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Rule of Law Collaborative in Columbia, South Carolina
No full textKathy Bacuta [2L] will contribute to the Collaborative’s goals of developing the Rule of Law as a discipline, advancing theoretical and research-based applications in the field, and refining policies relating to Rule of Law development. ROLC partners on a global scale with local and international NGOs, government and multilateral donors to carry out its work
How to Use an Enabling Statute, Federalregister.gov, and eCFR.gov to find Federal Regulations
No full textReference librarian Frederick W. Dingledy describes how to read a federal regulation using the Federal Register’s website and the federal government’s eCFR website, as well as how to use an enabling statute to find regulations related to that statute.
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Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Remedying Malicious Social Bot Behavior Via Section 230 Reform
Get PDFAs “interactive computer services” (social media sites) expanded over the past decade, so too did the prevalence of “social bots,” software programs that mimic human behavior online. The capacity social bots have to exponentially amplify often-harmful content has led to calls for greater accountability from social media companies in the way they manage bot presence on their sites. In response, many social media companies and private researchers have developed bot-detection methodologies to better govern social bot activities. At the same time, the prevalence of harmful content on social media sites has led to calls to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the law that largely immunizes social media sites from liability for third-party content on their platforms. Such reform proposals largely entail making Section 230 immunity contingent on social media companies following new requirements when moderating content. Social bots have been left out of these reform conversations, however. This Note suggests that including specific provisions regulating social bots within broader Section 230 reform will help remedy both outdated Section 230 provisions and malicious social bots’ effects. Fusing characteristics from several Section 230 reform proposals with existing bot-governance technology will help establish a legal foundation for social media companies’ new social bot management requirements. Two suggested requirements are: (1) interactive computer services must have some type of monitoring and classification system that helps users determine the “bot-ness” of social media accounts; and (2) interactive computer services must provide an accessible medium for users to view the data that its monitoring and classification system produces. These requirements will help protect the validity of organic online exchanges and reduce the potential power of deceitful influence campaigns
An Interview with Ingrid and Michael Hillinger
Get PDF...I mean, there are just many, many wonderful stories. We could not be more grateful to the law school for what they did for us, both as students and as teachers. And my sense is that that special quality, citizen lawyer, continues to this day, and that\u27s something really important. -- Ingrid Hillinger
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In this oral history, dated February 23, 2024, Ingrid and Michael Hillinger gave us an overview of their many years of studies and service to William & Mary Law School. The subjects ranged from funny stories at “Libel Night,” an annual student-run comedy event from the ‘70s, to Ingrid’s journey becoming one of the first women at the law school to receive tenure status. We heard anecdotes about their favorite friends and peers from the administration as well as a timeline of the changes they noticed at the law school over the years, from the construction of the new building to a shift in students’ work-life balance.https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/oralhist_all/1010/thumbnail.jp
Rage Rhetoric and the Revival of American Sedition
Get PDFWe are living in what Professor Jonathan Turley calls an age of rage. However, it is not the first such period. Professor Turley explores how the United States was formed (and the Constitution was written) in precisely such a period. Throughout that history, sedition has been used as the vehicle for criminalizing political speech. This Article explores how seditious libel has evolved as a crime and how it is experiencing a type of American revival. The crime of sedition can be traced back to the infamous trials of the Star Chamber and the flawed view of free speech articulated by Sir William Blackstone. That view continues to resonate in “bad tendency” rationales for criminalizing what Professor Turley calls “rage rhetoric.” An advocate for a broader theory of free speech, Professor Turley suggests that the United States should break this cycle and reject a crime that it is not only superfluous in many cases, but the product of the anti-free speech theories extending back to the seventeenth century. The elimination of the crime would fulfill what Professor Turley believes is the original and revolutionary view of free speech articulated by some figures at the start of the Republic. It would finally slay what James Madison called the “monster” lurking in our political and legal systems for centuries
