Tag: Law Technology

On The Importance Of Teaching Dissent To Legal Large Language Models

Machine learning from legal precedent requires curating a dataset comprised of court decisions, judicial analysis, and legal briefs in a particular field that is used to train an algorithm to process the essence of these court decisions against a real-world scenario. This process must include dissenting opinions, minority views, and asymmetrical rulings to achieve near-human legal rationale and just outcomes. 

tl;dr
The use of machine learning is continuing to extend the capabilities of AI systems in the legal field. Training data is the cornerstone for producing useable machine learning results. Unfortunately, when it comes to judicial decisions, at times the AI is only being fed the majority opinions and not given the dissenting views (or, ill-prepared to handle both). We shouldn’t want and nor tolerate AI legal reasoning that is shaped so one-sidedly.

Make sure to read the full paper titled Significance Of Dissenting Court Opinions For AI Machine Learning In The Law by Dr. Lance B. Eliot at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3998250

(Source: Mapendo 2022)

When AI researchers and developers conceive of legal large language models that are expected to produce legal outcomes it is crucial to include conflicting data or dissenting opinions. The author argues for a balanced, comprehensive training dataset inclusive of judicial majority and minority views. Current court opinions tend to highlight the outcome, or the views of the majority, and neglect close examination of dissenting opinions and minority views. This can result in unjust outcomes, missed legal case nuances, or bland judicial arguments. His main argument centers around a simple observation: justice is fundamentally born through a process of cognitive complexity. In other words, a straightforward ruling with unanimous views has little value in learning or evolving a certain area of the law but considering trade-offs, reflecting on and carefully weighing different ideas and values against each other does.  

This open-source legal large language model with an integrated external knowledge base exemplifies two key considerations representative of the status quo: (1) training data is compiled by crawling and scraping legally relevant information and key judicial text that exceeds a special area and is not limited to supporting views. (2) because the training data is compiled at scale and holistically, it can be argued that majority views stand to overrepresent model input considering that minority views often receive less attention, discussion, or reflection beyond an initial post-legal decision period.  In addition, there might be complex circumstances in which a judge is split on a specific legal outcome. These often quiet moments of legal reasoning rooted in cognitive complexity hardly ever make it into a written majority or minority opinion. Therefore it is unlikely to be used for training purposes.

Another interesting consideration is the access to dissenting opinions and minority views. While access to this type of judicial writing may be available to the public at the highest levels, a dissenting view of a less public case at a lower level might not afford the same access. Gatekeepers such as WestLaw restrict the audience to these documents and their interpretations. Arguments for a fair learning exemption for large language models arise in various corners of the legal profession and are currently litigated by the current trailblazers of the AI boom. 

A recent and insightful essay written by Seán Fobbes cautions excitement when it comes to legal large language models and their capabilities to produce legally and ethically accurate as well as just outcomes. From my cursory review, it will require much more fine-tuning and quality review than a mere assurance of dissenting opinions and minority views can incorporate. Food for thought that I shall devour in a follow up post.

Forecasting Legal Outcomes With Generative AI

Imagine a futuristic society where lawsuits are adjudicated within minutes. Accurately predicting the outcome of a legal action will change the way we adhere to rules and regulations. 

tl;dr
Lawyers are steeped in making predictions. A closely studied area of the law is known as Legal Judgment Prediction (LJP) and entails using computer models to aid in making legal-oriented predictions. These capabilities will be fueled and amplified via the advent of AI in the law.

Make sure to read the full paper titled Legal Judgment Predictions and AI by Dr. Lance B. Eliot at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3954615


We are in Mega-City One in the year 2099AD. The judiciary and law enforcement are one unit. Legal violations, disputes, infringements of social norms are enforced by street judges with a mandate to summarily arrest, convict, sentence, and execute criminals. Of course, this is the plot of Judge Joseph Dredd, but the technology in the year 2023AD is already on its way to making this dystopian vision a reality. 

Forecasting the legal outcome of a proceeding is a matter of data analytics, access to information, and the absence of process-disrupting events. In our current time, this is a job for counsel and legal professionals. As representatives of the courts, lawyers are experts in reading a situation and introducing some predictability to it by adopting a clear legal strategy. Ambiguity and human error, however, make this process hardly repeatable – let alone reliable for future legal action. 

