Sep 10, 2025 Tom C.W. LinCorporate Law
Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Daniel J.H. Greenwood, & Christina M. Sautter,
The Shareholder Democracy Lie, 78
Fla. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2026), available at
SSRN (Feb. 18, 2025).
Governance is hard; democratic self-governance is even harder. The governance of our political institutions and corporations is replete with evidence of such difficulties. Yet, the alternatives to democratic self-governance, while administratively easier, are filled with their own dangers. As such, appeals to democracy and conceptions of democracy have long been used in law, business, and politics throughout history to justify policies and actions of varying democratic ends.
In The Shareholder Democracy Lie, Professors Sergio Gramitto Ricci, Daniel Greenwood, and Christina Sautter offer a deeply researched and rigorously reasoned critique of one of corporate law’s most enduring metaphors and misleading myths: shareholder democracy. The authors argue that the noble rhetoric of shareholder democracy does not reflect legal, institutional, and historical realities—and that this rhetorical distortion carries real consequences for corporate governance, political legitimacy, and social progress. Continue reading "The Shareholder Democracy Promise"
Sep 9, 2025 Omri Ben-ShaharContracts
- Haggai Porat, Behavior-Based Price Discrimination and Data Protection in the Age of Algorithms, available at SSRN (Oct. 31, 2022).
- Haggai Porat, Bargaining with Algorithms: An Experiment on Algorithmic Price Discrimination and Consumer and Data Protection Laws, available at SSRN (Apr. 29, 2025).
A central interest in consumer law is the harm AI algorithms might cause to consumers. Firms are increasingly gaining the power to target individual consumers in manipulative ways and charge prices tailored to each buyer’s ability to pay. People may end up buying things they do not need or regret, at prices exceeding those in the pre-algorithmic market. Rivers of academic ink are spilled in describing the potential harms and recommending urgent regulatory action. Some of that work is very good, although the entire genre is suffering from an acute oversight: it ignores the documented benefits pricing algorithms are bringing to consumers. Personalized prices have been repeatedly shown in the empirical economic literature to benefit low-income consumers (and why not? The easiest thing for these algorithms to infer is individual purchasing power, calibrating the price to match it).
An assumption that runs through much of the legal literature on pricing algorithms is the passivity of consumers. Short of anonymizing themselves by changing the privacy settings (and good luck with that), there is nothing consumers can do to blur their profiling by sellers’ algorithms. Consumers, in other words, are price-takers, and are said to be in peril. Continue reading "Can Consumers Roar Back?"
Sep 8, 2025 Lyrissa B. LidskyConstitutional Law
In the face of mass digital data harvesting and manipulation, the need for effective data privacy protection is imperative. In Data as Likeness, Professor Zahra Takhshid offers new legal tools to address this need by urging us to reconceptualize one of the common law privacy torts, namely, the tort of appropriation of name or likeness. Her contribution, however, is not limited to reconceptualizing the appropriation tort. She also offers valuable insights into how to secure Article III standing for data privacy harms.
Takhshid’s reconceptualization is built on the insight that “[o]ur digital persona or likeness is our personal data.” Thus, appropriation of our data is an appropriation of our likeness, worthy of compensation through tort law. Takhshid’s reconceptualization turns the appropriation tort into a means to hold Big Tech and others accountable for their ubiquitous collection and transmission of personally identifiable data, which, according to Takhshid, constitute wrongful exploitation of the individual. This approach would also treat deepfake creation, geolocation data collection, and the deployment of facial-recognition technology as exploitations of digital persona. Continue reading "Are You the Sum of Your Data? Appropriation of Digital Persona as Appropriation of Likeness"
Sep 5, 2025 Michael C. DuffWork Law
Alvin Velazquez,
The Death of Labor Law and the Rebirth of the Labor Movement, B.C.L. Rev. (forthcoming), available at
SSRN (Feb. 13, 2025).
In The Death of Labor Law, Professor Alvin Velazquez asks: what if the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) dies because, as some employers want, the US Supreme Court declares – at this very late hour – that Act unconstitutional? (P. 18.). Assuming that happens, Velazquez offers “a silver lining” by showing how, by doing so, “the Court could serve as a catalyst for a series of (most likely) unfortunate events as well as fervent organizing opportunities.” (P. 7.) Thus, from death comes life. The article falls within a tradition of labor law scholarship that insists (like Oliver Wendall Holmes’ dissent in Vegelahn v. Guntner) that labor conflict is inevitable and labor law is always a provisional accommodation between labor and capital.
