The term "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) has become ubiquitous in current discourse around AI. OpenAI states that its mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all ...of humanity." DeepMind's company vision statement notes that "artificial general intelligence…has the potential to drive one of the greatest transformations in history." AGI is mentioned prominently in the UK government's National AI Strategy and in US government AI documents. Microsoft researchers recently claimed evidence of "sparks of AGI" in the large language model GPT-4, and current and former Google executives proclaimed that "AGI is already here." The question of whether GPT-4 is an "AGI algorithm" is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk against OpenAI.
We estimate how US state courts impact firm value by exploiting a US SupremeCourt ruling that exogenously changed firms’ exposure to different courts. Wefind that increased exposure to more ...business-friendly courts is associated withpositive announcement returns. We find no such association for objective courtquality. Consistent with the ruling impacting firm value through the legalenvironment channel, we find that effects are stronger for firms with highlitigation exposure. We find that the ruling led to a shift in both thegeographic distribution of lawsuits and operations of firms.
I am honored by the invitation to participate in this symposium on “What Practitioners Can Teach Academics About Tort Litigation” and to share my views from the defense side of government tort ...litigation. I have a foot in each camp of the practitioner/academic divide. For three decades I defended the federal government in Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) litigation, serving for the last 15 of those years as Deputy Director of the FTCA Staff in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. I worked with the FTCA and its jurisprudence on a daily basis—litigating cases, assessing and negotiating proposed settlements, advising agencies and Assistant U.S. Attorneys, and commenting on proposed legislation. I left Justice in 2006 to become an academic, a role in which I have had the pleasure of teaching Torts to first year law students and the time and freedom to write about sovereign immunity, the FTCA, and other things.
In late 1930, on a secluded mountain overlooking the rural paddy fields of British Burma, a peasant leader named Saya San crowned himself King and inaugurated a series of uprisings that would later ...erupt into one of the largest anti-colonial rebellions in Southeast Asian history. Considered an imposter by the British, a hero by nationalists, and a prophet-king by area-studies specialists, Saya San came to embody traditional Southeast Asia's encounter with European colonialism in his attempt to resurrect the lost throne of Burma.The Return of the Galon Kinganalyzes the legal origins of the Saya San story and reconsiders the facts upon which the basic narrative and interpretations of the rebellion are based. Aung-Thwin reveals how counter-insurgency law produced and criminalized Burmese culture, contributing to the way peasant resistance was recorded in the archives and understood by Southeast Asian scholars.This interdisciplinary study reveals how colonial anthropologists, lawyers, and scholar-administrators produced interpretations of Burmese culture that influenced contemporary notions of Southeast Asian resistance and protest. It provides a fascinating case study of how history is treated by the law, how history emerges in legal decisions, and how the authority of the past is used to validate legal findings.
The lawsuit was originally filed in state court but was moved to federal court due to diversity of citizenship among the parties. The judge also reviewed an argument made by the pharmacy chain's ...attorneys that this was not a traditional negligence claim but a professional negligence claim, invoking a different provision within the law of the state. ...a negotiated out-of-court settlement gives both parties some degree of control over the outcome whereas there are absolutely no guarantees when dealing with a jury.
SUMMARY
We investigate whether the concern of shareholder litigation motivates auditors to disclose internal control weaknesses. We document that issuing adverse internal control opinions reduces the ...likelihood of auditors being named with their clients as defendants in shareholder lawsuits. This finding suggests that auditors can reduce their legal liability arising from failed financial statement audits by increasing the quality of internal control audits. Consistent with this expectation, we find that auditors are more likely to issue such opinions in a timely manner for clients with higher ex ante litigation risk. Overall, our evidence suggests that the threat of litigation provides an incentive rather than a disincentive for auditors to issue adverse internal control opinions for clients with higher litigation risk.
Data Availability: The data are available from public sources indicated in the paper.
JEL Classifications: M42; K41.
The American Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which aims to fight corruption of foreign officials, applies under some circumstances to foreign firms located outside the United States. Empirical ...evidence shows that when the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission opens a case for an alleged violation of the FCPA against a foreign firm, the latter systematically accepts to settle. We argue that the structure of the pretrial phase led by the prosecutor results in a settlement even when a trial would have led to a more favorable outcome for the defendant. We use a Contest Success Function
á la
Tullock that we modify to capture the specificities of the procedure under the FCPA. First, we consider the parties’ expenditures during the ‘bargaining process (as opposed to the actual litigation costs) determine the outcome of the trial. Second, we assume that the effect of the prosecuting authority’s expenditures on the probability of winning in case of trial is stronger than that of the defendant’s. We show that in this framework, the case is always settled out of court. Systematic settlement entails a social cost which consists in the total absence of case law regarding the extraterritorial effect of the FCPA.
Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, William P. Hustwit assesses the significant role that Alexander v. Holmes (1969) played in integrating the South's public ...schools. Although Brown v. Board of Education has rightly received the lion's share of historical analysis, its ambiguous language for implementation led to more than a decade of delays and resistance by local and state governments. Alexander v. Holmes required "integration now," and less than a year later, thousands of children were attending integrated schools.
Hustwit traces the progression of the Alexander case to show how grassroots activists in Mississippi operated hand in glove with lawyers and judges involved in the litigation. By combining a narrative of the larger legal battle surrounding the case and the story of the local activists who pressed for change, Hustwit offers an innovative, well-researched account of a definitive legal decision that reaches from the cotton fields of Holmes County to the chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington.
PDF