Recent developments in the field of computer science, specifically around large-language models (LLM), natural language processing (NLP), retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and reinforced learning from human feedback (RLHF) have introduced technical capabilities to increase the quality of forecasting legal outcomes. It can be summarized as generative artificial intelligence (genAI). Crossfunctional efforts between computer science and legal academia coined this area of study “Legal Judgment Prediction” (LJP).  

The litigation analytics platform “Pre/Dicta” exemplifies the progress of LJP by achieving prediction accuracy in the 86% percentile. In other words, the platform can forecast the decision of a judge in nearly 9 out of 10 cases. As impressive as this result is, the author points out that sentient behavior is a far-fetched reality for current technologies, which are largely based on statistical models with access to vast amounts of data. The quality of the data, the methods leveraged to train the model, and the application determine the accuracy and quality of the prediction. Moreover, the author makes a case for incorporating forecasting milestones and focusing on those, rather than attempting to predict the final result of a judicial proceeding that is very much dependent on factors that are challenging to quantify in statistical models. For example, research from 2011 established the “Hungry Judge Effect” which in essence stated a judge’s ruling has a tendency to be conservative if it happens before the judge had a meal (or on an empty stomach near the end of a court session) versus the same case would see a more favorable verdict if the decision process took place after the judge’s hunger had been satisfied and his mental fatigue had been mitigated. 

Other factors that pose pitfalls for achieving near 100% prediction accuracy include the semantic alignment on “legal outcome”. In other words, what specifically is forecasted? The verdict of the district judge? The verdict of a district judge that will be challenged on appeal? Or perhaps the verdict and the sentencing procedure? Or something completely adjacent to the actual court proceedings? It might seem pedantic, but clarity around “what success looks like” is paramount when it comes to legal forecasting.  

While Mega-City One might still be a futuristic vision, our current technology is inching closer and closer to a “Minority Report” type of scenario where powerful, sentient or not, technologies churn through vast amounts of intelligence information and behavioral data to forecast and supplement human decision making. The real two questions for us as a human collective beyond borders will be: (1) how much control are we willing to delegate to machines? and (2) how do we rectify injustices once we lose control over the judiciary? 

About Black-Box Medicine

Healthcare in the United States is a complex and controversial subject. Approximately 30 million Americans are uninsured and at risk of financial ruin if they become ill or injured. Advanced science and technology could ease some of the challenges around access, diagnosis, and treatment if legal and policy frameworks allow innovation to balance patient protection and medical innovation.  

tl;dr
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly moving to change the healthcare system. Driven by the juxtaposition of big data and powerful machine learning techniques, innovators have begun to develop tools to improve the process of clinical care, to advance medical research, and to improve efficiency. These tools rely on algorithms, programs created from health-care data that can make predictions or recommendations. However, the algorithms themselves are often too complex for their reasoning to be understood or even stated explicitly. Such algorithms may be best described as “black-box.” This article briefly describes the concept of AI in medicine, including several possible applications, then considers its legal implications in four areas of law: regulation, tort, intellectual property, and privacy.

Make sure to read the full article titled Artificial Intelligence in Health Care: Applications and Legal Issues by William Nicholson Price II, JD/PhD at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3078704


When you describe your well-being to ChatGPT it takes about 10 seconds for the machine to present a list of possible conditions you could suffer from, common causes, and treatment. It offers unprecedented access to medical knowledge. When you ask how ChatGPT concluded your assessment, the machine is less responsive. In fact, the algorithms that power ChatGPT and other AI assistants derive their knowledge from a complex neural network of billions of data points. Information – some publicly available, others licensed and specifically trained into the model’s predictive capabilities – that is rarely analyzed for accuracy and applicability to the individual circumstances of each user at the time of their request. OpenAI, the current market leader for this type of technology, is using reinforced learning from human feedback and proximal policy optimization to achieve a level of accuracy that has the potential to upend modern medicine by making healthcare assessments available to those who cannot afford it. 

Interestingly, the assessment is something of a black box for both medical professionals and patients. Transparency efforts and insights into the algorithmic structure of machine learning models that power these chat interfaces still seem to be insufficient to explain reason and understanding about how the specific recommendation came to be and whether the prediction is tailored to the users’ medical needs or derived from statistical predictions. The author paints a vivid picture by breaking down the current state of medicine/healthcare and artificial intelligence and characterizing it with the “three V’s”: 

  1. Volume: large quantities of data – both public and personal, identifiable (health) information that is used to train ever-voracious large language models. Never before in history has mankind collected more health-related data through personal fitness trackers, doctor appointments, and treatment plans than it does today.  
  2. Variety: heterogeneity of data and access beyond identity, borders, languages, or culture references. Our health data comes from a wealth of different sources. While wearables track our specific wellbeing; location and travel data may indicate our actual wellbeing. 
  3. Velocity: fast access to data – in some instances with seconds to process medical data that otherwise would have taken weeks to process. Arguably, we have come a long way since WebMD broke down the velocity barrier. 

