PDF

Confidentiality of AI Conversations: Protecting Self-Represented Litigants Who Use ChatGPT for Legal Advice
Anoo D. Vyas

Date posted: 4-17-2026

When a layperson uses ChatGPT to obtain feedback on a legal matter, attorney-client privilege may not apply, as ChatGPT is not a lawyer, much less a human. Further, while lawyers are entitled to protection for their opinion work-product, it is not clear whether self-represented litigants are entitled to the same protection. Additionally, the broader duty of confidentiality binds only attorneys, not AI systems like ChatGPT. The public increasingly uses AI tools such as ChatGPT. If a layperson employs ChatGPT for legal advice, particularly in a civil matter, such communications may be discoverable and potentially admissible. This presents an access to justice issue because a self-represented litigant who seeks to understand the scope of their legal rights may not realize that their AI communications can be used against them. Alternatively, they may not be able to afford an attorney, and thus decide to take the risk of communicating with AI anyway. This Article argues that self-represented litigants should enjoy protection for opinion work-product, and further, AI responses to self-represented litigants should also be permitted to count as opinion work-product. In addition, this Article proposes a discovery management protocol so courts may handle AI communications in a practicable manner. The work-product solution may be implemented more easily than other options, such as extending attorney-client privilege, though that also may be advisable in the interests of justice. Finally, as a backstop, judges could also consider excluding such AI communications from admission under Rule 403.

Topic: AI, Litigation, Privacy

PDF

Fossil-Fueled Failure: How Nonrenewable Energy Policy Will Cost the United States the AI Race
Kayla Landeros

Date posted: 4-16-2026

This Article examines the structure and regulation of the United States electricity industry in light of accelerating electricity demand driven by Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and digitalization. It argues that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and related executive actions have exacerbated existing structural weaknesses within the nation’s energy governance framework by repealing renewable energy incentives, privileging nonrenewable generation, and reinforcing the instability of an executive dominated regulatory model. Through a comparative analysis, the Article contrasts the United States’ fragmented, market-based approach with China’s centralized, statute-based framework, which integrates renewable energy development, grid expansion, and AI infrastructure into a cohesive national strategy.

While acknowledging the constitutional and institutional limits of United States energy federalism, the Article contends that meaningful reform remains possible through measures that promote reliability and long-term planning. It concludes that the United States economic and technological leadership in the AI era requires a durable, whole-of-government energy policy that supports all forms of energy generation and unites generation, transmission, and distribution within a coherent framework capable of supporting both innovation and sustainability.

Topic: Environmental and Energy Law, Artificial Intelligence, Electricity Regulation, Public Policy

PDF

Juror Contact in the Digital Age: The LinkedIn Problem
Drew Thornley

Date posted: 4-12-2026

This Article examines an evolving dispute in professional responsibility: whether a lawyer makes a prohibited communication when viewing a juror’s LinkedIn account. When one LinkedIn user views another’s profile, the platform automatically notifies the profile owner and may include the viewer’s identity. Ethics rules are currently divided on whether or not this notification would count as a prohibited juror communication. On one hand, the ABA and some state bar associations explicitly allow attorneys to view social-media profiles of jurors even when the lawyer’s identity is revealed. On the other hand, some bar associations and courts believe these automatic notifications violate ethical rules, primarily, the juror-contact rule. Drawing on a survey of ethics opinions and the purpose of juror-contact rules, this article argues against a strict interpretation of what prohibited juror contact means in the digital age. This article argues that, with respect to the juror-contact rule, a communication requires that the attorney have a purpose to convey information. Since there is no purpose to convey information through these automated notifications, there is no communication. During voir dire, lawyers have an obligation to understand the people who will be deciding their client’s case. This interest needs to be balanced against the purpose of the juror-contact rule, which is preserving an impartial jury. Hiding the fact that an officer of the court is researching a juror’s public internet presence does little, if anything, to promote an impartial jury. Therefore, the ethical juror-contact rule cannot be used to justify a ban on researching jurors’ LinkedIn profiles.

