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Is the Contempt Power Obsolete?
No full textContempt power has been with us for as long as we’ve had courts in this country. Through summary contempt proceedings, judges may imprison any person they deem insufficiently respectful to the authority of the court—with significantly less due process than a person would be entitled to under any other criminal offense. In theory, this is necessary to maintain order in the court. But in practice, summary contempt power is serially and seriously abused. Judges use incarceration to deal with piddling offenses or for no real reason at all. This Article argues that the concept of allowing judges nearly unbridled discretion to jail people for rudeness is outdated and should be reformed
Training is Everything: Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, and “Fair Training”
No full textIn this Essay, we analyze the arguments in favor of, and against, viewing the use of copyrighted works in training sets for AI as fair use. We call this form of fair use “fair training.” We identify both strong and spurious arguments on both sides of this debate. In addition, we attempt to take a broader perspective, weighing the societal costs (e.g., replacement of certain forms of human employment) and benefits (e.g., the possibility of novel AI-based approaches to global issues such as environmental disruption) of allowing AI to make easy use of copyrighted works as training sets to facilitate the development, improvement, adoption, and diffusion of AI. Finally, we suggest that the debate over AI and copyrighted works may be a tempest in a teapot when placed in the wider context of massive societal challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, and loss of biodiversity, to which AI may be part of the solution
The “Deliberate Indifference” Standard of Mental Health Care: How it Fails Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum
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“What’s Brewin’ with Bruen?” Why, and How, We Must Permit Certain Felons to Possess Firearms
No full textIn the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, outlining a new test for the constitutionality of statutes regulating firearm possession. The result has been chaos. In less than a year, U.S.C. § 922(n) and § 922(g)(8), which criminalize possession by specific people involved in the criminal justice system, have been held unconstitutional. Challenges to other federal firearm regulations are flooding the courts.
Notably, § 922(g)(1), which criminalizes possession of a firearm by any person with a felony in their criminal history, has been vigorously challenged. Few courts have yet agreed with these challengers, relying in large part on specific dicta from District of Columbia v. Heller to reject them. That dicta held out certain “longstanding prohibitions” on firearm possession from the scrutiny applied to other gun regulations. However, the dicta is uncited and Bruen did nothing to explain the authority justifying the hold outs. As firearm regulations continue to fall under Bruen’s scythe, questions around § 922(g)(1) will continue to swirl until the law is changed to something more certain. Already, the Third Circuit has held the statute unconstitutional as applied to one defendant, and the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has held the statute facially unconstitutional.
So how to fill the gap currently band-aided over by Heller’s dicta? Two primary schools of thought are considered herein. One says that the founding fathers desired to disarm “unvirtuous” people, and that all felons are rightly disarmed because they lack virtue, as evinced by their felonious past. The other says that the authors of our constitution believed in disarming “dangerous” people, and that statutes such as § 922(g)(1) should be construed by that standard. This Comment analyzes both potential standards and finds that the “dangerous” standard is better supported by history as well as being the more practical and logical choice