ARTICLE

Missing the Role of Property in the Regulation of Insider Trading 
by Kevin R. Douglas

For decades, legal scholars have evaluated the law and practice of insider trading through a property lens. Some have debated whether a property rationale is useful for explaining past cases or might make a useful framework for deciding tough cases in the future. Others have explored which market actors should be allocated property rights in inside information in order to increase the efficiency or liquidity of U.S. securities markets. Yet scholars seem to have missed the fact that officials have consistently relied on the violation of some party’s property rights to justify imposing liability for insider trading—including in classical theory of liability cases. 

ARTICLE
Re-Envisioning Law Student Scholarship
by Emily Zimmerman

This Article recommends that we think more intentionally about how law students’ engagement in scholarship can promote their professional development. In so doing, we should recognize that legal scholarship plays a different role for law students than it does for law professors. Rather than trying to replicate law professors’ relationship with scholarship, the pedagogy of law student scholarship should focus more intentionally on the value of scholarship for law students—most of whom will not become law professors

COMMENT

Meaning, Biology and Identity: The Rights of Children
by Anika Smith

Sperm and egg donation in the United States is only loosely regulated, and the current regime privileges the anonymity of the adult donor over the child’s right to identity. The majority of people conceived through anonymous donation do not support the practice but find their rights abrogated by contracts made by their intentional and biological parents. Donor reliance on the anonymity guaranteed by those contracts is shifting as at-home genetic testing limits their expectation of privacy, with more biological ties being discovered by children conceived through gamete donation. This Comment explores the child’s right to identity in family law cases, examines alternate regimes of gamete donation, and argues that as donor reliance on anonymity erodes, the child’s liberty interest in the right to identity outweighs the donor’s contractual interest in anonymity.

ARTICLE

Practical Truth: The Value of Apparent Honesty in Supreme Court Opinions
by Timothy C. MacDonnell

The focus of this Essay is on the importance that apparent honesty has on the persuasive force of Supreme Court opinions. Legal scholars and Supreme Court Justices have observed the connection between the Court’s legitimacy and the persuasive force of its opinions. Because the Court’s opinions are both an exercise of the Court’s power and the justification for that power, the Justices’ opinions must be persuasive. The study of rhetoric has long recognized three methods of persuading an audience of the correctness of a particular view: logic, credibility, and emotion. Ethos/credibility is the most important to the Supreme Court, and apparent honesty is a necessary part of such an appeal.

COMMENT

Where We're Going, We Don't Need Drivers: Autonomous Vehicles and AI-Chaperone Liability
by Peter Y. Kim 

The future of mainstream autonomous vehicles is approaching in the rearview mirror. Yet, the current legal regime for tort liability leaves an open question on how tortious Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices and systems that are capable of machine learning will be held accountable. To understand the potential answer, one may simply go back in time and see how this question would be answered under traditional torts. This Comment tests whether the incident involving an autonomous vehicle hitting a pedestrian is covered under the traditional torts, argues that they are incapable of solving this novel problem, and ultimately proposes a new strict liability tort: AI-Chaperone Liability. Because advancement in technology requires advancement in the law, AI-Chaperone Liability is a step forward in unchartered territory.