Topic: Social Media, Juror Contact, Professional Responsibility

PDF

The Myth of Sufficient Technological Barriers: Reevaluating the "Gates-Up-or-Down" Analogy in Data Scraping
Yucen Zhong

Date posted: 4-9-2026

In Van Buren v. United States, the Supreme Court adopted a “gates-up-or-down” analogy from physical trespass law to define “authorization” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Despite historical shifts in judicial interpretation, courts have recently relied on this binary framework to interpret authorization as it applies to online trespass. But courts have struggled to apply this binary inquiry while still accounting for complications in modern authentication technologies. When pursuing a code-based inquiry based on the gates-up-or-down analogy, courts risk oversimplifying the dynamic nature of online trespass. Such an approach fails to account for how modern authentication measures—such as CAPTCHAs, unsearchable URLs, and compromised passwords—blur the line between public and private information. This Note argues that the gates-up-or-down framework is inadequate in defining authorization in online trespass and calls for a more balanced approach that looks beyond a code-based inquiry.

Topic: cybersecurity, digital privacy, tech policy, CFAA

PDF

Falling Flat: Why AI Cannot Free Melodies from Copyright Protection with “All the Music” as an Example
Hayley Huber

Date posted: 3-30-2026

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to surprise us with its humanlike abilities, it raises the question of whether AI-created music can or should be afforded legal protection. Particularly, how should copyright law treat melodies produced by an AI designed to algorithmically generate every possible melody? This article seeks to answer that question, ultimately concluding that AI-produced melodies are not copyrightable and that melodies are not merely facts undeserving of copyright protection, but something valuable to mankind and worth protecting by law.

The article explores Damien Riehl’s All the Music project (ATM) and his arguments for why ATM’s outputs should be protected as a case study that AI-produced music is uncopyrightable and that melodies are more than uncopyrightable facts. The article shows that U.S. copyright law does not recognize machines as “authors” for copyright purposes, that reducing melodies to “just math” conflicts with mainstream legal and musicological understandings of melody, and that even if ATM’s outputs were copyrightable, most of its “melodies” would fail for lack of originality. Projects like ATM neither free existing melodies from copyright protection nor meaningfully reduce the risk of infringement litigation for musicians.

Topic: Copyrights, AI, Music, Entertainment

PDF

Scaling Sustainable Propellants to Address Rocket Emissions: Lessons From the U.S. Aviation Industry
Zhizhou (Josie) Liu

Date posted: 3-24-2026

The rapid growth of the U.S. commercial space industry has exposed a profound regulatory gap in addressing rocket emissions. By releasing greenhouse gases and particulates like black carbon, alumina, and water vapor, rocket launches not only contribute to climate change but also accelerate stratospheric ozone depletion. The U.S. aviation industry encountered similar environmental challenges decades ago, which eventually prompted legal and policy frameworks to curtail aviation emission through sustainable fuel technologies. Unlike aviation, however, the space industry now operates in a legal vacuum, with no binding international environmental standards or domestic regulations targeting rocket atmospheric pollution. As rocket emissions penetrate into every layer of the atmosphere, their environmental risks are even more intensified and distinct from aviation emissions. This Note argues that sustainable rocket technologies, such as green propellants and green non-chemical propulsion systems, offer an effective pathway to contain rocket emissions. Drawing lessons from the U.S. aviation industry’s gradual regulatory evolution, the Note proposes that a proactive regulatory framework, including industry-specific emission standards, incentive programs, and international collaboration, is critical for the U.S. space industry to avoid replicating aviation’s delayed response and to ensure that the new space era proceeds within environmentally sustainable bounds.

