Best Practices

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Essay
Automation Rights: How to Rationally Design Humans-Out-of-the-Loop Law
Orly Lobel
Orly Lobel is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy (CELP) at the University of San Diego.

She graduated from Tel-Aviv University and Harvard Law School. Named as one of the most cited legal scholars in the United States, and specifically the most cited scholar in employment law and one of the most cited in law and technology, she is influential in her field. Professor Lobel has served on President Obama’s policy team on innovation and labor market competition, has advised the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and has published multiple books to critical acclaim. Her latest book, The Equality Machine, is an Economist Best Book of the Year.  

This Essay argues for the development of more robust—and balanced—law that focuses not only on the risks, but also the potential, that AI brings. In turn, it argues that there is a need to develop a framework for laws and policies that incentivize and, at times, mandate transitions to AI-based automation. Automation rights—the right to demand and the duty to deploy AI-based technology when it outperforms human-based action—should become part of the legal landscape. A rational analysis of the costs and benefits of AI deployment would suggest that certain high-stakes circumstances compel automation because of the high costs and risks of not adopting the best available technologies. Inevitably, the rapid advancements in machine learning will mean that law soon must embrace AI; accelerate deployment; and, under certain circumstances, prohibit human intervention as a matter of fairness, welfare, and justice.

Best Practices Law and Economics Machine Learning Oversight Regulation
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Essay
The Law of AI is the Law of Risky Agents Without Intentions
Ian Ayres
Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor, Yale Law School.
Jack M. Balkin
Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School.

 Harran Deu provided helpful research assistance.

A recurrent problem in adapting law to artificial intelligence (AI) programs is how the law should regulate the use of entities that lack intentions. Many areas of the law, including freedom of speech, copyright, and criminal law, make liability turn on whether the actor who causes harm (or creates a risk of harm) has a certain intention or mens rea. But AI agents—at least the ones we currently have—do not have intentions in the way that humans do. If liability turns on intention, that might immunize the use of AI programs from liability. We think that the best solution is to employ objective standards that are familiar in many different parts of the law. These legal standards either ascribe intention to actors or hold them to objective standards of conduct.

Best Practices Delegation Machine Learning Oversight Risk Technology Technology Regulation
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Essay
84.1
The Unbearable Rightness of Auer
Cass R. Sunstein
Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University
Adrian Vermeule
Ralph S. Tyler Jr Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

We are grateful to Ron Levin, John Manning, Arden Rowell, David Strauss, participants at a Harvard Law School faculty workshop, and participants at a University of Chicago symposium for valuable comments, and to Evelyn Blacklock and Maile Yeats-Rowe for superb research assistance. Parts of this Essay significantly expand and revise, while drawing on, a section of a near-contemporaneous, and much longer, article, Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, The New Coke: On the Plural Aims of Administrative Law, 2015 S Ct Rev 41. We are grateful for permission to draw on that section here.

I.  Cases and Problems

Administrative Law Best Practices Chevron Regulation Statutory Interpretation
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84.1
Originalist Methodology
Lawrence B. Solum
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

I owe thanks to the participants in The University of Chicago Law Review Symposium on “Developing Best Practices for Legal Analysis,” which led to the Symposium Issue in which this Essay appears, and to participants at a faculty workshop at Georgetown University Law Center. I owe special thanks to Gregory Klass and Louis Michael Seidman for the their very helpful suggestions and criticisms. My thanks as well to Johanna Schmidt for valuable research assistance. © 2017 by Lawrence B. Solum.

I.  The Theoretical Framework

The development of an originalist methodology requires a theoretical framework, the elaboration of which can begin with the idea of meaning itself.

A.    The Meaning of “Meaning”

Best Practices Linguistics Originalism Statutory Interpretation
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84.1
Analogy, Expertise, and Experience
Frederick Schauer
David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Barbara A. Spellman
Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law

I.  Analogical Reasoning in Law—The Traditional View

Best Practices Legal Profession
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Essay
84.1
Qualitative Methods for Law Review Writing
Katerina Linos
Professor of Law and Faculty Co-director, Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
Melissa Carlson
PhD Student, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

We are extremely grateful to Catherine Albiston, Lauren Edelman, Stavros Gadinis, David Lieberman, Aila Matanock, Alison Post, Kevin Quinn, Karen Tani, and participants at the Berkeley Law Faculty Workshop for their generous comments.

I.  Imagining Alternatives and Identifying a Puzzle

Best Practices Empirical Analysis Legal Profession
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84.1
Congress, Statutory Interpretation, and the Failure of Formalism: The CBO Canon and Other Ways That Courts Can Improve on What They Are Already Trying to Do
Abbe R. Gluck
Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, Yale Law School

Thanks to Brett Kavanaugh and John Manning; to Yale Law School students Julie Hutchinson, Aaron Levine, Scott Levy, Aviv Lipman, Leah Scaduto, and Kyle Victor; and to participants in presentations at The University of Chicago, University of Minnesota, and Yale law schools; and, as always, special thanks to Henry Monaghan.

I.  Why Interpretive Formalism Has Failed

Best Practices Judicial Decision-Making Statutory Interpretation
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Essay
84.1
The Concepts of Law
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of International Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, The University of Chicago Law School
Nicholas Stephanopoulos
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Thanks to John Gerring, Brian Leiter, Saul Levmore, Simone Sepe, and Lawrence Solum for superb comments.

I.  A Primer on Conceptualization and Measurement

A.    Concepts and Conceptualization

Best Practices Empirical Analysis Public Choice

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