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Data Injustice in Global Justice
No full textIn May 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General unveiled a sweeping “Data Strategy for Action by Everyone, Everywhere,” seeking to unlock the UN’s “full data potential.” The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor followed suit, declaring in 2023 its intent to acquire advanced cyber forensic tools so as to hold the “widest range of digital evidence globally.” Across international institutions, data-driven governance has become the norm, with humanitarian agencies and tribunals transforming into “data hubs and information clearinghouses.” This Article critiques the unfettered datafication of global justice by international courts and organizations. These entities have aggressively expanded their data-driven operations in the last decade — deploying AI to predict crises, satellites to monitor conflict zones, biometric-enabled blockchain systems to track refugee movements, and social media evidence to prosecute crimes. Yet, the data that fuels these systems is often extracted from the world’s most vulnerable communities. This exposes these communities to grave risks of surveillance, hackability, and exploitation — risks further entrenched by the privileges and immunities that shield these international institutions from independent oversight. In sum, the regulatory and accountability vacuum surrounding data protection in global justice not only reinforces existing power hierarchies but also undermines the legitimacy of the very courts and organizations purporting to dismantle them. Against this backdrop, this Article calls for a fundamental reorientation of the way international institutions govern data — recasting these institutions not as data aggregators in a digital supply chain, but as fiduciaries of the communities they aim to serve. In resisting both nation-driven and corporate-driven technological authoritarianism, international courts and organizations have an opportunity to present an alternative vision of data governance. Such a vision should draw from the international legal principles of good faith and self-determination as fundamental obligations constraining the datafication practices of these institutions. Without such a shift, international courts and organizations risk making data injustice the next frontier of global inequality
Paternity, Protection, and Pirates: A Queer Theory Analysis of Intellectual Property Metaphors
Full text linkIntellectual Property and queer theory share a fundamental concern with the interplay between private and public, tangible and intangible, and language and form. Queer theory emphasizes how language impacts the construction of identity and belonging, highlighting that discourse plays a pivotal role in structuring gender, sexuality, and normativity. Intellectual Property is often portrayed as strictly neutral, laser-focused on spurring creativity and innovation. However, is this portrayal reflective of reality? And does this purported neutrality hold up in IP’s rhetoric? By examining two principal IP terminologies through a queer lens – the term “protection” to describe IP legal privilege, and the metaphor of “paternity” to describe the link between authors and works – this article argues that IP rhetoric exhibits biased, gendered, and heteronormative characteristics. These terminologies reverberate in IP doctrine, case law, and literature, channelling certain individuals and groups into categories of proper and improper, socially desirable and undesirable, worthy and unworthy. This not only reinforces hegemonic power structures in innovation and culture but also significantly influences individuals’ well-being, participation, and the fabric of public life. Yet, it also exposes a powerful tenet of queer theory – the potential to reclaim terminologies and suggest different readings of conventional wisdoms
Prescribing a Balance: Sustaining Environmental Health with Pharmaceutical Interest in Puerto Rico
Full text linkPuerto Rico, often referred to as the “Medical Cabinet of the U.S.A.,” is a hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing, contributing significantly to the American medical supply chain and Puerto Rico’s economy. However, decades of industrial activity, compounded by climate events like Hurricane Maria, have led to severe environmental damage, particularly through groundwater contamination and damaged Superfund sites. This Note examines the historical intersection of economic incentives and environmental neglect in Puerto Rico, focusing on the pharmaceutical industry’s impact. By critically analyzing the Superfund program and proposing reforms, this Note advocates for a balanced approach: introducing proactive environmental protections and financial incentives for compliant pharmaceutical manufacturers. Such measures aim to sustain pharmaceutical investments while safeguarding Puerto Rico’s fragile environment, public health, and long-term economic resilience
“Appeals on Wheels” brings Court of Appeals of Indiana to Bloomington
Full text linkThe Court of Appeals of Indiana will hold oral arguments at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law on Thursday, April 3 inside Baier Hall.
The event is part of the court’s Appeals on Wheels series and is open to the public. Arguments begin at 1:45 p.m. and are expected to conclude around 2:45 p.m.