The “three V’s” allow for quick results, but usually lack the why and how a conclusion has been reached. The author coined this as “Black-Box Medicine”. While this creates some uncertainty, it also creates many opportunities for ancillary medical functions, e.g. prognostics, diagnostics, image analysis, and treatment recommendations. Furthermore, it creates interesting legal questions: how does society ensure black-box medicine is safe and effective and how can it protect patients and patient privacy throughout the process? 

Alomst immediately the question of oversight comes to mind. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate “the practice of medicine” but could be tasked to oversee the deployment of medical devices. Is an algorithm that is trained with patient and healthcare data a medical device? Perhaps the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or local State Medical Boards can claim oversight, but the author argues disputes will certainly arise over this point. Assuming the FDA would oversee algorithms and subject them to traditional methods of testing medical devices, it would likely subject algorithms to clinical trials that couldn’t produce scientific results because an artificial intelligence, by virtue of its existence, changes over time and adapts to new patient circumstances. Hence the author sees innovation at risk of slowing down if the healthcare industry is not quick to adopt “sandbox environments” that allow safe testing of the technology without compromising progress. 

Another interesting question is who is responsible when things go wrong? Medical malpractice commonly traces back to the doctor/medical professional in charge of the treatment. If medical assessment is reduced to a user and a keyboard will the software engineer who manages the codebase be held liable for ill-conceived advice? Perhaps the company that employs the engineer(s)? Or the owner of the model and training data? If a doctor is leveraging artificial intelligence for image analysis – does it impose a stricter duty of care on the doctor? The author doesn’t provide a conclusive answer and courts yet have to decide case law of this emerging topic in healthcare. 

While this article was first published in 2017, I find it to be accurate and relevant today as it raises intriguing questions about governance, liability, privacy, and intellectual property rights concerning healthcare in the context of artificial intelligence and medical devices in particular. The author leaves it to the reader to answer the question: “Does entity-centered privacy regulation make sense in a world where giant data agglomerations are necessary and useful?”   

Legislative Considerations for Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law

Who, if anyone, may claim copyright ownership of new content generated by a technology without direct human input? Who is or should be liable if content created with generative artificial intelligence infringes existing copyrights?

tl;dr
Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are raising new questions about how copyright law principles such as authorship, infringement, and fair use will apply to content created or used by AI. So-called “generative AI” computer programs—such as Open AI’s DALL-E and ChatGPT programs, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion program, and Midjourney’s self-titled program—are able to generate new images, texts, and other content (or “outputs”) in response to a user’s textual prompts (or “inputs”). These generative AI programs are trained to generate such outputs partly by exposing them to large quantities of existing works such as writings, photos, paintings, and other artworks. This Legal Sidebar explores questions that courts and the U.S. Copyright Office have begun to confront regarding whether generative AI outputs may be copyrighted and how generative AI might infringe copyrights in other works.

Make sure to read the full paper titled Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law by Christopher T. Zirpoli for the Congressional Research Service at https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10922/5


The increasing use of generative AI challenges existing legal frameworks around content creation, ownership, and attribution. It reminds me of the time streaming began to challenge the – then – common practice of downloading copyrighted and user-generated content. How should legislators and lawmakers view generative AI when passing new regulations? 

Copyright, in simple terms, is a type of legal monopoly afforded to the creator or author. It is designed to allow the creator to monetize from their original works of authorship to sustain a living and continue to create because it is assumed that original works of authorship further society and expand knowledge of our culture. The current text of the Copyright Act does not explicitly define who or what can be an author. However, both the U.S. Copyright Office and the judiciary have afforded copyrights only to original works created by a human being. In line with this narrow interpretation of the legislative background, Courts have denied copyright for selfie photos created by a monkey arguing only humans need copyright as a creative incentive.


