Legal Scholarship Repository (University of Tennessee College of Law)
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A Statistical Look at the Supreme Court\u27s 2009 Term
No full textWhether a change in membership occurs or not, every Supreme Court term presents a unique set of controversies and decisions for legal scholars to examine. Herein, we offer a discussion of the Court\u27s recently completed 2009-2010 term. Rather than analyzing specific opinions in detail (as many have already done), we generate a comprehensive statistical analysis of justice voting behavior for the term. In particular, we examine consensus and division on the Court, the ideological tenor of the term, voting alignments among the justices, the production of opinions, and the Court\u27s overall ideological spectrum based on individual voting patterns. Ultimately, we also assess the ramifications of our findings for the future study of judicial behavior
Generative AI and Lawyer Formation
No full textThe capabilities of generative artificial intelligence — reading, summarizing, analyzing, organizing, and producing draft documents — align with the very tasks law students and junior lawyers learn in the early years of practice. So how can we reimagine lawyer formation to harness AI’s efficiencies while also ensuring the full development of a lawyer\u27s mind? Guests Ben Barton of the University of Tennessee College of Law and Cat Moon of Vanderbilt University Law School share their thoughts and offer examples of innovative practices that they are developing in their work
Win-Win Environmental Regulations for Crypto Mining: Developing a Regulatory Program That Reduces Environmental Harm and Promotes Innovation and Competition
No full textThe crypto space is a rapidly growing industry with a rapidly growing carbon footprint. The industry’s expanding energy use has sparked a vigorous debate over whether and how best to regulate crypto mining’s environmental effects. The Biden Administration and many members of Congress have studied the industry’s environmental impact and concluded that there should be environmental regulations for the industry. Regulation, however, faces an obstacle in the form of concern that regulation may unduly stifle innovation and competition within the industry. This is a major reason why Congress has yet to enact environmental regulations for crypto mining.
This Article proposes a win-win regulatory approach that would reduce crypto mining’s environmental harms while also promoting, rather than stifling, competition and innovation. The Article proposes applying the Porter Hypothesis, a well-known economic theory in environmental law scholarship, to the problem of environmental harm caused by crypto mining. The Porter Hypothesis calls for a consultative, flexible approach to environmental regulation that involves input from the industry, focuses on reducing pollution at its source instead of mitigating its effects after the fact, and provides the industry flexibility by setting emission limits and using market incentives, but not prescribing the technological means, to meet them.
Applied to crypto mining, the Porter Hypothesis suggests regulations that use a market incentive—like a pollution tax or a cap-and-trade program—to encourage crypto miners to reduce their pollution at its source, without mandating the use of a particular technology. The program should also provide funding for pilot projects, use phase-in periods and realistic deadlines, as well as require policy-makers to monitor and publish data about individual miners’ energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. This Article is the first to propose a regulatory program of environmental regulations for the industry, the first to apply the Porter Hypothesis to crypto mining, and the first to propose a regulatory approach that offers a win-win solution to overcome political opposition to regulating the environmental harms of crypto mining
BBC World Business Report
No full textEarlier this year, Professor Heminway was interviewed for a BBC Business radio broadcast on stock trading by the husband of a BP employee while in possession of significant nonpublic information he learned by eavesdropping on his wife