Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs Lauryn Gouldin and Professors Grace Orsatti and Mary Szto recently participated in the annual Southeastern Association of American Law Schools (SEALS) conference.
Gouldin presented her articles Crime-Specific Searches (forthcoming in 2027 in the George Washington Law Review, Volume 95) and Handcuffing Children (forthcoming in 2026 in the Georgetown Law Journal Online, Volume 115), during the conference.
Orsatti presented on the “Current Events in Health Law and Bioethics” panel. “The focus of the group is to explore a variety of legal topics addressing current hot topics in health law, bioethics, disability, and public health law. I discussed whether, in serious illness, the law can do more for patients who have lost the capacity to decide for themselves. I argued that the law can better account for the social and structural conditions in which patients make choices, including systemic inequities in healthcare delivery that determine whether a patient’s wishes are actually met. I also discussed what a decision-making framework attentive to those social and structural conditions might look like,” said Orsatti.
Szto presented on the “AI, Ritual, and Attorney Licensing” panel on alternative pathways to attorney licensure. “I discussed how AI is changing rituals. The bar exam is an initiation rite. I concluded that especially in an AI world, we need attorney licensure rituals that emphasize human connection, e.g., apprenticeships and the diploma privilege,” said Szto. She was also a discussant on the session on “Current Trends in Emerging Technologies and the Law: International, Comparative, and Domestic Perspectives”.