This argument does imply human creativity is linked to the possibility of reaping economic benefits. In an excellent paper titled “The Concept of Authorship in Comparative Copyright Law”, the faculty director of Columbia’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts, Jane C. Ginsburg refutes this position as a mere byproduct of necessity. Arguably, a legislative scope centered around compensation for creating original works of authorship is failing to incentivize creators and authorship altogether, who, for example, seek intellectual freedom and cultural liberty. This leaves us with a creator or author of a copyrightable work can only be a human. 

Perhaps, generative AI could be considered a collaborative partner used to create original works through an iterative process. Therefore creating an original work of authorship as a result that could be copyrighted by the human prompting the machine. Such cases would also fall outside of current copyright laws and not be eligible for protection. The crucial argument is the expressive element of a creative work must be determined and generated by a human, not an algorithm. In other words, merely coming up with clever prompts to allow generative AI to perform an action, iterating the result with more clever prompts, and claiming copyright for the end result has no legal basis as the expressive elements were within the control of the generative AI module rather than the human. The interpretation of control over the expressive elements of creative work, in the context of machine learning and autonomous, generative AI, is an ongoing debate and likely see more clarification by the legislative and judicial systems.    

To further play out this “Gedankenexperiment” of authorship of content created by generative AI, who would (or should) own such rights? Is the individual who is writing and creating prompts, who is essentially defining and limiting parameters for the generative AI system to perform the task, eligible to claim copyright for the generated result? Is the Software Engineer overseeing the underlying algorithm eligible to claim copyright? Is the company owning the code-work product eligible to claim copyright? Based on the earlier view about expressive elements, it would be feasible to see mere “prompting” as an ineligible action to claim copyright. Likewise, an engineer writing software code performs a specific task to solve a technical problem. Here, an algorithm leveraging training data to create similar, new works. The engineer is not involved or can be attributed to the result of an individual using the product to the extent that it would allow the engineer to exert creative control. Companies may be able to clarify copyright ownership through its terms of service or contractual agreements. However, a lack of judicial and legal commentary on the specific issue leaves it unresolved, or with few clear guidances, as of October 2023.     

The most contentious element of generative AI and copyrighted works is the liability around infringements. OpenAI is facing multiple class-action lawsuits over its allegedly unlicensed use of copyrighted works to train its generative models. Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is facing multiple class-action lawsuits over the training data used for its large-language model “LLaMA”. Much like the author of this paper, I couldn’t possibly shed light on this complex issue with a simple blog post, but lawmakers can take meaningful action. 

Considerations and takeaways for lawmakers and professionals overseeing the company policies that govern generative AI and creative works are: (1) clearly define whether generative AI can create copyrightable works, (2) exercise clarity over authorship and ownership of the generated result, and (3) outline the requirements of licensing, if any, for proprietary training data used for neural networks and generative modules.

The author looked at one example in particular, which concerns the viral AI-song “Heart On My Sleeve” published by TikTok user ghostwriter977. The song uses generative AI to emulate the style, sound, and likeness of pop stars Drake and The Weeknd to appear real and authentic. The music industry understandably is put on guard with revenue-creating content generated within seconds. I couldn’t make up my mind about it, so here you listen for yourself. 

The Problem With Too Much Privacy

The debate around data protection and privacy is often portrayed as a race towards complete secrecy. The author of this research paper argues that instead, we need to strike a balance between protection against harmful surveillance and doxing on one side and safety, health, access, and freedom of expression on the other side.

tl;dr
Privacy rights are fundamental rights to protect individuals against harmful surveillance and public disclosure of personal information. We rightfully fear surveillance when it is designed to use our personal information in harmful ways. Yet a default assumption that data collection is harmful is simply misguided. Moreover, privacy—and its pervasive offshoot, the NDA—has also at times evolved to shield the powerful and rich against the public’s right to know. Law and policy should focus on regulating misuse and uneven collection and data sharing rather than wholesale bans on collection. Privacy is just one of our democratic society’s many values, and prohibiting safe and equitable data collection can conflict with other equally valuable social goals. While we have always faced difficult choices between competing values—safety, health, access, freedom of expression and equality—advances in technology may also include pathways to better balance individual interests with the public good. Privileging privacy, instead of openly acknowledging the need to balance privacy with fuller and representative data collection, obscures the many ways in which data is a public good. Too much privacy—just like too little privacy—can undermine the ways we can use information for progressive change. Even now, with regard to the right to abortion, the legal debates around reproductive justice reveal privacy’s weakness. A more positive discourse about equality, health, bodily integrity, economic rights, and self-determination would move us beyond the limited and sometimes distorted debates about how technological advances threaten individual privacy rights.