Topic: Space, Sustainable Technology

PDF

Revisiting Eli Lilly v. Canada: Judicial Interpretation of IP Law and Exposure to Investor-State Disputes
Yumu Chen

Date posted: 2-24-2026

Eli Lilly v. Canada was an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) case widely noted for signaling a regime shift in intellectual property (IP) protection from the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to ISDS. Its true yet often overlooked significance, however, lies in being a case of first impression on whether judicial interpretation of IP law may serve as a basis for state responsibility independent of denial of justice. To bridge that gap, this Note undertakes a close reading of the novel doctrinal discussion in Eli Lilly and related precedents, drawing implications for the broader theory of state responsibility arising from substantive judicial acts. It then applies those implications to domestic IP regimes through a comparative lens, with particular attention to common law jurisdictions, where judicial interpretation plays a central role in developing IP law. This Note argues that Eli Lilly suggests judicial lawmaking may be reviewable by ISDS tribunals as a basis for state responsibility, akin to legislative or executive acts, thereby exposing common law IP regimes to heightened risk of investor-state disputes. Nevertheless, the “regulatory chill” of which scholars have warned as a result of Eli Lilly may be overstated. Any reading of the decision as offering a promising pathway to overturn domestic judicial lawmaking solely on the basis of reduced IP protection is likely too optimistic.

PDF

It’s Not So Simple: An Examination of How the Internal Revenue Code Fails to Contemplate the Economic Realities of Individuals With Disabilities and Their Families
Garret Hoff

Date posted: 4-12-2025

Families with disabled students face extra costs associated with providing their child with the same education that other students get for free. Even though these costs are spent with the explicit purpose of supporting their child’s disability-informed care and are not incurred but for their disability (“but-for costs”), some of these costs are not deductible and others are subject to unnecessary ambiguity when it comes to their deductibility. Families with disabled students are forced to reckon with arbitrary distinctions if they want to receive any favorable tax treatment on but-for costs. This is because the relevant provision in the Internal Revenue Code, Section 213, was written and consequentially interpreted during a time when disabled people were not viewed as being worth public money to educate. This status quo is unacceptable. As a starting point, the IRS should revise Treasury Regulation 1.213-1(e)(1)(v)(a) to unambiguously recognize a broader interpretation of Section 213. This revision would remove a dated regulatory distinction that pushes families towards medical institutions and away from the rest of the world to support their children’s disability-informed education. A more substantial solution would be for Congress to amend Section 529A, the section of the tax code created by the ABLE Act, to remove limits on contributions to ABLE accounts and to make those contributions tax deductible. The result would be that instead of families being forced to try and fit their costs into the arbitrary and antiquated framework of the medical expense deduction to obtain some tax relief, families could funnel all their planned spending to “qualified disability expenses” through an ABLE account and receive deductions on their contributions to the account. However, there are only small solutions to be found for special needs families in the Internal Revenue Code and it requires a broader cultural shift more than new ideas to truly give disabled students and their families access to society and access to justice. The promises to disabled students are already embedded in our law; they merely remain unvindicated.

Topic: Tax Law, Disability Law, Juvenile Law, Family Law, Assistive Technology

PDF

To Infinity and Beyond (And Beyond): The Legal and Ethical Imperative for Rocket Reusability
Matthew Lumia

Date posted: 4-4-2025

Although the Space Shuttle’s first flight was in the 1980s, reusable rocket technology did not achieve mainstream viability until SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket revolutionized access to space. This note argues that transitioning to reusable rocket technology is not only a practical and economic advancement, but also a legal and ethical imperative. By analyzing reusable rockets through the “due regard” framework of the Outer Space Treaty, this note demonstrates how reusable rockets mitigate space debris, expand access to space, and can reduce environmental harm. Additionally, reusable rockets address critical ethical concerns by lowering barriers to space exploration, allowing the benefits of space exploration to be shared by more nations, and conserving resources which can be redirected to other pressing needs on Earth. As the global launch cadence continues to rise, widespread adoption of reusable rocket technology is essential to ensuring the long-term sustainability of space exploration while fulfilling international legal obligations and inherent ethical responsibilities.

