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A New Metaphor: How Artificial Intelligence Links Legal Reasoning and Mathematical Thinking
Get PDFArtificial intelligence’s (AI’s) impact on the legal community expands exponentially each year. As AI advances, lawyers have more powerful tools to enhance their ability to research and analyze the law, as well as to draft contracts and other legal documents. Lawyers are already using tools powered by AI and are learning to shift their methodologies to take advantage of these enhancements. To continue to grow into their shifting role, lawyers should understand the relationship between AI, mathematics, and legal reasoning
Republication Liability on the Web
Get PDFThe tort of defamation evolved in an era where defamatory speech was published in books, magazines, newspapers, or other printed documents. The doctrines that are antecedent to the tort, such as publication, fault, defamation per se, presumed damages, and republication liability, similarly presumed that most defamation would appear in written form in a published work. Similarly, the significant limitations on defamation liability that were produced by a succession of Supreme Court constitutional precedent, including restrictions on prior restraint, heightened fault standards, expanded “public” classes, the “fact/opinion” dichotomy, and the “truth/substantial truth” burden shifting, also were based on a publishing world in which defamatory statements would most likely appear in traditional printed form
A Legal Map of New Local Parkland
Get PDFPublic parks play consequential roles in local communities. Parks can raise property values, encourage or inhibit sprawl, and promote health, safety, and social cohesion. The decision to create a park affects development in the surrounding area and dictates which residents can easily access the property’s new amenities—and which residents cannot.
Yet, public stakeholders are given few signposts in making and monitoring public park acquisitions. Data on new parkland is scarce; moreover, the legal framework undergirding the process is poorly understood and rarely explored, particularly at the local government level. Although local governments are America’s leading stewards and gatekeepers of public park property, the actions of a parks department when acquiring new land receive bare direction from the formal legal regime and little attention from legal scholars. Instead, state law and judicial precedent grants almost unconstrained local discretion when acquiring parkland, a framework that delegates lawmaking to the lowest level of governance: to the local and sublocal institutions whose internal policies and unwritten practices determine what parkland is acquired, how potential land acquisitions are reviewed, and which stakeholders and priorities carry most weight in the process. Viewed as a whole, these policies and practices constitute an informal, heterogeneous legal regime of local parkland acquisition
Some Observations on Separation of Powers and the Wisconsin Constitution
Get PDFIn recent years the Wisconsin Supreme Court has decided several high- profile cases concerning the separation of powers under the state constitution. In the abstract, questions concerning the separation of powers do not seem inherently partisan, largely because the partisan balance of government will shift over time. Yet, as has been the case with many of its recent decisions, the justices’ votes have broken along what most observers regard as partisan lines, and the opinions have featured heated prose including accusations of result orientation and methodological illegitimacy
In the Name of “Justice”: \u3ci\u3eShiffra-Green\u3c/i\u3e Motions and Their Unintended Harms
Get PDFSexual assault victims face many barriers to reporting the violence they have experienced. As few as one-third of sexual assaults are reported to the police and even fewer result in criminal charges. The criminal justice system can be grueling for sexual assault victims and carries with it the possibility of testifying at trial in front of their perpetrators, an experience that is daunting at best and terrifying at worst. Because of how few cases make it into the court system, along with how difficult the process can be for victims, any legal mechanisms that would create an unnecessary barrier to a victim participating in the process must be critically examined. One such barrier in Wisconsin is known as a Shiffra-Green motion. This motion received its name from two separate criminal sexual assault cases that helped to shape the legal rules around a defendant’s right to request access to privileged information, often used to gain access to a victim’s mental health records. This Comment explores where challenges to victims’ credibility originate, the legal privilege afforded to victims’ records, and the evolution of federal and state law that gave birth to the Shiffra-Green motion. Finally, the Comment concludes with recommendations for Wisconsin to modify or eliminate the motion
No Leave To Grieve: How Misfit Frameworks and America\u27s Grief Tsunami Require Better Bereavement Policy
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic fueled America’s recent death surge: 2021 has become the deadliest year on record in the United States. Scholars and commentators claim that the American workplace re-mains unprepared for the impending “grief tsunami” in the wake of such pervasive loss. Likewise, American law is ill-equipped for workplace grief. Bereavement, while medically “normal,” lacks a substantial foothold in workplace benefits and in the law. Currently, organizations bear the burden of developing their own policies—and where available, these policies remain insufficient to accommodate the myriad logistical and emotional complexities associated with the loss of a loved one. In the event of an adverse action related to be-reavement or grief-triggered behavior, workers and organizations lack a defined litigation framework. Without clear options, bereft employees who believe they have suffered adverse action may seek protections under the FMLA, Title VII, or the ADA; these efforts yield absurd, conflicting, or callous results. In some cases, these frameworks promote poor workplace policy, as they encourage or-ganizations to minimize communication to avoid risk of estoppel in favor of the employee. Notably, current benefits or litigation options, however insufficient, apply near-exclusively to employees; there cur-rently exist few provisions for the increasing number of independent workers within the American workforce. However, there exist budding state legislative options which may serve to address the bereavement problem. Local legislators may pull from these examples to craft comprehensive bereavement frameworks, available to all types of workers, in a manner which may reduce organizational burdens and serve to address America’s swelling wave of grief
Equal Opportunity in Remote Learning
Get PDFStudents with disabilities have always been a marginalized group. During the Covid-19 pandemic, this group was even more vulnerable to discrimination because many students simply could not receive services required to ensure equal opportunity in education. While Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act in order to ensure students with disabilities are fairly treated in the educational system, remote learning has created complications and more complex issues. Making this issue even more complex, many parents are demanding the end of remote learning while others are demanding it as a reasonable modification. The ADA, Section 504, and IDEA always envisioned students learning in a brick and mortar building, and the goal has always been inclusion and a least restrictive environment in order to prevent students with disabilities from being locked away and forgotten; however, remote learning has changed the landscape of education, and, as a result, some of these goals of inclusion are thwarted by a technology that promotes isolation. Still, the main purposes of these laws are to ensure equal opportunity, promote student choice, and provide dignity for all students, regardless of status. Districts must reconcile new technologies with old statutes to promote student learning and avoid lawsuits until Congress provides more specific instruction. This article examines current case law and discusses policies that districts must address to ensure equal opportunity