In particular, Velazquez considers how the NLRA might collapse (Pp. 13-25); reminds readers that labor law and labor conflict preexisted the NLRA (Pp. 49-50); takes solace in the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s bar on federal courts issuing labor injunctions in peaceful private-sector labor disputes (P. 38); and reminds readers that a defunct NLRA may mean a dissolution of unduly complex federal preemption doctrines, in turn freeing states to innovate in the area of labor relations in ways they cannot do now. (Pp. 31-38.) The article covers a great deal of ground. It will stimulate and provoke labor law readers and perhaps also general legal readers focused on major administrative law developments. Continue reading "Beyond Collapse: Why Labor Law Probably Can’t End"
Sep 4, 2025 Gerry W. BeyerTrusts & Estates
What if death was not the end? The rapid rise and advancement of generative artificial intelligence presents the unique opportunity to allow people to speak to loved ones who have passed. Samuel Hoy Brown VII’s Don’t Fear the Reaper? delves into the rapidly growing industry of posthumous communication, an increasingly lucrative industry. This article analyzes the intersection between artificial intelligence, mourning the loss of a loved one, after-death rights, and the law. As Brown explores the ethical effects of posthumous communication through artificial intelligence, he questions consent and the ownership of an individual’s likeness after death.
This article provides a comprehensive examination of the history of artificial intelligence, starting with early chatbot models like ELIZA to today’s highly specialized generative AI tools like HereAfter AI and You. Brown explains how these new specialized AI tools emerged, and how they are capitalizing on the posthumous communication market, promising families who are in mourning an opportunity to participate in “real” conversations with their loved ones. This AI technology uses voice recordings, texts, email communications, letters, and personal stories of the deceased to manufacture conversations for the families to have while they are grieving, and for family members and friends to enjoy for years to come. Some may see this tool as a comfort in the mourning process and as a method of preserving family history, while others may discern the ethical issues that can stem from this technology. Continue reading "The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Immortality"
Sep 3, 2025 Margot KaminskiTechnology Law
- Daniel Wilf-Townsend, The Deletion Remedy, 103 N. Car. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2025), available at SSRN (Sept. 20, 2024).
- Christina Lee, Beyond Algorithmic Disgorgement: Remedying Algorithmic Harms, 16 U.C. Irvine L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2026), available at SSRN (Apr. 10, 2025).
In 2019 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created a new remedy in data privacy and AI law: algorithmic disgorgement, also known as model deletion. The FTC required that Cambridge Analytica “delete all Covered Information collected from consumers… and any information or work product, including any algorithms or equations, that originated, in whole or in part, from this Covered Information.” The idea behind model deletion is that companies should not be able to profit of models trained on wrongfully obtained personal data.
Algorithmic disgorgement has by now received its fair share of praise, including from FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who called it “an innovative and promising remedy.” The remedy’s boosters, however, have largely lauded how algorithmic disgorgement/model deletion can mitigate data privacy and algorithmic governance laws’ struggles to identify, quantify, and deter legally cognizable harms. Continue reading "AI Disgorgement or AI Recalls: A Trip down Remedy Lane"
Sep 2, 2025 Ellen BublickTorts
In the age of artificial intelligence (and statistics before that), there is a great need for these frameworks’ constant companion – data. After centuries of common law tort actions, and millions of lawsuits filed, one might think that much would be known about these suits. Not so. As James Anderson and co-authors from the Rand Institute for Civil Justice write, “Remarkably, there is little recent empirical research in the United States that measures the extent and sources of compensation, benefits, and assistance that individuals may receive after they suffer personal harms.” (Pp. 97-98.) Tort law counts among these empirically-neglected sources.