Topic: Space Law, Environmental Law, International Law

PDF

Playing to Win: The Use of Export Controls to Address Non-military Strategic Competition
Joshua Angelo

Date posted: 4-4-2025

Technology and national security have been intimately related throughout American history. Over the past eighty-five years, the United States has increasingly made use of export controls to prevent adversarial countries from using the fruits of its technological advancement to strengthen their militaries and harm American interests. Today, strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China involves a myriad of technologies which present risks outside of, as well as within, the military context. Chinese exports of technologies, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and 5G communications, can promote the country’s authoritarian model abroad, enable economic coercion, and help to enrich the regime. The Belt and Road and “Made in China 2025” initiatives illustrate China’s use of novel technologies to further its global ambitions. Export controls may help to confront these threats. This note asks whether the Bureau of Industry and Security (a government body tasked with implementing export controls) can regulate exports of novel technologies for purposes of non-military strategic competition. Through examination of the statutes authorizing export controls and of the deference traditionally afforded to the Executive in administrative and foreign affairs matters, this note concludes that such export controls are authorized.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Technology

PDF

Determinants of Socially Responsible AI Governance
Daryl Lim

Date posted: 1-27-2025

The signing of the first international AI treaty by the United States, European Union, and other nations marks a pivotal step in establishing a global framework for AI governance, ensuring that AI systems respect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. This article advances the concepts of justice, equity, and the rule of law as yardsticks of socially responsible AI—from development through deployment—to ensure that AI technologies do not exacerbate existing inequalities but actively promote fairness and inclusivity. Part I explores AI’s potential to improve access to justice for marginalized communities and small and medium-sized law firms while scrutinizing AI-related risks judges, lawyers, and the communities they serve face. Part II examines the structural biases in AI systems, focusing on how biased data and coding practices can entrench inequity and how intellectual property protections like trade secrets can limit transparency and undermine accountability in AI governance. Part III evaluates the normative impact of AI on traditional legal frameworks, offering a comparative analysis of governance models: the U.S. market-driven approach, the EU’s rights-based model, China’s command economy, and Singapore’s soft law framework. The analysis highlights how different systems balance innovation with safeguards, emphasizing that successful AI governance must integrate risk-based regulation and transparency without stifling technological advancement. Through these comparative insights, the article proposes a proactive governance framework incorporating transparency, equity audits, and tailored regulatory approaches. This forward-looking analysis offers legal scholars and policymakers a comprehensive roadmap for navigating AI’s transformative effects on justice, equity, and the rule of law.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Law, Internet Law

PDF

Fine-Tuning LLMs: Structural Fluency and Augmentation for the Great and Powerful Wizard of AI
Verónica C. Gonzales

Date posted: 1-27-2025

The civil legal tradition carries assumptions, biases, and attitudes rooted in racism and ideologies intended to protect the (im)balance of power. This moment in history offers new versions of the same challenges with the integration of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and large language models (“LLMs”) into legal frameworks, and those critiques are being addressed in the legal discourse. Building on these perspectives, this moment also offers civil legal professionals a chance to engage in machine learning frameworks informed by social justice principles and accountable to measures of “equal justice for all.” The perception of fairness in the use of these tools is critical to protecting the integrity of and trust in the civil justice system. Although the features of LLMs may not be able to replace legal analysis just yet, developers anticipate that that is where these tools are headed sooner than one might think. Without intentional approaches to machine learning, LLMs will create a civil legal system twilight zone where machines propose new outcomes based on the ineffective patterns of the past, a never-ending feedback loop that traps litigants and stifles social progress. LLMs, and the AI tools which use them, offer a new reality in which legal analysis is more efficient. But, like a law student almost ready to embark on a legal career, LLMs must be properly trained in this time of early development to correct human error. Legal educators, who are not code or software developers, cannot simply change expensive and vast datasets. However, law professors, well versed in scaffolded learning such as the Socratic method and the nuances of social context, are well-situated for this challenge. In the fight for justice, law professors have relied primarily on cultural competency and racial literacy skills to empower subordinated individuals in their work toward systemic justice, critical lenses which can also prove useful in prompting LLMs. Missing from these competency, policy, and regulatory frameworks is a method for prompting machines in ways that “fine-tune” them for social justice. Prompting to encourage consideration of the macro structures and micro systemic forces at work, the historical legacies of injustice, and modern-day subtleties of patterned structural injustice based on social identity and other factors can improve performance and fairness. This Article, borrowing from medical and social work efforts to improve social determinants of health and outcomes, proposes fine-tuning prompts and prompt augmenting to enhance fluency in structural injustice of LLM outputs.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Law, Internet Law, Law and Race