“The Appeals on Wheels program is the best trust-building tool we have as a judiciary,” said Anne Fuchs, the Court’s director of communications. “The court brings real oral arguments to communities around the state so the public can understand how the judiciary really works. We want them to have experiential knowledge of the courts and to get to know the people ‘behind the robes.
Steve Beard ’98 named to TIME100 Health list
Full text linkOne of the world’s most influential leaders in the health ecosystem never thought he’d make it to college, let alone to the C-Suite of a major corporation helping diversify the American health care workforce. But Steve Beard isn’t your average CEO.
Raised on the south side of Chicago, Beard just assumed he was destined for a blue collar career after high school. But a guidance counselor, seeing something in Beard that he didn’t see in himself, urged him to apply to college. Four years later Beard was a graduate of the University of Illinois. A brief stint in banking led to a desire to go even further with his own education. Three years later—Steve Beard, JD.
And now the Indiana University Maurer School of Law alumnus is a member of the TIME100 Health class of 2025, alongside a number of other prestigious leaders including Melinda French Gates, Bill Nye, and Kate Middleton
Foreword
Full text linkIn this issue we are delighted to present papers from the symposium “Law and Technology at the Crossroads: A Centennial Summit,” held in Bloomington in November 2024. The symposium originated from the collaborative efforts of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s law and technology faculty and the Indiana Law Journal’s editorial board, notably 2023–2024 Editor-in-Chief John Vastag and 2024–2025 Executive Articles & Symposium Editor Paige Wynkoop. The Maurer School of Law’s Center for Intellectual Property Research provided funding, as did Indiana University through its Research Conference Grant Program. Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop and the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering lent their respective endorsements to our efforts
The Overstated Cost of AI Fairness in Criminal Justice
Full text linkThe dominant critique of algorithmic fairness in AI decision-making, particularly in criminal justice, is that increasing fairness reduces the accuracy of predictions, thereby imposing a cost on society. This Article challenges that assumption by empirically analyzing the COMPAS algorithm, a widely used and widely discussed risk assessment tool in the U.S. criminal justice system.
This Article makes two contributions. First, it demonstrates that widely used AI models do more than replicate existing biases—they exacerbate them. Using causal inference methods, we show that racial bias is not only present in the COMPAS dataset but also worsened by AI models such as COMPAS. This finding has implications for legal scholarship and policymaking, as it (a) challenges the assumption that AI can offer an objective or neutral improvement over human decision-making and (b) provides counterevidence to the idea that AI merely mirrors preexisting human biases.
Second, this Article reframes the debate over the cost of fairness in algorithmic decision-making for criminal justice. It shows that applying fairness constraints does not necessarily lead to a cost in terms of loss in predictive accuracy regarding recidivism. AI systems operationalize concepts such as risk by making implicit and often flawed normative choices about what to predict and how to predict it. The claim that fair AI models decrease accuracy assumes that the model’s prediction is an optimal baseline. Fairness constraints, in fact, can correct distortions introduced by biased outcome variables—which magnify systemic racial disparities in rearrest data rather than reflect actual risk. In some cases, interventions can introduce algorithmic fairness without imposing the cost often presumed in policy discussions.
These findings are consequential beyond criminal justice. Similar dynamics exist in AI-driven decision-making in lending, hiring, and housing, where biased outcome variables reinforce systemic inequalities beyond the choices of proxies. By providing empirical evidence that fairness constraints can improve rather than undermine decision-making, this Article advances the conversation on how law and policy should approach AI bias, particularly when algorithmic decisions affect fundamental rights
Regulating Healthcare Coverage Algorithms
Full text linkAmerican healthcare facilities and providers increasingly rely on algorithmic tools to support clinical decision-making, standards of care, and institutional practices related to patient diagnosis and treatment. This development has been characterized as both “promising” and “peril[ous].” Healthcare algorithms are intended to improve and standardize healthcare decision-making, but they also are capable of exacerbating bias and discrimination and, thus, contributing to the delivery of inequitable care for already disadvantaged groups