Category «Legal Research»

How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect vital habitat

Dr. Mariah Meek asserts that it wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted: harm. The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act.

Subjects: Animals and the Law, Climate Change, Environmental Law, Government Resources, Legal Research, Legislative

Cultivating obedience: Using the Justice Department to attack former officials consolidates power and deters dissent

Political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, Professors Joe Wright and Erica Franz discuss how President Donald Trump’s first three months in office has been distinguished by how his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda. They believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Ethics, Legal Research

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 17, 2025

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: License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows; Senators want TSA to scale back facial recognition at airports; How Signal, WhatsApp, Apple, and Google Handle Encrypted Chat Backups; Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia; Does One Line Fix Google?

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, KM, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines, Social Media, Spyware

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, May 10, 2025

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: Using AI Can Be Ethically Iffy. Here’s How to Do It Right; How to Make Your iPhone as Secure as Possible; After $243M Crypto Heist, a Crucial Mistake; Postal Service Data Sharing to Deport Immigrants; and AI is getting “creepy good” at geo-guessing.

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Privacy

The U.S. as an Authoritarian State: Danger to the Global Rule of Law

Donald J. Trump’s second term as President of the United States has stunned the world. As Catherine Morris documents, commentators increasingly say the U.S. has now crossed the Rubicon into authoritarian territory. Morris addresses the impact on the legal system, legal education, and lawyers, in the United States and in Canada.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Human Rights, Legal Research, United States Law

AI In High-Stakes Litigation: The Critical Role of Experienced Attorneys

Skepticism about AI is not only justified—it’s evidence of good judgment. There are indeed pitfalls to AI use. Inept use of AI won’t help you, but Jerry Lawson’s

Subjects: AI, Communications, E-Discovery, Law Firm Marketing, Legal Marketing, Legal Profession, Legal Research

Software is increasingly being built by AI – so it’s vital to know if it can be trusted

Software is ubiquitous, powering almost every aspect of our lives. The computerised systems in your car alone incorporate tens of millions of lines of code. The increasing digital transformation of our society means that demand for more and better software is likely to continue into the future. Researchers, technologists and data scientists Iván Alfonso and Jordi Cabot. highlight a critical dilemma with the acceleration of AI in all facets of our lives. There are not enough human programmers to build all this software. This means that more and more of the software you use every day is built with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI). Software developers are already very familiar with tools such as GitHub Copilot, a kind of ChatGPT for programmers. It works something like a smart autocomplete tool to increase the productivity of human programmers. But we are now witnessing a more radical revolution, where AI “agents” are poised to carry out many types of development tasks on behalf of human programmers. Agents are programs that use AI to perform tasks and achieve specific objectives for a human user. AI agents can learn and make decisions with some level of autonomy, though they are still under human supervision.

Subjects: AI, KM, Legal Profession, Legal Research, Technology Trends

Trump Is Creating a Deportation Army of Local Cops

Mohamed Al Elew and Wendy Fry’s reporting analyzes federal data that my be a surprise to Floridians about ICE’s 287(g) program. All Florida residents now live in a county where local police will be trained to work on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to federal data analyzed by The Markup. The training is part of a rapidly expanding federal program to deputize state and local authorities as immigration enforcers, with the number of participating agencies doubling since January, according to the data. There are now over 10 million Americans living in a county with an immigration delegation agreement, The Markup’s review shows.

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Legal Research, Privacy