ChatGPT: The Sky is Not Falling

Generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) applications such as ChatGPT and its brethren erupted onto the scene last year and have been quite a disruptor throughout higher education. Like much new technology, generative AI brings with it benefits and challenges. This note focuses on early experiences with ChatGPT, attempts to learn how to use it, and possible changes needed for our assessment methodologies. I provide some suggested modifications to traditional assignments to adapt to generative AI's ubiquity.     

Insane Sex Offenders: Psychiatric and Legal Characteristics of Sexual Offenders Found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

There is little known about sexual offenders hospitalized under forensic commitment statutes such as not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI). We conducted a chart review to delineate the demographic, clinical, and legal characteristics of NGRI sexual offenders (n = 68) committed to the California Department of State Hospitals—Napa, including 41 found NGRI for a sexual offense and 27 found NGRI for a nonsexual offense. The two groups did not differ significantly in their demographics, psychiatric diagnoses, victim characteristics, or recidivism risk as measured by the Static‐99R. Those found NGRI for a sexual offense were older at the time of their first criminal and first violent offense, younger at the time of their committing offense, and had fewer prior total convictions and sexual offense convictions. These findings may indicate that sexual offenders found NGRI for a sexual offense are less antisocial than those found NGRI for a nonsexual offense.     

Legitimacy is Not Authority

The two leading traditions of theorizing about democratic legitimacy are liberalism and deliberative democracy. Liberals typically claim that legitimacy consists in the consent of the governed, while deliberative democrats typically claim that legitimacy consists in the soundness of political procedures. Despite this difference, both traditions see the need for legitimacy as arising from the coercive enforcement of law and regard legitimacy as necessary for law to have normative authority. While I endorse the broad aims of these two traditions, I believe they both misunderstand the nature of legitimacy. In this essay I argue that the legitimacy of a law is neither necessary nor sufficient for its normative authority, and I argue further that the need for legitimacy in law arises regardless of whether the law is coercively enforced. I thus articulate a new understanding of the legitimacy and authority of law.     

Insane Arsonists: An Early 21st Century Sample

We studied all individuals (n = 41) who had been found not guilty by reason of insanity for arson and who were committed to a California state psychiatric hospital on October 1, 2016 in a cross‐sectional analysis. This group of insane arsonists contained 33 (80.5%) males and eight (19.5%) females with a mean age at the time of the index arson of 35.9 years. At least 87.8% (n = 36) were considered to not have been participating in psychiatric treatment at the time of the index arson. Five (12.2%) of the insane arsonists had previously been found not guilty by reason of insanity for arson or had been convicted of having committed arson. Our findings suggest that lack of participation in psychiatric treatment was the most important factor in contributing to the index arson and the most important problem to be addressed in subsequent psychiatric treatment plans.     

Disruption is Not Permitted: The Policing and Social Control of Occupy Oakland

Negotiated management—various forms of communication, collaboration and cooperation between police and protest organizers, often taking the form of protest permits—has been mainly theorized as a means to mitigate police violence while respecting protesters’ 1st Amendment rights. A few theorists have problematized this view, suggesting that negotiated management is a form of social control that puts various restrictions on dissent. Drawing from my research on Occupy Oakland, I build upon these critiques to illustrate how negotiated management was used as a tool of repression in two key ways, and how newer forms of repression (strategic incapacitation) are still enmeshed in its logic. First, by criminalizing legal activity among protesters, through the use of a permit, who were then subjected to police repression. Second, I show how negotiated management as a normative structure of protest was used as a form of repression, even when communication and cooperation with police were clearly rejected by the movement. I illustrate how the refusal of negotiated management was used to discredit the movement and subject it to physical repression. Rather than seeing negotiated management as an alternative to police repression and strategic incapacitation, I argue that they are two sides of the same policing project, the primary aim of which is to prevent disruptive protest.     

