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Death by Stereotype: Race, Ethnicity, and California’s Failure to Implement \u3ci\u3eFurman\u3c/i\u3e’s Narrowing Requirement
Get PDFThis Article examines the possible racial and ethnic implications of California’s expansive death penalty statute in light of the Eighth Amendment’s requirement that each state statute narrow the subclass of offenders on whom a death sentence may be imposed. The narrowing requirement derives from the holding in Furman v. Georgia over forty-five years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that existing death penalty statutes violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Citing statistics demonstrating arbitrary and capricious application of capital punishment, a majority of the Justices concluded that a death sentencing scheme is unconstitutional if it provides “no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [death] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.
Authors and Machines
Get PDFMachines, by providing the means of mass production of works of authorship, engendered copyright law. Throughout history, the emergence of new technologies tested the concept of authorship, and courts in response endeavored to clarify copyright’s foundational principles. Today, developments in computer science have created a new form of machine, the “artificially intelligent” (AI) system apparently endowed with “computational creativity.” AI systems introduce challenging variations on the perennial question of what makes one an “author” in copyright law: Is the creator of a generative program automatically the author of the works her process begets, even if she cannot anticipate the contents of those works? Does the user of the program become the (or an) author of an output whose content the user has at least in part defined?
This Article frames these and similar questions that generative machines provoke as an opportunity to revisit the concept of copyright authorship in general and to illuminate its murkier corners. This Article examines several fundamental relationships (between author and amanuensis, between author and tool, and between author and co-author) as well as several authorship anomalies (including the problem of “accidental” or “indeterminate” authorship) to unearth the basic principles and latent ambiguities which have nourished debates over the meaning of the “author” in copyright. This Article presents an overarching and internally consistent model of authorship based on two basic pillars: a mental step (the conception of a work) and a physical step (the execution of a work), and defines the contours of these basic pillars to arrive at a cohesive definition of authorship.
The Article then applies the conception-and-execution theory of authorship to reach a series of conclusions about the question of machine “authorship.” Even the most technologically advanced machines of our era are little more than faithful agents of the humans who design or use them. Asking whether a computer can be an author therefore is the “wrong” question; the “right” question addresses how to evaluate the authorial claims of the humans involved in either preparing or using the machines that “create.” In many cases, either the upstream human being who programs and trains a machine to produce an output, or the downstream human being who requests the output, is sufficiently involved in the conception and execution of the resulting work to claim authorship. But in some instances, the contributions of the human designer and user will be too attenuated from the work’s creation for either to qualify as “authors” – leaving the work “authorless.
Choice Theory: A Restatement
Get PDFThis chapter restates choice theory, which advances a liberal approach to contract law. First, we refine the concept of autonomy for contract. Then we address range, limit, and floor, three principles that together justify contract law in a liberal society. The first concerns the state’s obligation to be proactive in facilitating the availability of a multiplicity of contract types. The second refers to the respect contract law owes to the autonomy of a party’s future self, that is, to the ability to re-write the story of one’s life. The final principle concerns relational justice, the baseline for any legitimate use of the contract power. We conclude this restatement of choice theory by highlighting its most important jurisprudential payoff – how our account relates to and improves on the economic analysis of contract. Choice theory is the modest price that economic analysis must pay to account for individual freedom
I Promise to Pay
Get PDFConsumers are more likely to keep a repayment promise they make themselves. When a scheduling conflict prevents a borrower from attending a mortgage closing, a power of attorney (POA) empowers a third party to promise that the borrower will repay the loan. On a matched sample of POA and non-POA loans, and comparing within borrower and within property, I link POAs to greater delinquency and foreclosure. Although POAs are uncorrelated with cash flow shocks, they reflect reduced promise keeping when borrowers undergo financial distress. This association vanishes for originator-servicers’ loans, which suggests that financial intermediation plays a role in consumer lending
State Hazard Mitigation Plans & Climate Change: Rating the States 2019 Update
Get PDFBetween 1980-2019, the U.S. endured 250 climate and weather disasters that each cost more than 1.7 trillion. Climate change contributes to a variety of hazards including extreme precipitation, drought, sea level rise, storm surge, heat waves, and flooding, and this effect will worsen over time. While the onset of natural disasters may be unavoidable, forgoing the opportunity to plan for changing conditions and increasing risks puts citizens in the path of preventable danger. Further investing in pre-disaster preparation or other resilience-building activities can save considerable money down the road – and many lives.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides technical assistance to states to develop State Hazard Mitigation Plans (SHMPs) which serve as “blueprints” for state efforts to prepare for natural and man-made hazards. The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act), the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, and other legislation set requirements for states to prepare these SHMPs as a condition for receiving certain federal grants to help communities prepare for and recover from future disasters. These plans offer an opportunity for states to integrate future climate projections and informed adaptation actions into their planning for hazard mitigation that can guide efforts across state agencies and applications for future funding. In 2016, FEMA put guidance into effect clarifying its interpretation that its regulations require SHMPs to consider changing future climate conditions (“2016 FEMA Climate Guidance”).
