Can Siri 10.0 Buy Your Home? The Legal and Policy Based Implications of Artificial Intelligent Robots Owning Real Property

This Article addresses whether strong artificial intelligent robots (“AI”) should receive real property rights. More than a resource, real property promotes self-respect to natural persons such as human beings. Because of this distinction, this Article argues for limited real property rights for AIs. In developing this proposition, it examines three hypotheticals of a strong AI robot in various forms of real property ownership. The first hypothetical determines whether an AI could work as an agent in real property transactions. As robots currently act as agents in various capacities, the groundwork exists for an AI to enter this role. The second hypothetical considers whether an AI could own property in a manner similar to a corporation. In this instance, an AI would own the property in its name, but generate wealth for its shareholders and have oversight by natural persons. Corporations can acquire property as artificial persons, so too AIs could meet similar legal requirements. As such, the law should allow such ownership rights to AIs. The third hypothetical delves into whether an AI should own property outright like a natural person. After describing potential reasons for this approach, this Article explains why legal and policy-based arguments weigh against this extension of property rights to AIs. Instead, any possibility of an AI owning property like a natural person should come from Congress, not the courts

Corporate responses to climate change: The Role of internal scientists as institutional entrepreneurs

In this paper, we argue that institutional discourses and practices do not pass undisturbed across organizational boundaries. We look at how corporate scientists in the automobile industry, acting as institutional entrepreneurs, influence way in which corporations perceive and respond to climate science

The Use of Collateral Estoppel by a Private Party in Suits Against Public Agency Defendants

Collateral estoppel has been defined as the facet of the doctrine of judicial finality that deals with a judgment\u27s conclusive effect in a suit on another cause of action. It precludes relitigation of a previously decided issue when that same issue arises in the context of a subsequent suit based on a different claim. Traditionally, a party seeking to assert collateral estoppel must establish three elements: (1) identity with an issue actually and necessarily litigated in the prior case, (2) mutuality of parties, that is, the same parties or their privies in the second case as in the first, and (3) a final judgment rendered in the first case; In addition, collateral estoppel has traditionally been used defensively rather than offensively, and has been held to apply only to questions of fact. In recent years the judiciary, responding in part to the increased congestion of court dockets, has expanded the scope and flexibility of the doctrine of collateral estoppel. This trend has had a significant and beneficial impact in multiparty tort litigation, 9 patents and trademarks, and antitrust law. However, the same cannot be said for public interest litigation, civil rights, and poverty law. This article discusses the application of collateral estoppel against a public agency defendant in civil litigation. Welfare law hypotheticals are used to illustrate the procedural points. The authors are here concerned with cases in which a private litigant might take advantage of a favorable ruling in a prior case to which he or she was not a party by asserting collateral estoppel

Case History of the Temporary Support of an 11-Story Historic Building in Downtown Washington, DC

In conjunction with the below-grade construction of a new office building at 1875 Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington, D.C. an adjacent 11-story historic building was supported using a system of bracket piles, a transfer girder and flat jacks. Before Clark Foundations could begin work, an office building from the 1960’s was demolished. This paper will discuss the design, construction and performance of the 65-foot deep excavation support system for the new office building. Built at the turn of the century, the adjacent structure was first supported in 1960 by a series of bracket piles and a concrete grade beam. The new office building at 1875 Pennsylvania Avenue required subgrade to extend approximately 10 feet below the tip elevation of those original 1960’s bracket pile system. The Clark team installed a series of 25 additional bracket piles and a transfer girder between the existing bracket piles to support the older system. This system was preloaded using a series of flat jacks to minimize any additional settlement. Clark Foundations created a very unique two-tiered underpinning support system. This new system supports a 1960’s system, which in turn, supports the adjacent historic structure. Clark’s innovative approach created additional below-grade space gained for the law firm tenant while maintaining the integrity of a historic structure