Ending the Paper Chase at the U.S. Supreme Court

This Article offers the first systematic analysis of the administrative impact and practical consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court\u27s filing requirements. The lack of meaningful research on this subject reveals how Justices, clerks, and lawyers have become inured to these requirements and their attendant costs. Every year, the Supreme Court receives approximately five thousand petitions for certiorari. With some exceptions, the Court compels litigants to file multiple paper copies of their submissions. When combined, these submissions exceed two hundred thousand documents, which include over five million separate pieces of paper. If stacked, these documents would reach beyond the height of the tallest building in the United States. If weighed, these filings would require over thirty-three tons of paper to produce. Significantly, these documents are filed with the Court every year before it has even granted the petition for certiorari, which occurs in less than two percent of cases. Because litigants must submit electronic copies of their filings through the Court’s online filing system, requiring them to also submit paper copies is unnecessary and wasteful. For these reasons, the Court should revise its submission rules to eliminate the requirement of paper submissions, particularly at the certiorari stage. Litigation costs are already significant at the Supreme Court. The Court’s filing requirements reinforce the inaccessibility of justice to economically marginalized litigants by forcing them to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on processing, printing, filing, and serving unneeded documents. Environmental harm should not be added to the costs of seeking judicial review. By quantifying the effects of the Court’s filing requirements, their administrative impact and practical consequences can be measured, highlighted, and hopefully changed

Bespoke Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

The decision to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) has far reaching consequences. Determining how to address budding applications of AI technology should depend on their effects. This article describes how regulation should be carefully tailored to avoid harm while maximizing social welfare, building on Orly Lobel\u27s taxonomy of regulatory tools. Part I examines the foundational difficulties in governing AI, including industry influence in regulation and deficiencies in enforcement. Part II elaborates on Lobel\u27s framework, detailing the benefits and limitations of a variety of tools, such as voluntary standards, soft law mechanisms, and public-private partnerships. It describes how bringing in diverse stakeholders can achieve a more practical approach to AI governance but cautions against an evaluation of AI that overlooks its effects on areas such as access, autonomy, privacy, and the environment. Part III introduces the legislative carve-out as a potential instrument in AI governance. Using the 21st Century Cures Act\u27s exclusion of certain low-risk Clinical Decision Support (CDS) software from FDA oversight as a case study, it evaluates the carve-out\u27s implications for innovation, safety, and physician liability. The article concludes by advocating for a nuanced approach to AI governance that furthers innovation while mitigating risks, underscoring the importance of tailoring regulation based on the degree of likely harm