Make sure to read the full paper titled The Problem With Too Much Data Privacy by Orly Lobel at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4578023

The United States has historically frayed away from enacting privacy laws or recognizing individual privacy rights. Arguably, this allowed the United States to innovate ruthlessly and progress society relentlessly. The Fourth Amendment and landmark Supreme Court cases shaped contemporary privacy rights in the U.S. over the past half of the century. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, privacy rights were hollowed out when H.R. 3162 aka the Patriot Act was passed, which drastically expanded the Government’s surveillance authority. In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden released top-secret NSA documents to raise the public’s awareness of the scope of surveillance and invasion of privacy done to American citizens and citizens of the world by and large. In 2016, the European Union adopted regulation EU 2016/679 aka General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Academic experts who participated in the formulation of the GDPR wrote that the law “is the most consequential regulatory development in information policy in a generation. The GDPR brings personal data into a complex and protective regulatory regime.” This kickstarted a mass adoption of privacy laws across different States from California’s Consumer Protection Act of 2018 (CCPA) to Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act of 2021 (VCDPA). 

History, with all its legislative back-and-forth evolutions, illustrates the struggle around balancing data privacy with data access. Against this backdrop, the author argues that data is information and information is a public good. Too much privacy restricts, hampers, and harms access to information and therefore innovation. And, while society has always faced difficult choices between competing values, modern technology has the capability to effectively anonymize and securely process data, which can uphold individual privacy rights while supporting progressive change.   

W36Y23 Weekly Review: X Corp. v. California, Maryland v. Instagram/TikTok, and Government Takedown Requests

+++X Corporation Challenges California Law for Transparency in Content Moderation 
+++Maryland School District sues Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and others over Mental Health
+++Appeals Court Limits Government Power to Censor Social Media Content
+++California Lawmakers Wrestle with Social Media Companies over Youth Protection Laws

X Corporation Challenges California Law for Transparency in Content Moderation 

California’s AB 587 law, which demands that social media platforms reveal how they moderate content related to hate speech, racism, extremism, disinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference, is being challenged by X, the company that runs Twitter. X says that the law infringes on its constitutional right to free speech by making it use politically charged terms and express opinions on controversial issues. The lawsuit is part of a larger conflict between California and the tech industry over privacy, consumer protection, and regulation.

Read the full report on techcrunch.
Read the full text of Assembly Bill 587.
Read the case X Corporation v. Robert A. Bonta, Attorney General of California, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California, No. 2:23-at-00903.

Download

Maryland School District sues Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and others over Mental Health

A school district in Anne Arundel County, Maryland is taking legal action against major social media companies, such as Meta, Google, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok. The school district accuses these companies of causing a mental health crisis among young people by using algorithms that keep them hooked on their platforms. The school district says that these platforms expose young users to harmful content and make them spend too much time on screens. The school district demands that these platforms change their algorithms and practices to safeguard children’s well-being. The school district also wants to recover the money that it has spent on addressing student mental health issues.

Read the full report on WBALTV.
Read the case Board of Education of Anne Arundel County v. Meta Platforms Inc. et alia, U.S. District Court, Maryland, No. 1:23-cv-2327.

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Appeals Court Limits Government Power to Censor Social Media Content

A federal appeals court has narrowed a previous court order that limited the Biden administration’s engagement with social media companies regarding contentious content. The original order, issued by a Louisiana judge on July 4th, prevented various government agencies and officials from communicating with platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to encourage the removal of content considered problematic by the government. The appeals court found the initial order too broad and vague, upholding only the part preventing the administration from threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to liability protection for user-generated content. Some agencies were also removed from the order. The Biden administration can seek a Supreme Court review within ten days. 

Read the full report on the associated press.
Read the case Missouri v. Biden, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, No. 3:22-CV-1213.

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California Lawmakers Wrestle with Social Media Companies over Youth Protection Laws

A bill to make social media platforms responsible for harmful content died in a California committee. Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) authored SB 680, which targeted content related to eating disorders, self-harm, and drugs. Tech companies, including Meta, Snap, and TikTok, opposed the bill, saying it violated federal law and the First Amendment. Lawmakers said social media platforms could do more to prevent harm. Another bill, AB 1394, which deals with child sexual abuse material, passed to the Senate floor. It would require platforms to let California users report such material, with fines for non-compliance.

