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Special Issues Facing People Who Use Drugs and How Sensitive Lawyers Can Help: Three Case Studies from Rutgers Law Associate
Full text linkAddressing Opioid Use Disorder in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Regions
Full text linkThe opioid crisis has devastated communities across the United States, prompting extensive litigation against pharmaceutical companies for their role in fueling addiction. Aggressive pharmaceutical marketing has led to the development of key lawsuits against Purdue Pharmaceuticals, the Sackler family, Johnson & Johnson, and Teva Pharmaceuticals, as well as a landmark $26 billion global settlement involving major distributors. U.S. courts have played a crucial role in corporate accountability, mandating record financial settlements alongside behavioral and policy reforms. By contrast, the opioid crisis in MENA, which stemmed largely from illicit drug trafficking often linked to geopolitical instability, has been more often met with strict criminal penalties rather than structured legal redress. While many countries prioritize enforcement, Iran and Turkey have implemented harm reduction strategies, such as medication-assisted treatment and controlled opium production, which offer valuable models for balancing regulation with public health needs. This article contends that MENA’s response could be strengthened by incorporating judicial oversight akin to the civil litigation framework employed in the U.S. By allowing courts to address opioid-related harms through civil mechanisms while working alongside policy-level actors to combat trafficking and stigma, both regions can build more effective, sustainable frameworks to manage opioid use and its detrimental societal impacts
Decentral Intelligence Agency: The Law and Autonomous Artificial Intelligence
No full textArtificial intelligence (“AI”) is rapidly gaining autonomy across a range of domains, such as business, education, social relationships, and warfare. This article examines the legal and policy implications of autonomous AI agents, a rapidly evolving technology that challenges existing regulatory frameworks. Drawing from tort, agency, property, contract, privacy, human rights, and constitutional law, we propose a comprehensive approach to govern these increasingly independent entities. Our analysis begins with a historical perspective, tracing both the evolution of autonomous computational systems and of legal responses to such technologies. We then conduct a comparative study of AI governance across jurisdictions, highlighting regulatory gaps and best practices. Central to our discussion is the challenge of defining AI autonomy and agency in legal terms. We explore the concept of “legal personhood for AI”2 and its potential ramifications for liability, responsibility, and other legal issues. Through case studies and hypothetical scenarios, we illustrate the practical challenges of applying current laws to AI agents. These examples inform our proposals for legal reforms, including the creation of new AI-specific legal categories and the establishment of specialized regulatory bodies. The article also addresses the ethical dimensions of AI deployment, discussing issues of bias, privacy, and societal impact. This article aims to offer a roadmap for policymakers, legal practitioners, and technologists navigating the future of AI regulation. By balancing innovation with accountability, we seek to foster a legal environment that promotes responsible AI development while safeguarding societal interests
And the Oscar for Best “Original” Screenplay Goes to . . . ChatGPT: Does the Use of AI in Scriptwriting Devalue Hollywood Writers?
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Loopholes of Liberty: The Supreme Court’s Evisceration of the Fourth Amendment
No full textThe Fourth Amendment’s protections against unwarranted government intrusion are currently undermined by the Supreme Court’s third party and open fields doctrines, which permit warrantless access to shared data and private land beyond a home’s curtilage, clashing with the Amendment’s aim to safeguard privacy and property in an era of advanced surveillance. These doctrines enable arbitrary governmental overreach, necessitating urgent review to restore constitutional protections. Rooted in Enlightenment principles, the Fourth Amendment historically protected “papers” and “effects” from physical trespass, as seen in Boyd v. United States. Katz v. United States introduced a “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, but its subjective nature fails to adapt to modern technological and societal shifts resulting in in inconsistent rulings by the Supreme Court. A proposed hybrid “SENT” standard of review which assesses the Scope and Extent of government intrusion, Necessity of information exposure, and the National Tradition/historical parallels provides a balanced, adaptable framework to ensure protections are grounded in founding principles. The third party and open fields doctrines should be abolished or reassessed using SENT to align jurisprudence with contemporary privacy expectations and founding era principles
Defeating Antisemitism in the World’s First Democratic Republic: the American Revolution and Jewish Legal and Political Equality
Full text linkAt a moment when antisemitism is on the rise in the United States, we believe it is useful to consider how the American Revolution led to the first nation in the world where antisemitism was fundamentally contrary to the national constitution and Jews were entitled to full rights as citizens of the national government. As we explain in this article, during and after the Revolution, Jews were free to participate in all professions and general civic life, naturalize (if immigrants), vote, serve on juries, become lawyers and judges, become military officers, and attend universities. Jews had almost none of these rights in England and limited rights in the British colonies in the Americas. After the Revolution, the Constitution of 1787 guaranteed total religious liberty to Jews and access to almost all aspects of federal rights and privileges, including the right to hold offices in the national government. However, under the American system of federalism the states regulated rules for voting and state office holding and were able to have established churches, provide state support for some religions, and in other ways favor one faith over another. Thus, most of the early state governments and state constitutions had a religious test (either Protestant or Christian) for holding a state office and had various laws that negatively impacted Jews or provided benefits to some Christians, but not to Jews or all Christians. By the end of the mid-nineteenth century, most of this discrimination was gone. This article shows how Jewish participation in the Revolution led to a sea change in Jewish rights and how the very presence of Jews in the nation helped lead to a national policy of religious liberty that would quickly be adopted by most states within the American system of federalism
“Digital Integrity”: Defending the Judicial Integrity in the Digital Age
Full text linkRecent revelations have shown that the protection of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age is inadequate. Despite well-known exclusionary rules regarding evidence obtained by illegal search and seizure, current trends in the digital age and the law of evidence resulted in courts that tend to include such evidence, and by doing so, create significant risk of both substantive and procedural errors and hence increase the potential for wrongful convictions. To address the matter and try to empower and modernize the protection given by the Fourth Amendment, this article suggests performing a revolution in the law of evidence in the digital age by establishing the “Digital Integrity” doctrine. Our proposed solution for “Digital Integrity” suggests using the fundamental principle of judicial integrity as a measure to implant fairness and equality in the criminal proceeding in three different aspects, regarding (1) knowledge, (2) education, and (3) symmetry of the proceeding. The adoption of “Digital Integrity shall reduce the scope of Fourth Amendment violations, adapt it to the digital age, and therefore protect the innocent from wrongful convictions