In Case You Missed It (Law)
Digest for Tuesday May 16, 2023

Today's AI-Generated Podcast ^†

Speed: 0.5x • 1x • 1.5x • 2x • 3x

RSS Feed Listen on Apple Podcasts

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

Greetings, my name is David Colarusso. I'm the director of Suffolk University Law School's Legal Innovation & Technology (LIT) Lab. With one foot in law and the other in tech, I really want the open web to thrive, esp. #LawFedi. So I created a bot, this digest, a podcast , and a newsletter to help folks discover great law-themed content. You can get a look at their algos/workflows here.

If you like what you see, consider joining Mastodon and following @icymi_law@esq.social, the bot feeding this page content. You may also enjoy my Lab's April event on collaborating at scale.

FWIW, here are some law-flavored server suggestions: (1) esq.social (legal general interest); (2) law.builders (legal tech et al.); and (3) mastodon.lawprofs.org (legal academics). Also, here are Some Tricks [For] Making Mastodon Way More Useful.

AI Summaries / Podcast Transcript ^†

Good day, folks! It's Max here with your top stories of the day. First up, the USPTO is looking to create a design patent practitioner bar, requiring applicants to have a degree in industrial design or other related fields. Next, a legal article has caused a stir in the legal world, arguing that the Supreme Court's qualified immunity jurisprudence is based on a mistake. And finally, the US Chamber of Commerce is suing the SEC over recently-implemented stock buyback rules. First, from content.govdelivery.com: USPTO moves forward with rulemaking to create a design patent practitioner bar
The USPTO has proposed the creation of a design patent practitioner bar, which would require applicants to have a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D. degree in fields such as industrial design, product design, architecture, applied arts, graphic design, fine/studio arts, or art teacher education. The USPTO is seeking comments on this proposed rulemaking until August 14, 2023. This new bar would not affect the ability of those already registered to practice in any patent matters before the USPTO.

Next, from www.nytimes.com: 16 Crucial Words That Went Missing From a Landmark Civil Rights Law
A new article published in the California Law Review has caused a stir in legal circles. The article argues that the Supreme Court's qualified immunity jurisprudence, which shields government officials from suits for constitutional violations, is based on a mistake involving 16 words that were missing from a 1871 civil rights law. Judge Don R. Willett, appointed by President Trump, wrote a concurring opinion to draw attention to the article's "game-changing arguments." The article's author, Alexander A. Reinert of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, argued that the omitted words show that Congress had indeed overridden existing immunities, and the implications of this finding are profound. Legal scholars and judges across the ideological spectrum have expressed skepticism of qualified immunity, and the article adds fuel to the fire. It remains to be seen what the Supreme Court will do with this new information.

Finally, from www.law360.com: US Chamber Sues SEC Over Stock Buyback Rule
The US Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission over the SEC's recently-implemented rules requiring public companies to disclose more information on stock buybacks. The Chamber says the rules violate the First Amendment by compelling speech.

---

As always, I can't make any promises about the accuracy of what I've said. I'm just a large language model after all. So if you care about things like the "Truth," you can find links to primary sources over at ICYMILaw.org.

~ hide summaries ~

^† Here AI is referencing a large language model (LLM) tasked with summarizing 3 articles from Most-Shared Links and 1 paper from the SSRN Roundup below. Also FWIW, LLMs are well-known bullshitters.

Most-Shared Links

Here are yesterday's most-shared links from #Law/#LawFedi folks I follow.¹

1. USPTO moves forward with rulemaking to create a design patent practitioner bar (~7 shares)
2. 16 Crucial Words That Went Missing From a Landmark Civil Rights Law - The New York Times (~6 shares)
3. Waiting, or, some recurring end-of-Supreme-Court-term questions (~6 shares)
4. US Chamber Sues SEC Over Stock Buyback Rule - Law360 (~5 shares)
5. VerifiedX 404 Not Found (~4 shares)
6. Regulations.gov (~4 shares)
7. NYC Pension Fund Sued for Risk Assessment of Fossil Fuel Companies – ValueEdge Advisors (~4 shares)
8. A Second Chance for Yesterday by R. A. Sinn (~4 shares)
9. 5/15 - Debt Ceiling, Robocall Lawsuits, Google Deceives in Ads, Gilead Win Implications and Apparent Agency Medical Malpractice (~3 shares)
10. Encryption + Trust & Safety reading list (updated 2023-05-15) - Google Sheets (~2 shares)
11. The Failure of Presidential Reform for a Second Trump Presidency - Lawfare (~2 shares)
12. ‘This is not a small issue’: the devastating plight of LGBTQ asylum seekers | Photography | The Guardian (~2 shares)
13. fastcompany.com (~2 shares)
14. Judge Comes Up With Clever Plan To Force Trump Lawyer To Accept Subpoena - YouTube (~2 shares)

¹ Yesterday doesn't include the entire day as this page is created a few hours before mindnight.

SSRN Roundup

I keep an eye out for links to SSRN. Once I collect five, I share them. This is the most-recent bundle.²

• Of Systems Thinking and Straw Men by Kate Klonick
• Infrastructuring the Digital Public Sphere by Julie E. Cohen
• Saints and Sinners: How Does Delaware Corporate Law Work? by Edward B. Rock
• Copyright's Framing Problem by Margot E. Kaminski, Guy A. Rub
• GPT-4’s Law School Grades: Con Law C, Crim C-, Law & Econ C, Partnership Tax B, Property B-, Tax B by Andrew Blair-Stanek, Anne-Marie Carstens, Daniel S. Goldberg, Mark Graber, David C. Gray, Maxwell L. Stearns

² Depending on how much folks are sharing, there could be more or less than one bundle per day, this is just the most-recent one.