The article argues that 'AI agents' are not autonomous entities but software executing human instructions, and that calling them agents obscures legal liability and erases the labor behind model training. The author contends that real automation requires bounded outputs, deterministic code, and human accountability, drawing parallels to classical commercial law principles that eliminate contractual uncertainty.
The deodand was a medieval English legal concept requiring the owner of an object that caused someone's death to forfeit its value to the crown. This obscure law persisted into the Industrial Revolution until railways made it impractical, as railway companies faced ruinous costs when trains killed people.
The author reflects on their first-year law school experience while purchasing a Rhodia tablet, drawing parallels to fraternity involvement and previous law office work.
Kevin Hart reviews Timothy Michael Law's book about the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used by the early Church. Law traces how this Greek version, beginning with the Torah's translation in third-century BCE Alexandria, became foundational to Christian Scripture before the Bible eventually became a Hebrew-Greek compilation. The Septuagint preserves older textual versions and challenges modern assumptions about biblical canon formation.
An interdisciplinary project developing ethical guidelines for artificial consciousness, addressing both the protection of potentially conscious AI systems and humans interacting with them. The initiative spans computer science, law, psychology, theology, and philosophy to explore when technical life becomes worthy of moral and legal protection.
Jay Nordlinger urges remembrance of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement and its prominent activists, particularly Joshua Wong and Jimmy Lai, who remain imprisoned after China's Communist Party crushed the city's freedom struggle. Wong, the 29-year-old face of Hong Kong's democracy movement, faces potential life imprisonment after pleading guilty to encouraging Western sanctions, while the broader international community, including the United States, has largely abandoned the cause.
South Korea has launched a real-time stalking app that allows survivors to track perpetrators wearing ankle tags on a map, with alerts sent to police when offenders come within 1km. The system serves about 400 people and comes after stalking reports tripled since a 2021 law was introduced, with concerns raised about whether it shifts safety responsibility onto victims.