In this Article, we explain why the transactions commonly known as “smart contracts” are better understood as “bot contracts.” Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we show why the “smart contracts” moniker is misdescriptive in two important ways. First, these transactions are automated, not smart. Second, they do not afford parties many enforcement rights and defenses that one expects from common law contractual relationships. To fully understand these transactions, it is important to app…

This Article presents the findings of a content analysis of 86 family law casebooks published in the United States from 1960 to 2019. Its purpose is to critically assess the discipline of family law with the aim of informing our understandings of family law’s history and exposing its ideological foundations and consequences. Although legal thinkers have written several intellectual histories of family law, this is the first quantitative look at the field.

The study finds that coverage of mar…

Most survivors of gender-based violence do not sue their perpetrators in tort because they cannot find attorneys to take their cases. Attorneys who charge contingent fees find these cases financially unappealing. The cases are unlikely to result in substantial collectible judgments because of insurance policy exclusions, laws that protect tortfeasors’ assets, and, at times, insufficient damages. Yet empirical evidence reveals that survivors do not seek to use the tort system to achieve compensa…

This Essay seeks to answer two interrelated questions about regnant maritime choice-of-law analysis in the United States: Does it descriptively capture international law as the United States claims? And, if so, is such an approach a good one? In so doing, this Essay aims principally to provide national and international decision makers with a robust and fresh resource for resolving these disputes in a manner, I argue, beneficent to overall social welfare and peaceful relations among states…

Despite recent technological advances, the statutory basis under which U.S. courts evaluate patent-eligible subject matter has remained substantially unchanged for over 200 years. As a result, the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit have decided patent eligibility for software-based inventions without legislative input. Most notably, in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International the Supreme Court created a two-part test for analyzing eligibility that determines (1) whether a claimed inve…

Courts and legislatures constantly adapt to new technologies that bring with them new types of legal disputes. Today, one such dispute arises when two people who have created human embryos using their own genetic material are later unable to agree on the appropriate fate of the embryos. This Note explores how state courts and legislatures have addressed these disputes. Embryo disputes are unlike any other as they involve the frozen potential for life and the often-heartbreaking circumstances in…

Among the key characteristics of democratic governance are opportunities for meaningful public participation, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law, including reasoned and substantiated decision-making. These characteristics are particularly important in decision-making by administrative agencies, which, unlike legislative bodies that formulate public policy and adopt laws, are not directly accountable to the electorate. Under the Trump Administration, the processes by which agencies w…