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Learning From Mistakes: A Guide to Expanding the Oversight Board
Get PDFMore than 4.4 billion people use social media. A few platforms attract a significant number of those users—for example, 2.9 billion people use Facebook, 2.3 billion use YouTube, and 1.2 billion use WeChat. How these major platforms govern themselves with respect to content moderation has an impact on billions of users and may lead to policy changes across other platforms that affect billions more. That is why it is so important to analyze Meta’s Oversight Board—an independent body created for the purpose of “promot[ing] free expression by making principled, independent decisions regarding content on Facebook and Instagram by issuing recommendations on the relevant Facebook company content policy.” Though decisions made by the Oversight Board with respect to specific posts receive substantial media attention, less attention has been paid to the structure of the Board as well as how the Board plans to expand to increase the number of posts it reviews per year. This article aims to fill that gap. Lessons from the evolution of the federal court system in the United States provide the template from which this article will make recommendations for the expansion of the Oversight Board. This article argues that the Board, at least in theory, shares much in common with federal courts—making those courts a valuable source of information on the ways in which the Board and Meta’s content adjudication system should evolve. The first lesson for the Board from the evolution of the federal court system is that—in response to increases in the Board’s jurisdiction and caseload—the Board must make timely adjustments to its structure, including creating lower courts or “Content Moderation Commissions” (CMCs) and increasing the number of members on the Board. The second lesson is that Board members and CMC commissioners must reflect the diversity of users on platforms under their jurisdiction and possess the expertise necessary to address the complexity presented by appeals. The third lesson is that Meta should cede authority to the Board over when and how to select content adjudicators so that the Board and CMCs can develop in a more appropriate and flexible fashion
New Frontiers in Technology: Can Traditional Intellectual Property Rights Laws Be Adapted and Applied to NFTs?
Get PDFA decade ago, ‘NFTs’ were rarely heard of or known to anyone, unless they worked in or kept up with the tech world. However, they are not new - they have been around for almost two decades. Their popularity has grown over the past few years. ‘NFT’ stands for ‘non-fungible token’. An NFT is a digital file with a unique identity that is verified on a blockchain and is therefore not interchangeable - i.e., a kind of crypto asset, like an authentication certificate for digital artifacts. In theory, NFTs can represent almost any real or intangible property. These days, it seems as though what can be an NFT is limited only by one’s imagination. Since NFTs were a relatively unheard-of phenomenon until late 2020, there was no real focus on regulating them. With their boost in popularity, that can no longer continue. Unfortunately, our current legal system does not have an adequate way of addressing the arising issues. The goal of this paper was to look at traditional intellectual property rights laws as they stand today and analyze whether they can be applied to NFTs in their current iterations, or whether (and how) these laws need to be adapted to adequately address the issues with NFTs. This paper looks at three different branches of IPR laws - copyright, trademark, and patent. This paper also discusses two experiments conducted by the author - buying An NFT and creating and attempting to sell an NFT of her own artwork
Common Sense or Sensibility: Vaccine Hesitancy, Parens Patriae, and the Common Good
Get PDFContending with national emergencies that develop into transnational catastrophes gives rise inevitably to concerns raised by libertarians and utilitarians over the extent to which the government — state, local, and federal — can restrict or redirect personal conduct to contain, if not resolve, any existing emergency condition. Using its parens patriae powers to protect the common good — especially the communal benefits of health and safety — government must endeavor to establish health care policies, and here, mandate vaccinations to combat the COVID-19 pathogen, against the benefits that are accruing to the general public. The conclusion drawn from this Article is that reasonable compromises to individual liberties must be permitted in order to guarantee the preservation of society’s general welfare or the common good
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Visits Catholic Law
No full textOn Thursday, September 21, the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT) at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) hosted Justice Amy Coney Barrett of the Supreme Court of the United States for a conversation that covered topics including constitutional originalism, the role of the Supreme Court, and the Catholic intellectual tradition
Resolved: The legal regime for defamation inaugurated by New York Times v. Sullivan is too protective of free speech over reputation
No full textOn Monday, February 13, 2023, Catholic Law—in collaboration American Enterprise Institute and co-sponsored with Catholic Law’s chapters of the Federalist Society and the Democratic Law Students Association—hosted second annual The Seigenthaler Debates, an annual series that is part of Catholic Law\u27s First Amendment Initiatives.
The virtual program provided attendees with an opportunity to hear from two First Amendment scholars on the topic - Resolved: “The legal regime for defamation inaugurated by New York Times v. Sullivan is too protective of free speech over reputation.” Rodney A. Smolla, President of Vermont Law and Graduate School, argued the pro position, and George Freeman, Executive Director of the Media Law Resource Center, the con position. Judge Thomas B. Griffith, special counsel to Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, who has recently served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, acted as the program’s moderator
The Appropriate Appropriations Inquiry
Get PDFThe Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument this fall concerning whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unconstitutionally self-funded. The question presented in the case asks whether the statute establishing the CFPB’s self-funding scheme, 12 U.S.C. § 5497, “violates the Appropriations Clause.” But that question is incomplete at best, because although the Appropriations Clause requires that “appropriations” be “made by law,” the Appropriations Clause does not itself vest Congress with any authority to make “law” in the first place. Instead, Congress’s authority to make appropriations laws is vested in part by the Necessary and Proper Clause. Thus, the “appropriate” appropriations inquiry asks not whether Section 5497 violates the Appropriations Clause, but instead whether Section 5497 violates one of Congress’s appropriations powers. And deciding that requires asking whether Section 5497 constitutes a “necessary and proper” means of “carrying into execution” a constitutionally vested power—which in regards to funding the CFPB, is presumably Congress’s power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states.”
This Essay argues that the Supreme Court should use the upcoming CFPB self-funding case to reorient its appropriations jurisprudence around the specific constitutional text that vests Congress with appropriations authority. Such a reorientation would suggest that, although Congress may empower some entities (such as the post office and national mint) to self-fund themselves through fees, Congress may nonetheless be unable to empower other entities (such as the CFPB) to operate outside of the congressional appropriations process. The difference in constitutionality stems from the different constitutional text (i.e., the different appropriations powers) that Congress must rely on to fund different parts of the federal government
The TikTok Algorithm Is Good, But Is It Too Good? Exploring the Responsibility of Artificial Intelligence Systems Reinforcing Harmful Ideas on Users
Get PDFLife as a Catholic Big Firm Litigator
No full textThe Center for Law and the Human Person at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) held on Wednesday, November 8, the second Faith in Action lecture of 2023-24 academic year. By invitation of Center director Elizabeth Kirk, Sullivan Cromwell partner Thomas C. White discussed the challenge of balancing his faith with his career, in a talk entitled “Life as a Catholic Big Firm Litigator.” Emphasizing the discipline required to pursue excellence as not only a litigator but also a person of faith—as well as, in his case, a father of a large family—White highlighted that lawyers must be honest with themselves about their commitments, both religious and secular. He noted that ways to better live out the proper ordering of obligations to God, family, and work could always be identified by a rigorous examination of conscience; and shared that, in his experience, spending time in daily prayer is possible—even for very busy people—because God is a “time multiplier.