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The Hon. James E. Baker Reacts to Artificial Intelligence Comments Raised in Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts’ Year-End Report

The Hon. James E. Baker, Professor of Law and Director of the Syracuse Institute for Security Policy and Law, provided Politico with feedback to Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts’ year-end report on the federal judiciary that highlighted the challenges judges are facing with Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Baker, co-author of “An Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Federal Judges” published by the Federal Judicial Center, noted that he expects the complexity of models to make controversies over AI evidence more vexing than debates over DNA evidence, which overcame initial skepticism to become a mainstay in American legal proceedings.

“The challenge with AI is every AI model is different,” he says, “What’s more, AI models are constantly learning and changing.”

Professor Andrew Kim Publishes “Immigrant Torts” in the UC Davis Law Review

Professor Andrew Kim’s paper Immigrant Torts has been published in the UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 57, No. 2. (December 2023) at page 1059.

The paper can be found here.

Abstract:

In 2022, the Supreme Court effectively gutted a long-standing constitutional remedy for torts committed by federal officers. In the process, it seemingly immunized even the most serious abuses committed by Border Patrol agents. Such dramatic legal transformation has occurred despite — and perhaps because of — the soaring numbers of migrants at the southern border and the sobering evidence of alleged abuses there. According to one study, since 2010, over 250 persons, including unarmed children, have died due to fatal encounters with Border Patrol agents.

While the Court has historically expressed skepticism toward this remedy since its inception in the landmark case Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, its recent expression of outright hostility toward it is relatively new. To justify such casual discarding of an established constitutional precedent, it cast Bivens as an unlawful judicial usurpation of legislative power.

Though scholars have probed the reasons for the remedy’s demise, they have not focused on the important role that immigrants and immigration law have played in it. The Article’s novel contribution is filling that gap by contextualizing the transformation of constitutional torts within immigration law and its animating principles. It frames the Court’s separation-of-powers rationales as incomplete by showing that the remedy’s erosion occurred primarily in cases involving immigrants, or immigration-related matters, and through the Court’s reliance on the following three false narratives about them: (1) immigrant as terrorist, (2) immigrant as danger, and (3) immigrant as foreign. It then exposes constitutional torts’ hidden connections to immigration law by locating the same three false narratives in a foundational immigration law theory that has been used to exclude immigrants from the ambit of constitutional protections for over a century. Finally, it examines the import and implications of the remedy’s demise by exposing harms to both the law and the person.

Professor Kat Macfarlane Comments on Accessibility Issues Raised at AMC Theater in Greenville, North Carolina

In the wake of a disagreement between a disabled patron and management of an AMC Theater in Greenville, NC over seating accommodations, Professor Kat Macfarlane provided accessibility and Americans with Disabilities Act perspectives to ABC News 11.

Macfarlane, the Director of the Disability Law and Policy Program, noted that “The Americans with Disabilities Act governs places like movie theaters and restaurants, and requires that if there’s a policy in place, a movie theater for example, has to make a reasonable modification for people with disabilities.”

Distinguished Visiting Lecturer David Cay Johnston Discusses Claims of Justice Clarence Thomas’ Tax Fraud and Ethics Violations

David Cay Johnston, Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, spoke with MSN regarding ethics and tax fraud claims made about Justice Clarence Thomas.

“What Clarence Thomas has done would result in not only any judge in America being removed from the bench, but there is a good chance it would result in criminal prosecution for income tax fraud and for false filings in his mandatory financial ethics disclosure statements,” says Johnston.

Professor Gregory Germain Discusses the New York State Bill to Force Chick-fil-A to Open Thruway Restaurants on Sunday

In the Newsweek article “Chick-fil-A Could Be Forced to Open on Sundays”, Professor Gregory Germain provides legal analysis of the proposed New York State bill that would require fast-food restaurants at New York State Thruway rest stops to serve customers on all seven days.

The bill raises questions about what would happen if Chick-fil-A’s lease comes up for renewal.

What happens if “the government’s agency says they won’t renew unless Chick-fil-A agrees to operate seven days a week, and Chick-fil-A sues claiming that the law violates their religious principles?” Germain said.

“The governing Supreme Court authority would be Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, 573 US 682 (2014), where the Court held that private corporations are ‘persons’ under the Affordable Care Act, and that the ACA violated HL’s religious principles by requiring them to pay for contraceptives for employees,” he explained.

Professor Shubha Ghosh Receives a 2023-24 Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity Fellowship

Shubha Ghosh, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and Director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, has been awarded a 2023-24 Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellowship.

The WRKE Fellowship Program is a one-year fellowship designed to explore the intersection of racial equity, free knowledge, and the intellectual property ecosystem, and to promote sound policy for achieving social justice through these overlapping disciplines.

