27127 research outputs found
Sort by
Feedback Loops: Feedback Machines
No full textYes, AI raises serious concerns about bias, privacy, copyright infringement, environmental sustainability, and a whole bunch of other important topics. But if you are looking for a positive use case - and a new way to approach professional development - try asking chatgpt or some other AI chatbot for feedback, especially on something you\u27ve written
Don’t be Cruel: Cruelty, Complicity, Self-Knowledge, and Growth
No full textThe papers in this symposium, and the larger body of scholarship to which this symposium is a contribution, ask us to attend to the often brutal and inhumane conditions in American jails and prisons. But why should we do that? Why should we confront the suffering of the incarcerated? Why should we ask ourselves whether that suffering is unjust, unnecessary, or even unconstitutional? The main reason, of course, is that we want to remedy those injustices. We care about the suffering of our fellow human beings, and people do not cease to be our fellow human beings merely because they have been incarcerated, nor because they have committed crimes for which they have been incarcerated. That is, or certainly should be, sufficient reason to care about the rights of the incarcerated. But I would like here to add another reason. Cruelty diminishes those who are cruel
Paying for Performance? Attorneys\u27 Fees in Fraud Class Actions
No full textThis paper studies whether plaintiffs\u27 lawyers matter in securities class actions. We use inverse propensity score weighting (IPW) to compare the results in cases led by top-tier firms against those brought by lower-tier firms. This technique addresses case selection effects by using all of the cases led by a top-tier firm and then weighting the cases led by lower-tier firms based on how similar these cases are to the cases led by top-tier firms. We do find that top-tier lawyers obtain better outcomes for shareholders in a subset of securities class actions, specifically the cases against the larger (although not the very largest) companies. Outside of these cases, we find that most of the difference in the results obtained by top- and lower-tier firms disappears when we balance observable characteristics using the IPW technique. Although the top-tier firms do not get better results in most cases, they do invest more hours and money into their cases
Defining Relevant Markets in Digital Ecosystems
No full textTraditional market definition focuses on the substitutability of two products or geographies. In digital ecosystems, competition often occurs in important ways that elide definition in conventional substitutability terms. This Article considers three kinds of economic rivalry that do not fit the conventional market definition mold: (1) Single-side competition: In two sided markets, firms may compete on just one side of the market. For example, Google and Facebook compete for the same advertisers, but their users on the other side of the market do not necessarily think of the offerings (social media and universal search) as substitutes; (2) Ecosystem competition: Technology companies often compete with other firms to define which nodes in a digital ecosystem are differentiated or commoditized. For example, Apple and Amazon competed fiercely over the e-books ecosystem to determine whether value would reside primarily in retail distribution or tablets; (3) Capacity competition: Firms compete for dominance in technological capacity that does not yet have certain applications. For example, firms are in an arms race for supremacy in a variety of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and (more remotely) nanotechnology where the potential applications (and hence markets in an antitrust sense) are myriad and as of yet unknown. These three examples provide impetus to design new legal-analytical toolkits for identifying competition in digital ecosystems
Three Proposals for Fixing the TCJA
No full textThe year 2025 promises to be important in U.S. tax history for three reasons. First, the expiration of the individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act means that Congress is very likely to enact important tax legislation to prevent tax increases for millions of individual taxpayers. Second, a new administration frequently means tax legislation, typically through budget reconciliation if the same party controls Congress (1981, 1993, 2001, 2017, 2022). Third, the trifecta of Supreme Court decisions in 2024 (Moore, Corner Post, and Loper Bright) suggests that there may be a spike in litigation challenging various tax provisions as unconstitutional or illegal, prompting Congress to enact modifying legislation.
