A drunk man in Japan was arrested for kicking a humanoid robot that was stationed as a greeter at a SoftBank store. The man was angry at the attitude of one of the store clerks. The “Pepper robot” now moves more slowly, and its internal computer system may have been damaged. Whether a robot can be legally “injured” or not is debatable, and raises the question of what exactly robot laws should look like. Weng has proposed 2 special regulations for robots. First, a “Humanoid Morality Act” would define a proper relationship between humans and robots, including the use of coercive power to constrain unethical applications. Second, a “Robot Safety Governance Act” would extend current machine safety regulations to protect the safety of both humans and robots.
Tag: laws
US Justice System is a joke
having spent time as a juror, the US justice system is indeed a joke. no one is laughing:
there are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors—and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices— engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials. The misconduct ranges from misleading the jury, to outright lying in court and tacitly acquiescing or actively participating in the presentation of false evidence by police.
DOMA repeal
yay for the gay marriage supreme court decision. boo for the 100s of “thinkpieces” about it we’ll have to suffer through over the next few months.
US legal reach
rather than sending troops around the world, maybe the US should do more of this global stamping out of corruption. if only there was as much zeal to stamp out corruption domestically.
Europe is also more wedded to the doctrine of “comity”, which holds that courts should not act in a way that demeans the jurisdiction, laws or judicial decisions of another country. “In practice, this translates into keeping your collective nose out of other nations’ legal affairs, with a few exceptions, such as war crimes
Criminal lawyers
The New Mexico Law Review just published an issue dedicated entirely to Breaking Bad. It features 8 articles that analyze the illegal acts committed on the show, their real-world parallels, and the consequences attached. Some of the greatest legal minds in New Mexico (and the country) came together to examine how Walter White would look to a jury, how the war on drugs affects peripheral citizens like Skyler, and whether Heisenberg could have stayed legit by fighting for his stake in Grey Matter in the courts.
The right to feed lions
Little Caesar’s argued that the persecution of Christians and the feeding of them to ravenous big cats was a “deeply held” religious belief, that the continued survival of the 6k Christian employees, as well as the fact that they remained on company payroll, imposed a “substantial financial burden” on their religious liberty.
Email disclaimers
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This email does not create an attorney-client relationship. Probably. If it does, it will have said it does. Although it could have created an attorney-client relationship without explicitly saying so, because the law is tricky like that, and the authoritative statements in this disclaimer are not as authoritative as they look. Suffice it to say, if you aren’t absolutely certain about whether or not an attorney-client relationship exists between yourself and the sender of this email, you should probably hit “reply” and ask for some clarity.
War is unlawful
The General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy was a 1928 international agreement not to use war to resolve conflicts. it was signed by Germany, France and the United States. Today, the treaty remains a federal law in the US
Affluenza
I thought the perpetrator was a victim because of the Justin Bieber haircut, but this is amazing too:
You have this problem, if “you have too much and you don’t know how to distribute it.” in his view, this “defense” is “not exclusively for the rich.” So, good news—if you live in poverty but have too much stuff to distribute, this defense may also be available to you.
2022-01-31:
Responding to the tragedy with a triumphant show of support, members of a local community came together Monday to express hope that killing 2 people in a drunk-driving accident would serve as a wake-up call to the promising young rich kid responsible. “With any luck, this little mishap will be a turning point for [perpetrator of DUI manslaughter] Greg [Nelker], and he’ll graduate and go on to Yale without incident,” said concerned resident John Morgan, adding that he was sure the 17-year-old high school senior and frequent drunk driver realized how lucky he was that nothing worse had happened.
Last Days of Big Law
another bubble is popping.
There are currently between 150 and 250 firms in the United States that can claim membership in the club known as Big Law, the group of historically profitable firms that cater to the country’s largest corporations. The overwhelming majority of these still operate with a business model that assumes, at least implicitly, that clients will insist upon the best legal talent instead of the best bargain for legal talent. That assumption has become rickety. Within the next 10 years or so, there will be at most 20 to 25 firms that can operate this way—the firms whose clients have so many billions of $ riding on their legal work that they can truly spend without limit. The other 200 firms will have to reinvent themselves or disappear.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 