For his Fellowship grant, Ghosh plans to compile information about existing Intellectual Property (IP), Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), and artistic educational programs, with the goal of creating a map of this landscape, along with an analysis of these programs.

“I selected this focus because educational programs in entrepreneurship and IP at the K-12 level exist but have been understudied. Universities are the major avenues for commercializing technology in conjunction with private industry and government research labs. But by the time students enter college, the issues surrounding entrepreneurship and innovation come across as unfamiliar,” says Ghosh.  “The development of entrepreneurship and IP education programs at the K-12 level was established to educate students about these issues earlier as they develop their own educational and career paths.  My goal is to work, within existing channels of research, to better understand what these programs involve and whether they can be improved.” 

Ghosh will disseminate his research through original writings in journals, book chapters, and law reviews. “My research will also connect me with policymakers at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who have just started to study these issues in depth and with nonprofit organizations like The Henry Ford in Detroit, which works with the Ford Museum and the Ford Foundation, to design programs on entrepreneurship and intellectual property in the Detroit metro area. The Henry Ford is also designing a comprehensive database of these programs throughout the United States. I will be analyzing this database as well as contributing to it,” he says.

About the Fellowship

The role of the WRKE Fellow is to undertake scholarly and other research, produce scholarly publications and public intellectual writings intended to contribute to the body of free knowledge and racial equity scholarship, and to organize and present policy and community educational programming relevant to the Fellowship’s research and education agenda. The WRKE Fellow will work at the direction of supervising IIPSJ and HUSL personnel (in consultation with Wikimedia Foundation legal and policy staff), and receive support, guidance and mentorship from the WRKE Fellowship Advisory Board, made up of distinguished legal academics in the field of intellectual property social justice. Members of the Board are on hand to provide the Fellow with scholarly insight, policy expertise, and general guidance where needed to achieve Fellowship goals.

Among other things, the research and programming will examine the role of doctrinal elements within the IP law in contributing to traditions of systemic IP racial inequity and related injustice. The resulting research analyses will be put towards constructing free knowledge initiatives to improve the understanding and use of intellectual property in marginalized and underserved communities. The ultimate goal of the research is to improve racial equities through the IP ecosystem and related socio-economic aspects of the political economy, and will be available to the general public, IP law and policy makers, and IP practitioners.

The fellowship is funded through a grant from the Knowledge Equity Fund at the Wikimedia Foundation and is jointly administered by the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ) and the Howard University School of Law (HUSL).

3Ls Tracy Acquan and Thomas Sheffield Named Feinman Fellows as Spring 2024 Externs

3Ls Tracy Acquan and Thomas Sheffield have been named Feinman Fellows for the Spring 2024 semester. Established by Martin Feinman ’73, G’77, L’83, the Feinman Fellows receive a financial gift to help defray expenses associated with taking on their Spring externships in recognition of their commitment and dedication to public service. Feinman is the Director of Juvenile Justice Training at the Legal Aid Society of New York City.

Both students are externing with the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of New York. This public defender office in Syracuse, NY represents people charged with federal crimes who cannot afford to hire an attorney. It furthers the representation and rights of indigent persons in the criminal justice system by providing direct representation, training the broader federal defense bar (including attorneys assigned under the Criminal Justice Act), and tracking developments in federal criminal law.

Professor Roy Gutterman L’00 Reacts to Courts Ruling on Police Departments Releasing Officer Misconduct Reports

Professor Roy Gutterman L’00, Director of the Tully Center for Free Speech, Associate Professor at the Newhouse School, and Professor of Law at the College of Law, discussed two recent New York court decisions supporting Newsday’s requests for police department officer misconduct reports.

Gutterman noted that it is appropriate for agencies to redact personal, financial, and medical details, but “there is a vast disparity between an unsubstantiated report of police misconduct and legitimately private information.”

The article may require a subscription to Newsday.

Professor Shubha Ghosh Contributes Chapter on Intellectual Property in the Book Intellectual Property Rights in the Post Pandemic World

Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh, director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, has contributed a chapter on how economic rewards and property rights can shape invention and innovation in the new book INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD, published in December by Edward Elgar Publishing.

In this new work of scholarship titled Crisis, Invention, and Innovation, Ghosh identifies a new impetus for innovation: crisis.  A crisis is an external challenge to society’s economic, social, and legal systems, such as a war or pandemic. Such a challenge stirs innovators and entrepreneurs to devise solutions to address the crisis. Professor Ghosh demonstrates how this theory of crisis and innovation can help to understand the development of the Polio vaccine, HIV vaccines, and Covid vaccines.