Anderson and the current RAND crew set out to fill this information gap. In tribute to Stanford Law School Professor Deborah Hensler and her pioneering empirical work on civil justice claims, the authors surveyed 17,000+ adult Americans about injuries, illness, and the ways in which losses from these difficulties were addressed. Using a standard that measured respondents’ lost days of work, inability to perform regular activities, multiple visits to a healthcare provider, nights in the hospital and visits to the emergency room, the researchers winnowed the group down to roughly 3,000 people who had suffered “significant injury or illness” under the study criteria in 2017. (P. 98.) Those 3000 people were asked to provide detailed information about the extent and manner of their injuries or illness; the harms, treatments, and expenses they endured; the sources of compensation they relied on; their views about attribution of blame; and their decisions to consult a lawyer, initiate suit, and pursue a claim. About two years after these first inquiries, the researchers sent follow up questions to learn more. Continue reading "When Do Injured People Sue? New Empirical Research on Blaming and Claiming in Tort Law"
Sep 2, 2025 Christopher J. RobinetteTorts
The vast majority of tort cases are settled, and many of the settlements include confidentiality provisions that prevent the public from learning about the allegedly wrongful conduct. This has been true for decades, but the confidentiality provisions—nondisclosure agreements (“NDAs”)—have become increasingly controversial. The #MeTooMovement provided momentum to criticism of NDAs, and multiple states and even the federal government have passed legislation restricting their use.
But do such “sunshine laws” matter to plaintiffs? Noting the lack of empirical data on the issue, Professor Gilat Juli Bachar fills the void with the first article to examine the “extent to which a confidentiality clause affects plaintiffs…when weighing a settlement offer….” (P. 1260.) Such information is important because “the real-world impact of sunshine laws ultimately depends on the litigants themselves.” (P. 1206.) Not only does Professor Bachar shed light on how NDAs are perceived, but she also delves further to identify other factors affecting a plaintiff’s willingness to settle. Bachar’s excellent article is useful on the prominent issue of NDAs, and her methods have the potential to reveal information crucial to a better-functioning civil justice system. Continue reading "Why Plaintiffs Settle"
Sep 1, 2025 Afton TitusTax Law
This article’s importance lies in its boldness to say the quiet parts out loud–-that tax systems rely on gendered assumptions and reproduce inequality. In doing so, this paper argues that the tax systems in Europe (and others globally) quietly and invisibly discriminate against women. More importantly, this fact is somehow not the focus of comprehensive study in either feminist or political economy research, although this is slowly picking up traction in tax scholarship. This paper asks frankly: Why is taxation not more commonly treated as a site for gendered power? And what do feminist research and political economy scholarship lose by its invisibility? In short, this paper is an appeal for scholars to bring their feminist and political economy insights into the study of taxation.
As such, this paper is mainly addressed to scholars of political economy and feminist public policy. However, tax scholars may find themselves susceptible to this call as well. Tax scholars may see this paper as an invitation to anchor normative tax debates in political theory and feminist institutional analysis. It may also pique their interest to answer the questions Seelkopf very pointedly asks. These are questions like: How does the tax system in your jurisdiction affect women differently? Does your country still have joint filing, and what are its effects on women? What effect do VAT exemptions have on women in your jurisdiction? Seelkopf tackles both issues directly. Drawing on economic literature, she shows that joint taxation substantially raises the marginal tax rate faced by secondary earners, who are overwhelmingly women, thereby deepening gender‐based income disparities. Turning to VAT exemptions for feminine hygiene products, she finds that empirical studies on whether these lower prices or increase corporate profits are inconclusive, although there have been lower prices for non-brand products noted. Continue reading "Invisible, But Taxed: Gender, Power, and the Tax State"
Aug 29, 2025 Carol Necole BrownProperty
Danielle Stokes,
Renewable Energy Federalism 2.0, available at
SSRN (Dec. 2, 2024).
In a time of deepening political polarization and growing judicial skepticism toward administrative power, Professor Danielle Stokes’ essay, Renewable Energy Federalism 2.0, offers a timely, thoughtful, and forward-looking response to the challenges of environmental governance in the United States. By developing the concept of “sustainable collaborative governance,” Professor Stokes updates her earlier work on collaborative federalism and provides a comprehensive framework for navigating the complex legal and political realities surrounding the renewable energy transition.
At the heart of her essay is an important conceptual evolution. Professor Stokes distinguishes between collaborative federalism, which primarily emphasizes formal cooperation between federal, state, and local governments, and collaborative governance, which encompasses a broader spectrum of actors, including private industry and civil society. Continue reading "Bridging Divides: Stokes’ Sustainable Collaborative Governance as a Path Forward for the Energy Transition"