不是所有涉案查账都是司法会计鉴定

之所以说不是所有涉案查账都是司法会计鉴定,是由于两者具有对象与方法不同等实质性差异。然而,说两者不同,并非是对涉案查账的排斥,也并非说司法会计鉴定就不需要查账了。它们各有所长,也各有用武之地。     

眼见未必为实——网络证据保全公征的深层问题

一、一件网络侵权案件引起的思考案件回放:今年1月某日,某大型网站的法律顾问向笔者咨询,如何推翻一份被恶意利用的保全证据公证书。笔者仔细了解了案件缘由:某律师事务所受某影视公司委托向该网站提出侵权诉讼,侵权事实是该网站非法提供盗版电影下载,主要证据是某公证处出具的保全证据公证书。该公证书详细记载了公证员在该公司内监督其工作人员保全证据的过程,并附有网页打印件,下载的影片被刻录为光碟保存。该法律顾问没有否认影片可以下载,但指出该网站提供的仅仅是链接方式,网站服务器中并无影片内容,影片内容由其他网站提供。而本案的…     

Guilt Shall Not Escape or Innocence Suffer? The Limits of Plea Bargaining When Defendant Guilt is Uncertain

This article examines optimal prosecutor behavior with respectto plea bargaining when defendant guilt is uncertain. I showthat when jury beliefs and behavior are determined endogenouslyin equilibrium along with defendant and prosecutor behavior,plea bargaining can play only a limited role in managing society'sconflicting desires to maximize punishment of the guilty andminimize punishment of the falsely accused. In particular, whileit can be optimal for prosecutors to use plea bargaining toinduce a large fraction of guilty defendants to voluntarilysort themselves from the innocent, such sorting must come atthe cost of imposing relatively short sentences on such guiltydefendants who accept plea bargains.     

The Negligence Standard: Political Not Metaphysical

This contribution distinguishes two kinds of responsibility: the basic (or ‘metaphysical’) kind that we all inescapably have as functioning human beings; and the assignable (or ‘political’) kind that connects each of us with some particular tasks, and not with others. Having explored some differences between the two, and in particular the role of law's authority in connection with each, the discussion turns to the negligence standard, especially but not only as it figures in tort law. Recently, several philosophers have attempted to find a role for the negligence standard in the metaphysics of basic responsibility. This contribution resists that development and stands up for the traditional lawyer's view that the negligence standard belongs to the pliable politics of assignable responsibility. Basic responsibility, it is argued, is fundamentally strict.     

When the "Public Interest" is Not What Interests the Public

In response to the Federal Communications Commission's proposed changes to its electronic media ownership rules, thousands of concerned citizens filed e-mail comments to express their opinions. The chairman of the FCC at that time, Michael Powell, opined that such comments were too general to be seriously considered by the agency in making its decisions. Several indicia of effective participation in such proceedings have been established in the literature, including whether the comments provide specific information relevant to the issues being considered. This article analyses the e-mail comments filed in the FCC's ownership proceedings to determine whether they contain the kind of information that is considered necessary for meaningful public participation. While the comments generally addressed relevant topics in sometimes sophisticated ways, they did not present the kinds of specific information that the Commission uses to justify its expert opinions.     

Identifying Miscarriages of Justice: Why Innocence in the UK is Not the Answer

This article examines two contrasting proposals for the reform of criminal appeals: the government's recent proposal that the guilty should no longer have their convictions quashed on 'technicalities'; and calls by campaigners for the Court of Appeal to consider innocence rather than the 'safety of the conviction,' together with their associated attempts to establish Innocence Projects in the UK. Despite the rhetorical power of 'innocence' as a campaigning tool, it is contended that to import such a standard into the legal system would be retrogressive and counter-productive, both as a safeguard against wrongful convictions and in protecting the integrity of the system. In order to be meaningful, due process protections must apply to all. The government's proposals attack this principle directly; innocence campaigners risk unwittingly assisting their endeavours.