Read the full report on losangelestimes. 
Read the full text of Senate Bill 680.
Read the full text of Assembly Bill 1394.

More Headlines

  • Copyright Law: “Sam Smith Beats Copyright Lawsuit Over ‘Dancing With a Stranger’” (by Bloomberg Law)
  • Copyright Law: “Copyright Office Denies Registration to Award-Winning Work Made with Midjourney” (by IP Watchdog)
  • Cryptocurrency: “Who’s Afraid Of (Suing) DeFi Entities?” (by Forbes)
  • Privacy: “Meta Platforms must face medical privacy class action” (by Reuters) 
  • Social Media: “Meta-Backed Diversity Program Accused of Anti-White Hiring Bias” (by Bloomberg) 
  • Personal Injury: “New York man was killed ‘instantly’ by Peloton bike, his family says in lawsuit” (by CNBC)
  • Social Media: “Fired Twitter employee says he’s owed millions in lawsuit” (by SF Examiner)
  • Social Media: “Georgetown County School District joining lawsuit against Meta, TikTok, Big Tech” (by Post and Courier) 
  • Defamation: “Elon Musk to sue ADL for accusing him, X of antisemitism” (by TechCrunch)

In-Depth Reads

  • Surveillance Capitalism: “A Radical Proposal for Protecting Privacy: Halt Industry’s Use of ‘Non-Content’” (via Lawfare)

In Other News (or publications you should read)

This post originated from my publication Codifying Chaos.

Machine Learning from Legal Precedent

When training a machine learning (ML) model with court decisions and judicial opinion, the result of these rulings is the training data needed to optimize the algorithm that determines an outcome. As lawyers, we take the result of these rulings as final. In some cases, however, the law requires change when rulings become antiquated or conflict with a shift in regulations. This cursory report explores the level of detail needed when training an ML model with court decisions and judicial opinions.   

tl;dr

Much of the time, attorneys know that the law is relatively stable and predictable. This makes things easier for all concerned. At the same time, attorneys also know and anticipate that cases will be overturned. What would happen if we trained AI but failed to point out that rulings are at times overruled? That’s the mess that some using machine learning are starting to appreciate.

Make sure to read the full paper titled Overturned Legal Rulings Are Pivotal In Using Machine Learning And The Law by Dr. Lance B. Eliot at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3998249

(Source: Mapendo 2022) 

Fail, fail fast, and learn from the failure. That could be an accurate summary of a computational system. In law, judicial principles demand a less frequent change of pace. Under the common law principle of stare decisis, courts are held to a precedent that can either be a vertical or horizontal rule. Vertical stare decisis describes lower courts are bound by higher courts ruling whereas horizontal stare decisis describes an appellate court decision can become a guiding ruling but only for similar or related cases on the same level. In essence, stare decisis is meant to instill respect for prior rulings to ensure legal consistency and predictability. 

In contrast, the judicial process would grind to a halt if prior decisions could never be overturned or judges wouldn’t be able to deviate and interpret a case without the dogma of stare decisis. Needless to say, overturning precedent is the exception rather than the rule. According to a case study of 25,544 rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States from 1789 to 2020, the court only overturned itself in about 145 instances, or 0.56%. While this number might be considered marginal, it does have a trickle-down effect on future court rulings at lower levels. 

A high-level description of current ML training procedures could include the curation of a dataset comprised of court decisions, analysis, and legal briefs in a particular field that is used to train an algorithm to process the essence of these court decisions against a real-world scenario. On its face, one could argue to exclude overturned, outdated, or dissenting rulings. This becomes increasingly difficult for legal precedent that is no longer fully applicable yet still recognized by some of the judiciary. Exclusion, however, would lead to a patchwork of curated data that would not be robust and capable of reaching legal reasoning of high quality. Without the consideration of an erroneous or overturned decision, a judge or an ML system could not develop a signal around pattern recognition and sufficiently adjudicate cases. On the other hand, mindlessly training an ML model with everything available could lead the algorithm to amplify erroneous aspects while ranking lower current precedents in a controversial case. 

This paper offers a number of insightful takeaways for anyone building an ML legal reasoning model. Most notably there is a need for active curation of legal precedent that includes overturned, historic content. Court decisions and judicial opinions must be analyzed for their intellectual footprint that explains the rationale of the decision. Once this rationale is identified, it must be parsed against possible conflicts and dissent to create a robust and just system.