PDF

Something Is Rotten in the State of Healthcare: Accountability, Affordability, and the Court of Public Opinion
Isabelle Breier

Date posted: 11-15-2024

Many countries worldwide recognize a right to health and provide legal recourse for securing that right. By contrast, for many Americans, there is no legal right or remedy that enables them to access healthcare if they cannot afford it. While there are some statutes and measures in place, such as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) and Medicaid, coverage remains piecemeal and access to healthcare is not guaranteed. Conditioning people’s access to healthcare upon their ability to pay violates the foundational bioethical principle of justice. In the United States, individuals and advocates use social media to fill this vacuum, raising awareness and funds through platforms like GoFundMe and X.com (formerly Twitter). In the absence of government-provided healthcare or a right to health, the American public sometimes functions as a healthcare access mechanism via social media. However, this insufficient and inequitable stopgap cannot replace effective governance. The public is filling a vital and unmet need through social media advocacy, but there are many drawbacks to effectively delegating this authority to the public instead of the government, including the public’s capriciousness and lack of legal accountability. The government should take proactive steps to ensure that healthcare is more affordable and accessible.

Topic: Health & Biotechnology, Media & Communications

PDF

Gray Advice
Keith Porcaro

Date posted: 11-4-2024

Debates over economic protectionism or the technology flavor-of-the-month obscure a simple, urgent truth: people are going online to find help that they cannot get from legal and health professionals. They are being let down, by products with festering trust and quality issues, by regulators slow to apply consumer protection standards to harmful offerings, and by professionals loath to acknowledge changes to how help is delivered. The status quo cannot continue. Waves of capital and code are empowering ever more organizations to build digital products that blur the line between self-help and professional advice. For good or ill, “gray advice” is changing how ordinary people get help with legal issues and healthcare issues, and even how they perceive professionals. This Article begins the work of articulating what makes a high-quality digital advice product, and how regulators and professionals can engage with the reality of how people seek and find help today.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Law, Internet Law

PDF

Tribes and AI: Possibilities for Tribal Sovereignty
Adam Crepelle

Date posted: 9-29-2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has permeated every facet of modern existence. Governments across the globe are exploring its applications and attempting to establish regulatory frameworks. Numerous scholars have proffered recommendations for governing AI at the local, national, and international levels. However, as is often the case, Indian tribes have been neglected in AI policy discussions. This oversight is significant because the 574 federally recognized tribes are sovereigns with their own judicial, education, and healthcare systems. Due to their relatively small populations and geographic isolation, tribes stand to benefit significantly from the services AI can perform. Moreover, tribes are uniquely well-suited to implement AI. This is the first law review article dedicated to exploring how AI can enhance tribal sovereignty. This article begins with a history of tribal sovereignty and then provides an overview of AI. Subsequent sections delve into the ways AI can augment tribal legal systems, healthcare, education, cultural preservation endeavors, economic development, and administrative capacity. By illuminating the intersection of AI and tribal sovereignty, this article seeks to foster a more inclusive discussion of AI.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Internet Law

