Fact sheet for the report Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law Growing Racial Disparities in Voter Turnout, 2008–2022, published March 13, 2024: “A Brennan Center study of nearly 1 billion voter file data points finds the following: The nationwide racial turnout gap — the difference in voting rates between white… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Courts
Illinois Task Force Explores How AI Could Speed Up Litigation
Bloomberg: “Generative artificial intelligence could boost the Illinois judiciary by helping judges produce opinions faster and assist individuals in better preparing their own cases, members of a new Illinois AI task force said. The Illinois Judicial Conference task force, created in January, is meeting monthly to discuss how generative AI could help the court system… Continue Reading
The tyranny of America’s Supreme Court
FT.com [unpaywalled]: “The great thing about modern sports is that you can check decisions on replay. No amount of parsing could reconcile the court’s two decisions with a single set of rules. The common ground between the two is that they suit Trump’s purposes. The first was a form of judicial slow walk. Last December… Continue Reading
Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry?
Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986 – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process… Continue Reading
Fetal personhood laws, explained
Vox: “The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern… Continue Reading
Supreme Court Inadvertently Reveals Confounding Late Change in Trump Ballot Ruling
Slate: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the… Continue Reading
Amazon’s Big Secret
The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – “…Nearly 30 years after the company was founded, we still don’t really know where its profits come from. The answer will loom large in the antitrust case against it. Under SEC rules, public corporations must file quarterly reports disclosing revenue, expenses, profits, and other metrics. Initially, only company-wide data were required.… Continue Reading
Their States Banned Abortion
ProPublica – Doctors Now Say They Can’t Give Women Potential Lifesaving Care. “…Most medical exceptions in abortion bans only allow the procedure to “save the life of the mother.” But there is a wide spectrum of health risks patients can face during pregnancy, and even those that are potentially fatal could fall outside of the… Continue Reading
New York judge rebukes law firm for using ChatGPT to justify its fees
FT.com [unpaywalled]: “A New York judge has scolded a law firm for citing ChatGPT to support its application for “excessive” attorneys’ fees of up to $600 an hour. The Cuddy Law Firm had invoked the predictive artificial intelligence tool in a declaration to the court over a case it won against the city’s education department.… Continue Reading
The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech
The Verge: “Social media companies have long made their own rules about the content they allow on their sites. But a pair of cases set to be argued before the Supreme Court on Monday will test the limits of that freedom, examining whether they can be legally required to host users’ speech. The cases, Moody… Continue Reading
Judge Clerkship Database to Launch With Hundreds of Testimonials
Bloomberg: “A database for prospective law clerks to learn more about the judges they’re considering working for is set to launch in March, the nonprofit behind the project said Thursday. The Legal Accountability Project’s Centralized Clerkship Database, featuring hundreds of surveys from former state and federal law clerks, will be available to potential clerks who… Continue Reading
Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI
Ars Technica: “The day after The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, the author and systems architect Daniel Jeffries wrote an essay-length tweet arguing that the Times “has a near zero probability of winning” its lawsuit. As we write this, it has been retweeted 288 times and received 885,000 views. “Trying to get… Continue Reading
