decision and its impact on state legislatures’ attempts to regulate abortion through criminal, regulatory, and civil penalties during and after the height of the pandemic. This chapter also highlights the public health consequences of overturning Roe during the long tail of the pandemic. The pandemic both exposed and exacerbated health disparities for low income people and people of color. The reversal of Roe v. Wade portends worsening reproductive health disparities among communities already ravaged by the pandemic.https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_bk_contributions/1425/thumbnail.jp
Destabilizing Property
No full textProperty rights depend upon the respect, or at least acquiescence, of non-owners to owners’ assertions of priority and control over things. Property is often theorized in such a way that it is easy to lose sight of all that a stable property rights regime demands of non-owners. This chapter resists the standard proposed solutions—magically giving disadvantaged groups more resources or expand the definitions of property to include the poor—to the linked problems of inequality and inequity dominate academic and policy discussions. It considers a third option: destabilizing property. Rather than being content with the often incomplete and grudging efforts to bring non-owners up to the level of owners by giving them more resources or employing expansive approaches to property rights, selectively destabilizing property rights offers a way of forcing owners to confront all that property rights demand of non-owners.https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/facsch_bk_contributions/1426/thumbnail.jp
The Art of Discovery: Part 2
Get PDFForm discovery is undeniably useful, particularly for seeing the types of questions or documents that are usually asked in a certain type of case. Unfortunately, many form interrogatories and document requests are outdated and do not follow effective writing strategies of clarity and precision. Many of the sample discovery requests are full of legalese, which often results in ambiguity. Grab your comb and razor, as we work together to “clean up” your discovery requests
Limitations and Exceptions in the WIPO Instrument on Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge
Get PDFOne of the hot topics in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference on an instrument on “Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge Associated with Genetic Resources” is whether and what exceptions language should be included in the text. At the brief public report from Committee I on May 15, 2024, the Chair reported: “There appears to be adequate support for eliminating Article 4, limitations and exceptions. Some parties opposed.” This Blog provides some background information on the Article and analysis of potentially applicable models and concepts for the provision, including analysis of similar treaties with no exceptions
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) Treaty Mechanisms as a Threat to Climate and Sustainable Development Goals
Get PDFInvestor-State Dispute Settlement (“ISDS”) treaty mechanisms threaten the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment by crippling states’ abilities to enact meaningful climate change and sustainable development policies, thus hindering their ability to meet obligations under the Paris Agreement
Justice William J. Brennan Jr.\u27s Teleological Jurisprudence and What it Means for Constitutional Interpretation Today
Get PDFObservers commonly think of the Warren and Roberts Courts as polar opposites in their modes of constitutional interpretation. But how different are their approaches really? To be sure, the values that underlie the jurisprudence of the Warren and Roberts Courts are dramatically different, but their methodologies for constitutional adjudication are similar in a crucial respect: both Courts frequently employ a teleological approach. They look, in other words, to ends outside of the law to determine the direction in which constitutional law should be heading.
To prove this point, this Article examines the methods and values Justice William J. Brennan Jr. used in his constitutional interpretation. Widely recognized as an intellectual leader of the Warren Court, Justice Brennan was open and forthright about the ends toward which he believed constitutional law should be evolving. As he put it, the challenge Justices faced in interpreting the Constitution’s meaning was to “foster and protect the freedom, the dignity, and the rights of all persons within our borders, which it is the great design of the Constitution to secure.” His jurisprudence, in short, sought to promote the dignity rights of the individual. This Article traces the personal and historical influences that led Brennan to this jurisprudential commitment and the way in which it played out in many facets of work, including both his opinions and his extrajudicial writings. The Article further investigates the criticisms that Brennan’s approach engendered and evaluates problems with his jurisprudence that have become clear with the benefit of historical hindsight.
Today, as a large and growing literature convincingly documents, the Roberts Court similarly uses a teleological approach in its constitutional adjudication. Unlike Justice Brennan, however, the members of the Roberts Court’s conservative supermajority refuse to acknowledge that they bring teleological reasoning to their judging, instead hiding behind purportedly almost mechanistic interpretive techniques such as originalism. Those techniques leave vast areas of uncertainty and large spaces for discretion in constitutional adjudication, however, and for this reason the Roberts Court uses its own kind of teleological reasoning to come to conclusions in many of the cases it adjudicates, very much like Brennan did methodologically but with very different substantive ends in mind. The views of the conservative majority on the Roberts Court about the “good” toward which constitutional law should be moving are anchored in preserving tradition and promoting the political agenda of the right wing in United States politics. Those values, to be sure, differ greatly from Brennan’s. But in its underlying methodology, the Roberts Court’s conservative majority mirrors Brennan far more than it wants to admit.