The Imperative of Rejecting Gender-Critical Feminism in the Law
Get PDFRoughly a half-century ago at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, some feminist scholars and activists found themselves arguing with transgender people about who is a woman. While much of contemporary feminist thought has moved past biological essentialism’s outdated embrace of a sex binary to embrace trans-equality, a relatively small but vocal group of self-proclaimed “gender-critical feminists” (who are sometimes called trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or “TERFs” for short) eschew transgender legal rights that they perceive as potentially threatening to the rights of cisgender women. Most gender-critical arguments in that regard are fallacious; they are based on myths and false narratives that misconstrue or ignore empirical data from both the natural and social sciences. Worse yet, the gender-critical position not only threatens to undermine equality under law, but also fosters narratives that contribute to the criminal victimization of transgender persons. In an attempt to minimize the potential for such harmful outcomes, this Article seeks to dismantle some of the more common arguments that gender-critical feminists routinely offer so that judges and lawyers have a source of legal literature that corrects the misinformation gender-critical authors are spreading in this emerging field, thereby providing them with the evidence needed to craft accurate legal arguments and rulings
The Law Doesn\u27t Work Like a Computer : Exploring Software Licensing Issues Faced by Legal Practitioners
Get PDFMost modern software products incorporate open source components, which requires compliance with each component’s licenses. As noncompliance can lead to significant repercussions, organizations often seek advice from legal practitioners to maintain license compliance, address licensing issues, and manage the risks of noncompliance. While legal practitioners play a critical role in the process, little is known in the software engineering community about their experiences within the open source license compliance ecosystem. To fill this knowledge gap, a joint team of software engineering and legal researchers designed and conducted a survey with 30 legal practitioners and related occupations and then held 16 follow-up interviews. We identified different aspects of OSS license compliance from the perspective of legal practitioners, resulting in 14 key findings in three main areas of interest: the general ecosystem of compliance, the specific compliance practices of legal practitioners, and the challenges that legal practitioners face. We discuss the implications of our findings
Democratic Vibes
Get PDFWho should decide who gets to say what on online social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube? American legal scholars have often thought that the private owners of these platforms should decide, in part because such an arrangement is thought to serve valuable free speech interests. This standard view has come under pressure with the enactment of statutes like Texas House Bill 20, which forbids certain platforms from “censoring” user content based on viewpoint. Such efforts to regulate the speech policies of online platforms have been challenged for undermining the editorial speech rights of these platforms and allowing the proliferation of hate speech.
This Article develops a democratic theory of free speech, according to which one of the most important reasons for protecting robust free speech rights is that free speech can contribute not only to democratic elections but to a democratic culture more generally. To achieve robust cultural democracy, a community’s speech environment must enable people not only to rationally persuade one another about matters of public importance and convey mutual respect to one another as political equals but also allow people to influence each other in a less articulate and rational manner—to “democratically vibe” with one another.
This theory yields a qualified normative defense of government regulation of the speech policies of large social media platforms that can help to realize cultural democracy, suggesting that First Amendment doctrine should focus to a greater extent on protecting the speech rights of platform users, rather than platform owners. Although far from a ringing endorsement of H.B. 20 or S.B. 7072, this Article suggests that First Amendment law should be friendlier to state regulation of platform speech than many critics have thought
The Limits of Lochnerism
Get PDFThe Lochnerism thesis is among the most influential constitutional theories to emerge in recent years. It argues that the judiciary increasingly protects private business from public regulation by enshrining and expanding liberty of contract rights under the First Amendment. Using 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis as a case study, this Essay explores the limits of Lochnerism as a theoretical framework. It argues that, while productively illuminating the judiciary’s attack on the administrative state and democratic processes, the theory may also displace concerns over the concrete harms experienced by vulnerable communities. To bring these harms back into view, this Essay suggests a theoretical reorientation: a shift in perspective from concerns over regulation to a more traditional point of focus—the distribution of property rights