This report analyzes SHMPs issued since 2014 and assesses their compliance with the 2016 FEMA Climate Guidance. The report also ranks the SHMPs into 5 categories, with “1” indicating SHMPs that did not recognize climate change or did so inaccurately and “5” indicating plans with extensive consideration of how climate change will affect hazards, should be integrated across agencies and planning documents, and should be mitigated through adaptation actions. The report updates an earlier Sabin Center report, published in 2013, that ranked the states on their integration of climate change considerations in their then-current SHMPs (“2013 SHMP Report”). Since 2013 all 50 states have issued new SHMPs. This report therefore analyzes recent SHMPs in all 50 states and three U.S. territories to assess how states have changed their consideration of climate change. This assessment can help track progress in SHMP development, identify states resisting integrating climate change into their risk assessments, and serve as an initial look at whether the 2016 FEMA Climate Guidance is being followed in practice
What\u27s Wrong with Jumpstart(ing) Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act?
Get PDFLack of access to financial capital is a barrier for many entrepreneurs who seek to grow their business venture. In an effort to democratize the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Congress and the Obama Administration enacted the JOBS Act, which implements and regulates crowdfunding. The democratic nature of the online crowdfunding platforms is a seemingly attractive solution to structural and institutionalized barriers to fundraising within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Although the JOBS Act is a laudable step, the legislation does not in practice help entrepreneurs and herein lies one of its greatest shortcomings. The JOBS Act is unduly burdensome and is yet another barrier for entrepreneurs. Merely permitting underrepresented entrepreneurs and unsophisticated investors to engage in an alternative investment scheme of crowdfunding to raise capital does not solve the problems of access to traditional sources of capital. This article makes concrete proposals for addressing these shortcomings
Prosecuting Vote Suppression by Misinformation
Get PDFFollowing the 2016 U.S. presidential election, concerns about the influence of “fake news” proliferated in the media. Questions abounded regarding the affect social media platforms may have had on the electorate. Election Day 2016 had many in the media pondering: “Did Social Media Ruin Election 2016?” and “Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?” Two years after the election, social science scholars were still studying the effect of voters’ consumption of fake news stories leading up to November 8. The current fascination in the U.S. regarding fake news and, relatedly, the role of social media as a news-sharing entity, raises a worthwhile question: how do we prevent fake news without infringing on the right to free speech? This paper does not purport to answer this lofty inquiry but, instead, will address a slightly narrower one. Specifically, how should we curb those communications that work to corrupt the voting franchise by means of misleading or deceiving voters? In Part I, this paper will discuss some of the common types of misinformation used to deceive voters. Part II will briefly look at the history of protecting the right to vote in U.S. elections. Part III will examine the efficacy of the current legal framework for prosecuting election suppression efforts. Finally, Part IV will address a potential legislative reform to eliminate the inadequacies of this current framework
From the Basketball Court To Federal Court: Perils of the Prosecutorial Approach to Wire Fraud in the NCAA Basketball Cases
Get PDFThree similar criminal cases involving college basketball are currently progressing through the Southern District of New York. The first to go to trial, United States v. James Gatto, Merl Code, and Christian Dawkins, No. 17 Crim. 686, culminated in a guilty verdict on October 24, 2018, with all three defendants found guilty on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleged that the Gatto defendants participated in a scheme in which the defendants—former Adidas employees Gatto and Code, as well as aspiring sports agent Dawkins—made payments to the families of college-bound athletes in exchange for the athletes’ agreement to play basketball at universities with teams sponsored by Adidas. Prosecutors characterized this conduct as a criminal conspiracy, rather than a mutually beneficial business transaction, because the payments violated the amateurism policy of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”), the private organization that regulates college athletics at member institutions. NCAA regulations provide that athletes lose their eligibility to participate in NCAA sports if they receive payment for their athletic skills, and the NCAA imposes sanctions on universities for noncompliance by their athletes. The NCAA also requires that both student-athletes and coaches submit to their schools annual certifications of compliance with NCAA rules.
Trials of two other groups of defendants were previously scheduled for later this year. In both cases, the charges involve schemes wherein student-athletes received payments in violation of the NCAA’s amateurism rules
Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines
No full textEvery academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines’ research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position.
This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1252/thumbnail.jp