If this argument holds, then a key question in constitutional law today is not so much based in assessing underlying differences in the methods of reasoning of the Warren versus Roberts Courts as it is in evaluating the views of these two Courts as to the ends, values, and conceptions of the “good” constitutional law should embrace. Those questions require acknowledging the teleological assumptions underlying the reasoning of Justices in the two eras. With those assumptions exposed, the job of evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the alternative teleological conceptions that underlie the jurisprudence of various Justices and eras of the Court can begin
Artificial Intelligence and Weaponized Illusions: Methodologies for Federal Fraud Prosecutions Involving Deepfakes
Get PDFExperts in the public and private sectors have vocalized concerns over the potential harms that can be inflicted when artificial intelligence (AI) is used maliciously. As AI technology increases in availability, it will become more accessible to criminal actors and allow for the emergence of new kinds of fraudulent schemes. Deepfakes are highly realistic AI-rendered depictions of individuals that criminals have already used to perpetrate fraud on an international scale. These renderings mimic third parties known to victims, allowing fraudsters to leverage the trust and familiarity of an existing relationship to perpetrate their schemes. The deepfake is used to convince the victim to send money to the fraudster under the guise of legitimacy.
This Article examines the increasing role that deepfakes play in the commission of criminal fraud schemes and suggests a methodology for federal criminal prosecutors to effectively respond to their growing threat. The Article first provides a general overview of deepfake technology: what deepfakes are, how fraudsters are using them, and how easy they are to create. It then suggests a methodology for federal prosecutors to follow when investigating and charging fraudsters that use deepfakes to perpetrate their schemes. Finally, the Author proposes an increase to the offense level of deepfake-based wire fraud under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines based on its specific offense characteristics
Targeting Children: Liability for Algorithmic Recommendations
Get PDFWe live in the algorithmic society, characterized by massive digital surveillance and data collection by private companies exploiting human information vulnerabilities for profit. The infrastructure of free expression translates into an infrastructure of digital surveillance. This model, dubbed “surveillance capitalism,” includes massive personalized algorithmic targeting that departs from human speakers, allowing a level of influence never witnessed before in scale, scope, or depth.
Personalized targeting can garner many benefits, as it allows individuals to find content that interests them without needing to invest energy in seeking out that content. However, personalized targeting can also cause tremendous harm because it can alter an individual’s perceptual, emotional, and social judgment. It can also promote the illegal sale of firearms and drugs, increase pedophile networks, and amplify incitement to terror. Most critically for this Article, personalized algorithmic recommendations often target material to children that a platform’s official policy forbids. Because children are particularly vulnerable and lack full decision-making capacity, unregulated targeting can lead to self-harm and unfortunately, has even cost children’s lives. Should intermediaries bear any liability for targeting children? Or rather, should they be immune for autonomous targeting by artificial intelligence algorithms?
In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google, a change in policy regarding targeting is more urgent than ever, especially in the context of targeting susceptible children. Accordingly, this Article argues that with the shift from human information to a data network connection in the algorithmic society, algorithmic targeting should be more regulated. After all, platforms are not just middlemen; algorithmic targeting differs from merely hosting content, and it is not the same as human speech. In fact, the design of the platform and the algorithmic targeting mechanism itself develop content and transform the context of the information. Therefore, intermediaries should be subject to liability for negligent design.
This Article demonstrates how social media platforms, aiming to increase traffic and enhance profits, deliberately use algorithms to target susceptible children. This Article makes the case for imposing civil liability on intermediaries for negligent design, thereby incentivizing intermediaries to restrict algorithmic targeting directed towards children. Subsequently, this Article reviews normative free speech considerations in imposing liability for targeting children and overviews judicial decisions regarding liability by analyzing and criticizing case law interpreting § 230 immunity.
This Article outlines a proposed framework and policy reform for a duty of care for targeting children. Finally, it addresses possible objections to liability for algorithmic targeting, the problem of demonstrating causal connection between targeting and harm, and First Amendment objections to the proposed framework. The Article concludes that liability alone will not be enough to protect children, and more comprehensive reforms are required