I was recently removed from an academic listserv for expressing my concerns about the administration of Donald Trump. This type of self-censorship permeating across sectors, including academia, is a troubling sign of our times. In some ways I feel as though we are living in 1933 Germany, when Adolf Hitler took power and rapidly dismantled [...]
A pressing question to ask is whether — and if yes, how — novel societal harms caused by AI systems are adequately addressed within the contours of existing legal categories and legislation. This article focuses on the risks and harms concerning the rule of law. It will highlight three issues by discussing relevant provisions of [...]
Last month, actor Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their Santa Fe home. Along with their bodies, one of the couple’s dogs, a 12-year-old Australian kelpie named Zinna, was also found dead. How they died matters, as in all cases of unexplained death. When death appears to be criminal, investigators [...]
Human beings rarely participate in world politics directly, but they do get involved as individual members of separate sovereign states. Normally, the expected costs and benefits of such indirect participation remain tangible expressions of secular considerations. Though far less decipherable and recognizable, these expressions may also include implicit promises of personal immortality. There is meaningful [...]
On February 10, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order, “Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security” (FCPA EO), directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to halt enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) until new guidelines and policies are released. The aim of this move is to [...]
As the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to dismantle the federal government as we know it, reports have emerged that the US African Development Foundation (USADF) denied entry to a gaggle of DOGE minions. This refusal was reportedly at the behest of the foundation’s resident and CEO Ward Brehm. The USADF board [...]
Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone — Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi (1970) Decades of my professional life have been devoted to the topic of expertise and experts — their qualifications, basis of knowledge, standards by which we evaluate them in court, and their proper [...]
Congress has before it a unique opportunity: it can recalibrate the balance of power between the president and Congress through a bipartisan manner that places no burden on the national budget, and has the potential to save $500,000 To do so, Congress must simply reintroduce and pass the National Emergencies Act Reform Legislation that was [...]
On Friday, March 7, just ahead of the Jewish Sabbath, a South Carolina firing squad will shoot to death my longtime pen pal and friend Brad Sigmon. This will mark the first American firing squad execution to take place in 15 years. Accordingly, it will be the first since I co-founded the 3,800+-member-strong L’chaim! Jews [...]
In 1996, when Professor Bernard Hibbitts first established JURIST, few could have foreseen the impact the project would have. Whether measured in terms of the individual lives it has touched, its global reach, or the impressions it has left on the landscape of online legal news coverage, JURIST’s role cannot be overstated. What began as [...]