The key issue for 2025 is what to do about the expiring TCJA provisions, and whether other TCJA provisions should be modified to pay for the extension of expiring provisions and other reforms. I recommend that Congress: lets section 199A (the passthrough deduction) expire; retains and improves the corporate alternative minimum tax; and repeals subpart F and the global intangible low-taxed income rule for corporations subject to the corporate AMT
Use of Artificial Intelligence in Drug Development
No full textConsiderable focus has been placed on the health care applications of artificial intelligence (AI). Already, machine learning, a subset of AI that involves “the use of data and algorithms to imitate the way that humans learn” has been used to predict diseases, while AI-powered smartphone apps have been developed to promote mental health and weight loss. Owing in part to such successes, the market for AI in health care has been forecasted to increase more than 1000% between 2022 and 2029, from 164.1 billion. One area of substantial promise is drug development, which is poised to benefit from advances in the use of AI to predict protein folding, molecular interactions, and cellular disease processes. Successful application of AI to drug development, however, faces several obstacles, including poor model performance caused by nondiverse training data and shortcut learning. Additionally, the often opaque ways that AI systems reach their predictions conflict with regulatory approval frameworks that require a rationale for decision-making. Given these obstacles, we sought to identify the scope and breadth of AI use in drug development
Bizindan Miinawa (Listen Again)
No full textJohnson v. McIntosh was as fake as John Wayne’s teeth. That one was a property dispute, remember? Two wealthy, privileged, and powerful white people squared off over thousands of acres of land acquired from Indigenous nations who called the vast valley of Eagle River home. On one side, you had a former United States Supreme Court Justice; on the other, you had a wealthy political benefactor/beneficiary. No tribal nations or Indigenous peoples to be seen or heard from. And of course, the competing property claims at issue barely overlapped, if at all, thanks to stipulations of the parties at the trial level that formed the basis of the factual dispute. It was a sham case
The Meme Stock Fenzy: Origins and Implications
No full textIn 2021, several publicly traded companies, such as GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, and AMC, became “meme stocks,” experiencing a sharp rise in their stock prices through a dramatic influx of retail investors into their shareholder base. Analyses of the meme stock surge and its implications for corporate governance have focused on the idiosyncratic creation of online communities around particular stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Article, we argue that the emergence of meme stocks is part of longer-running and more structural digital transformations in trading, investing, and governance. On the trading front, the abolition of commissions by major online brokerages in 2019 reduced entry (and exit) costs for retail investors. Zero-commission trading represents a modification of the payment for order flow (“PFOF”) system, which is itself a product of technological disruptions in the financial markets in the 1980s. With respect to investing, the emergence of social media communication amplified retail investors’ pre-existing dependence on social networks to make decisions regarding stock investing and portfolio construction. It also allowed them to coordinate their investing activities and affect the market price while expressing their non-financial interests. These structural changes imply that meme trading is here to stay. While some startups have attempted to bring the shareholder experience into the digital age and help retail investors participate in governance, these developments have been relatively modest. After tracing the meme stock phenomenon, we sketch a research agenda for law and finance scholars to explore the concrete effects of meme investing on corporate governance. First, we ask whether retail traders can transform into retail shareholders actively engaged in corporate governance. Second, we propose a broader metric for “meme-ness”: future scholarship can use modern advances in data science to better identify which companies are vulnerable to meme surges and social media-driven investing unrelated to their financial fundamentals
Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Client? Navigating the Mysteries of Prospective and Organizational Representation
No full textMany years ago, I was trying a civil case that had stretched on for weeks in a federal court in Detroit. The counsel tables for both parties were covered with briefs, coffee cups, memoranda, books, water pitchers, examination outlines, yellow writing pads, and all the other litter that inevitably piles up during long trials. It appeared that we had moved in, just as at our actual homes it appeared that we had moved out
Repurposed Energy
No full textWildfires, weather extremes, and other conditions induced partially by climate change add urgency to the project of accelerating the clean energy transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy infrastructure. Yet the hurdles to accomplishing such a massive industrial-scale transition are daunting. Indeed, large renewable energy generation projects regularly face denials or project-killing delays across the United States. This Article proposes a national policy to channel the bulk of new clean energy projects to targeted categories of both rural lands and urban, post-industrial lands that we define collectively as “repurposed energy” sites. Such lands will consist of marginal farmland, abandoned coal mines, retired or retiring coal plants, closed landfills, and other underutilized or abandoned properties known as “brownfields.”
Repurposed energy addresses two core problems in the communities slated to host new clean energy generation projects like utility-scale (large) wind farms and solar plants. Developers predominantly pursue clean energy projects in rural and, to a lesser extent, post-industrial communities, where available land is more plentiful, but climate change denial or opposition to clean energy projects can be significant. Yet many of these communities also have flagging economies, underutilized infrastructure, and abandoned lands previously used for energy resource extraction or industrial activities. Prioritizing such lands for clean energy projects addresses the dual problems of clean energy opposition and economic decline, and it comes at a perfect moment. The massive infusion of federal money from the recent federal infrastructure and climate bills can make repurposed energy a reality. In this Article we build on existing legislative and regulatory efforts that prioritize clean energy development on already-disturbed lands to construct a more complete legal and policy framework for implementing repurposed energy. In doing so, we explore the existing laws that can support this approach as well as new policies and cultural narratives needed to ensure that the energy transition comprehensively addresses the governance issues, political economic barriers, procedural hurdles, and environmental and energy justice challenges associated with the massive buildout of U.S. energy infrastructure. This build-out is a critical step toward combating climate change. As with all challenges in the energy realm, repurposed energy is far from a complete solution, but it is an achievable one and, we argue, a central enabling pillar of a successful energy transition