MSNBC: “Hot takes summarizing the justices’ work can try to spin the data, but the reality is simple. By Steve Vladeck, professor at the University of Texas School of Law The effective end of the Supreme Court’s term on Friday touched off what has become an annual tradition: hot takes summarizing the justices’ work over… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Courts
‘AI Arms Race’: Privacy Class Action Claims ChatGPT Is ‘Catastrophic Risk to Humanity’
Law.com – The lawsuit likens Open AI’s alleged privacy violations to complaints against Clearview AI for scraping photos off the internet for commercial gain: “A proposed class action lawsuit against Open AI and ChatGPT investor Microsoft Corp. is seeking a court order requiring the generative artificial-intelligence platform to stop its alleged secret “harvesting” of personal… Continue Reading
The Search for Case Dockets & Documents Around the World
Reposted with permission from AALL Spectrum, Volume 27, Number 6 (July/August 2023), pgs 48-50. By Rachel Green, Faculty Services Librarian; Caitlin Hunter, Reference Librarian; Sherry Leysen, Reference Librarian and Lynn McClelland, Reference Librarian, UCLA, Hugh & Hazel Darling Law Library Tips for locating court records in non-U.S. jurisdictions (and why we should appreciate PACER more). Legal… Continue Reading
Federal Judicial Financial Disclosure Reports
“Overview – This site contains financial disclosure reports for judicial officers, including bankruptcy, magistrate, and special trial judges. This site includes all judges’ 2021 and future financial disclosure reports that are currently available for release. Request Additional Reports – Judges’ 2017 to 2020 and judicial employees’ 2017 to 2022 financial disclosure reports are available by… Continue Reading
The Dobbs Divide
Five Thirty Eight – “Percentage change in the number of abortions per month, compared to the average monthly abortions before Dobbs (April and May 2022), through March 2023 by state: “New estimates provided exclusively to FiveThirtyEight by #WeCount — a national research project led by the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that supports research… Continue Reading
Supreme Court Narrows Federal Jurisdiction Under Clean Water Act
CRS Legal Sidebar Supreme Court Narrows Federal Jurisdiction Under Clean Water Act June 21, 2023 – On May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court decided Sackett v. EPA, a case with significant implications for the scope of federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (CWA). While the Court unanimously agreed that the lower court applied the wrong… Continue Reading
An Aggressive Supreme Court Reshapes the US as Its Standing Erodes
Bloomberg – free link: “A conservative supermajority is remaking US laws on the environment, health and firearms, even as public confidence declines and ethical questions grow. The Supreme Court, in the midst of a run of decisions that have stress-tested the core principles of US democracy, has rarely been so aggressive in using its powers —… Continue Reading
Chamber of Secrets
Washington Monthly: “…The Supreme Court’s habit of deciding hugely important cases without briefings, arguments, or even a word of explanation threatens democracy. Some progressive legal scholars have coined the term demosprudence to underline that the opinion announcements are the only time that the Court’s members directly address the public. Clearly, however, the justices do not… Continue Reading
The Presidential Records Act, Clinton’s Socks, and Trump’s Boxes
Lawfare: “…In 1950, Congress passed the Federal Records Act, which requires federal agencies—but not the president—to preserve their records. Five years later, Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act, which encouraged (but did not require) former presidents to donate their records to private, federally maintained libraries. Then came Richard Nixon. Four months after Nixon resigned in… Continue Reading
Freedom of speech and LGBT rights: Americans’ views of issues in Supreme Court case
“A majority of Americans think business owners should be able to refuse to provide services in situations where providing them may “suggest support for beliefs about lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) issues” to which they have personal or religious objections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. In earlier surveys, the public has… Continue Reading
The GPTJudge: Justice in a Generative AI World
Grossman, Maura and Grimm, Paul and Brown, Dan and Xu, Molly, The GPTJudge: Justice in a Generative AI World (May 23, 2023). Duke Law & Technology Review, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4460184 “Generative AI (“GenAI”) systems such as ChatGPT recently have developed to the point where they are capable of producing… Continue Reading
Projected Health Outcomes Associated With 3 US Supreme Court Decisions in 2022
Gaffney A, Himmelstein DU, Dickman S, et al. Projected Health Outcomes Associated With 3 US Supreme Court Decisions in 2022 on COVID-19 Workplace Protections, Handgun-Carry Restrictions, and Abortion Rights. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(6):e2315578. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.15578. “Several recent US Supreme Court rulings have drawn criticism from the medical community, but their health consequences have not been quantitatively… Continue Reading