PDF

Unintentional Algorithmic Discrimination: How Artificial Intelligence Undermines Disparate Impact Jurisprudence
Vincent Calderon

Date posted: 5-10-2024

Artificial intelligence holds the capacity to revolutionize the economy by capturing efficiencies. These benefits, ostensibly, should pass down to consumers, thereby benefitting the general public. But the immense complexity of AI systems is bound to introduce legal hurdles for plaintiffs and frustrate our disparate impact jurisprudence. Specifically, demonstrating causation and proffering a less discriminatory alternative are herculean tasks for a plaintiff seeking to prove a disparate impact upon which legal relief may be granted. The courts have already begun to wrestle with these issues, primarily in the housing and employment sectors. With the rapid surge of AI systems, courts should expect further inquiry into how these programs interfere with our established antidiscrimination framework. This Note outlines how each step of a plaintiff’s successful disparate impact analysis is hindered by the opaque ways in which AI operates. This Note then proposes several policy reforms to mitigate these consequences.

Topic: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Law, Internet Law

PDF

Can ChatGPT Keep a Secret? An Evaluation of the Applicability and Suitability of Trade Secrecy Protection for AI-Generated Inventions
Gina Campanelli

Date posted: 5-9-2024

The rising popularity of generative artificial intelligence has sparked questions around whether AI-generated inventions and works can be protected under current intellectual property regimes, and if so, how. Guidance from the U.S. Copyright Office and recent court cases shed some light on the applicability of copyright and patent protection to AI-generated products; namely “authors” and “inventors” are limited to natural persons. But further developments in copyright and patent law are still lagging behind generative-AI’s rapid growth. Trade secrecy emerges as the most viable path forward to protect AI-generated works and inventions because ownership of trade secrets is not limited to natural persons. But trade secrecy has its drawbacks too, primarily inadequate protection outside of misappropriation. Further, trade secrecy precludes disclosure, which hinders greater scientific development and progress. This Note examines the suitability and applicability of copyright, patent, and trade secret protection for AI-generated outputs and proposes alternative protection schemes.

Topic: Patents & Technology, Copyrights & Trademarks, Trade Secrecy, Intellectual Property, Machine Learning

PDF

Decoding Cryptocurrency Taxes: The Challenges for Estate Planners
Max Angel

Date posted: 5-5-2024

In this article, Angel explores the unique challenges of estate planning with cryptocurrency, which include accurately valuing those assets, preserving their value, and addressing the complex tax implications of transferring cryptocurrency to heirs.

Topic: eCommerce, eCommerce & Business

PDF

Beyond Patents: Incentive Strategies for Ocean Plastic Remediation Technologies
Jacob Stotser

Date posted: 4-27-2024

With a garbage truck’s worth of plastic being dumped in the ocean each minute, there is a dire need for effective technological solutions aimed at mitigating the marine plastic pollution problem. However, the reliance of the U.S. patent system on market demand to incentivize this type of innovation has proven insufficient in light of the peculiarities of “green” technologies. To remedy this, this article proposes a multi-faceted incentivization approach that looks beyond the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to stimulate the development of remediation technologies through comprehensive regulatory interventions, the establishment of prize funds and other alternative incentive mechanisms, and targeted reforms to patent procedures.

Topic: Patents & Technology

PDF

Barcoding Bodies: RFID Technology and the Perils of E-Carceration
Jackson Samples

Date posted: 4-11-2024

Electronic surveillance now plays a central role in the criminal legal system. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are tracked by ankle monitors and smartphone technology. And frighteningly, commentators and policymakers have now proposed implanting radio frequency identification (“RFID”) chips into people’s bodies for surveillance purposes. This Note examines the unique risks of these proposals—particularly with respect to people on probation and parole—and argues that RFID implants would constitute a systematic violation of individual privacy and bodily integrity. As a result, they would also violate the Fourth Amendment.

Topic: Patents & Technology