Monthly archives: January, 2026

LLRX January 2026 Issue – Articles and Columns

Attacks against the International Criminal Court: Who cares about victims of atrocity crimes? – The attacks against the ICC are part of a wholesale U.S. assault on international legal norms and institutions since the 20 January 2025 inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. Exactly a year later, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney made a blunt …

Subjects: KM

Attacks against the International Criminal Court: Who cares about victims of atrocity crimes?

The attacks against the ICC are part of a wholesale U.S. assault on international legal norms and institutions since the 20 January 2025 inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. Exactly a year later, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney made a blunt statement at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the world order has been ruptured, and that we now face a “brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.” This article by Catherine Morris, attorney and founding director of Peacemakers Trust, considers what can be done to strengthen respect for human rights and to fulfill the promise of equal justice for the millions of victims of atrocity crimes around the world, who, as their last resort, seek accountability of perpetrators in the ICC.

Subjects: Comparative/Foreign Law, Government Resources, Legal Research, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 31, 2026

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Six highlights from this week: Google Is Accused of Burying $700M Settlement Emails — They’re Landing in Spam Folders; How ICE is using facial recognition in Minnesota; US Version of TikTok off to Bumpy Start; Competitors Surge; Google ties AI Search to Gmail and Photos, raising new privacy questions; and Activists Say Ring Cameras Are Being Used by ICE.

Subjects: AI, Computer Security, Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Financial System, Legal Research, Privacy

AI in Finance and Banking, January 31, 2026

This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, conferences, industry white papers and reports, academic papers and speeches, and central bank actions on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. Six highlights from this post: The FCA has launched a review into the implications of advanced AI on consumers, retail financial markets and regulators; The Dangerous Illusion Of Explainable AI In Modern Finance; Companies including Palantir and Deloitte have collectively reaped more than $22bn from contracts linked to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown; Digital Economics and AI Tutorial, Spring 2026, Alfred P. Sloane Foundation; Speculative Growth and the AI; and Behavioral Economics of AI: LLM Biases and Corrections.

Subjects: AI in Banking and Finance, Economy, Education, Financial System, Legal Research

Reducing The Threat Of Drive-By Downloads

When people think about malware, they often imagine someone clicking a suspicious attachment or downloading a shady file. In reality, Jerry Lawson describes how one of the most dangerous forms of infection requires no obvious mistake at all. It’s called a drive-by download, and it remains a quiet but serious threat.

Subjects: Computer Security, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Government Resources, Search Engines, Technology Trends

All In: Embedding AI in the Law School Classroom

What is the irreducibly human element in legal education when AI can pass the bar exam, generate effective lectures, and provide personalized learning and academic support? This article by law professor Gregory M. Duhl confronts that question head-on by documenting the planning and design of a comprehensive transformation of a required doctrinal law school course—first-year Contracts— with AI fully embedded throughout the course design. Instead of adding AI exercises to conventional pedagogy or creating a stand-alone AI course, this approach reimagines legal education for the AI era by integrating AI as a learning enhancer rather than a threat to be managed. The transformation serves Mitchell Hamline School of Law’s access-driven mission: AI helps create equity for diverse learners, prepares practice-ready professionals for legal practice transformed by AI, and shifts the institutional narrative from policing technology use to leveraging it pedagogically.

Subjects: AI, Education, KM, Legal Education, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Legal Technology, LEXIS, Westlaw

Hold Fast, Harvard

Since 2025 the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has engaged in battles with major American institutions of higher education and research. Using the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, McMahon demands strict adherence to “educational principles” that include elimination of ‘DEI’ programs to quality for ‘preferential federal funding.’ In the case of Harvard University, this funding is on the order of $2.2 billion annually. Lawyer Kyle K. Courtney unravels the litigation at the heart of Harvard’s effort to preserve academic freedom and deny the administration another huge payoff with no transparency as to where the exortion money actually ends up.

Subjects: Economy, Education, Financial System, Free Speech, Healthcare, Legal Research, Medical Research, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, January 24, 2026

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: AI Fools Itself: Top Chatbots Don’t Recognize AI-Generated Videos; FBI’s Washington Post Investigation Shows How Your Printer Can Snitch on You; SCOTUS to Hear Case on ‘Geofence’ Warrants; Confusion and fear send people to Reddit for cybersecurity advice; and AI-Powered Surveillance in Schools.

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Ten years of a ‘quiet culture war’: where does it stand now?

In 2014, Rick Anderson wrote A quiet culture war in research libraries – and what it means for librarians, researchers and publishers’, arguing that there existed an ongoing conflict within the academic library profession over whether the library’s most important role is to support its local institution or to advance global priorities (specifically, progress towards open scholarship). Here Anderson reassess the landscape ten years later, finding that this conflict has both persisted and deepened, and offer two predictions: first, that the broader systemic conflict between competing business models will not be resolved by libraries, authors or publishers, but rather by institutions and funders, and second, that the end result will be a system characterized by coexisting models of pay‑access and open‑access publishing.

Subjects: Education, Libraries & Librarians, Open Source

12 ways the Trump administration dismantled civil rights law and the foundations of inclusive democracy in its first year

Spencer Overton, Professor of Law, George Washington University, homes in on how after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, a pattern emerges. Across dozens of executive orders, agency memos, funding decisions and enforcement changes, the administration has weakened federal civil rights law and the foundations of the country’s racially inclusive democracy.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Legal Research, United States Law