Welcome to Our Research Archive
Search and filter by content type, issue area, author, and keyword
January 28, 2025
A Warning Against Warning Labels on Social Media Platforms
If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike. That’s seemingly the strategy of some lawmakers frustrated that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free expression and editorial autonomy have repeatedly stymied their paternalistic efforts to restrict minors’ platform access to lawful, presumptively protected…
January 27, 2025
AI’s Emerging Paradox
While the presidential transition commanded headlines this week, equally significant shifts were occurring in AI technology. Just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, DeepSeek released its latest model, achieving a breakthrough in AI reasoning that matches the best models of OpenAI and Anthropic but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek, which is backed by a Chinese…
January 24, 2025
Trump’s Big, Bold AI Gamble
What a difference a week makes. As others and I have predicted, newly-inaugurated President Trump rolled back much of his predecessor’s policy approach to artificial intelligence (AI). But few forecasted just how stark the contrast has been. Last week, before the inauguration, I argued that Trump should reverse outgoing President Biden’s ill-considered Executive Order on AI. As…
January 22, 2025
Liability Elasticity and Other Policy Concerns Underlying Social Media Addiction Lawsuits
Lurking beneath today’s raft of social media addiction lawsuits blaming platforms for harming minors are three broad public policy concerns. These frets could easily affect corporate liability in areas beyond online media. The first concern is the discretion trial court judges possess––in the absence of explicit legislation or a state high court ruling dictating otherwise––when deciding whether…
January 21, 2025
A Flammable Landscape
Los Angeles continues to burn. As of this writing, the Palisades Fire is spread over 23,713 acres and is 22 percent contained. This means that 22 percent of the fire’s perimeter has been controlled by firefighters through containment lines. The Eaton Fire currently stands at 14,117 acres burned at 55 percent containment. Will Rogers State Park is…
January 17, 2025
Demystifying Social Media Addiction Litigation
The old sales pitch hollered by baseball game vendors was “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” Something similar rings true today about not only knowing the litigants but also their theories in more than 1,000 lawsuits wending their way through numerous courts and blaming social media platforms for addicting and harming minors. The…
January 16, 2025
After Net Neutrality: The Return of the States
Last week I discussed the Sixth Circuit decision classifying broadband as a Title I information service and effectively eliminating the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) general power to regulate broadband. But like nature, regulators abhor a vacuum. While closing the door to federal regulators, the decision also creates opportunities for states to act. This post examines the present…
January 16, 2025
AI-Generated Regulation: Not Ready for Prime Time (Yet)
Key Points Read the PDF. Executive Summary Generative AI has attracted great attention in the policymaking sphere, including for agency rulemaking. This report compares a final rule drafted by a generative AI model with the Department of Transportation’s actual rule. The AI model’s policy recommendations appear overly sensitive to the number of commenters supporting a…
January 15, 2025
Goodbye and Good Riddance to Meta Fact-Checking
The decision last week by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, to immediately stop using “fact checkers” — groups hired by Meta to determine what information is true and what is false, and thuswhat should be removed — represents not just a return to common sense but also good news for both science and…
January 13, 2025
Restoring the Lost Law of Eavesdropping
Under a standard of recency that allowed me to review a 40-year-old book in 2023, I want to celebrate the very recent publication, over a year ago, of two articles on the law of eavesdropping. Historically, there was fairly robust law on listening in. Given new technological forms of secret overhearing, that law may have…