Might AI translation inadvertently shrink reality itself?

Google Gemini CC0

AI language translation is making communication easier around the world. But might it also shrink our very perception of reality?

That's the question I asked of a thought-provoking panel on language acquisition at the 17th Global Legal Skills Conference at the Faculty of Law at Masaryk University (MUNI) in Brno, Czechia, Thursday.

Panelists discussed the question whether foreign language acquisition will remain a virtue in a world in which artificial intelligence increasingly makes communication seamless across borders.

Karen Lundquist, University of Minnesota Law, answered aptly, in sum, "It depends." Certainly there are client interactions she can now have with AI translation tools, Lundquist said, that might not have been possible before. But those conversations do not perfectly replicate connection in a shared language. At least for now, MUNI linguist Kateřina Chudová said, there are non-verbal or near-verbal properties of communication that even AI cannot bridge, such as body language, cultural context, and irony.

Will AI get there? Probably, as fast as the technology is evolving. Attorney Luca Forgione observed that the world today looks ever more like the fictional Minority Report, a film that came out more than 20 years ago (2002). (I noted in the Q&A that Philip K. Dick published the story "The Minority Report" in Fantastic Universe in 1956!)

Disclaiming that I am no expert in linguistics, I asked in the Q&A that the panelists might reflect on the science showing that language and a person's very perception of reality are causally interactive, that is, something of a chicken-or-egg problem. For example, I said, it's almost self-evident that how a language uses tense is indicative of how a culture understands time.

In a world of AI translation, then, are we on the cusp of a global cultural convergence? More to the point: Will AI universalism cost humanity a multiplicity of realities? 

My answer to the central question on the panel, whether foreign language acquisition still has value, is an emphatic yes, for much the reasons the panelists posited. I'm no polyglot, but with just one other language and a smattering beyond, I understand the powerful link between speech and thought. Thinking about how I would conjugate a verb in Spanish sometimes helps me to rethink how best to say it in English. For example, the imperfect tense in Spanish evokes a sense of time with no precise English equivalent.

Forgione said in response that even not knowing all of the six languages his wife and children know, he can detect differences in tone that correlate to language, especially in emotionally laden contexts. Having various languages in my extended family, I understand that. Lundquist, who lived many years in Rome, suggested that Italian, for example, possesses a richer capacity than some other languages to communicate emotional intensity. That's a controverted proposition. Yet it does feel credible to me, remembering my Italian relatives and some of the language.

The differences might run deeper than the merely interpersonal. The question I asked the panel in Brno about the science of language was informed by a memorably haunting episode of Radiolab from more than a decade ago. "Colors" (2012) is widely regarded as a classic installment of the groundbreaking podcast.

To put criminally concise description to but one proposition of "Colors": Analysis of poetry suggests that ancient peoples might not have perceived the color "blue" before they acquired a word for it. With no concept of "blue," they didn't describe the sky that way. But it's not just a problem of description. With no human concept of blue, did blue even exist?

I know, you're thinking, well, there was still light at the shorter-wavelength end of the visible spectrum. But dig a little deeper. It's really a variation on the tree-falls-in-the-forest problem. And the answer is important, because in a world of intelligent—dare I say sentient?—machines, it's becoming less clear whose perception gets to define reality.

After the panel, I was fortunate to meet Lindsey Kurtz, a linguist and teacher at Penn State Dickinson Law. She taught me that the scientific concept I was after is called "the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis," or "linguistic relativity." Learn more at the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast (2023) or at the Lingthusiasm podcast (2025).

The idea, restated by anthropologist Edward Sapir in 1929, is that structures of language are interrelated with perception and thought themselves. There are weaker and stronger versions of the hypothesis to describe the depth and inextricability of the interrelationship. 

The implications quickly become surreal. Does something exist before the mind can describe or memorialize it? The answer might be no. That is, it's possible that words are not a consequence of reality. At least sometimes, words might cause reality, that is, bring it into existence. Language is literally creative.

So what happens if language differences go away? What if artificial intelligence causes a convergence of the human diversity expressed in language, leaving behind only monochromatic modules of machine-readable meaning for our consumption? 

Is it possible, then, that humans will lose the ability to create new concepts? that our creative well will run dry? Or worse, might we inadvertently and irrevocably transfer our creative power to AI? Will AI create new planes of reality beyond our comprehension and leave us behind to wallow in the blissful ignorance of "the matrix" (the "simulation hypothesis")? Are we in it already?

In Brno, or at least in the Brno matrix, there was nary an objection to the proposition that foreign language acquisition continues to have value for learners, including lawyers, professors, and law students. As yet, there is no perfect proxy for language to effect a meeting of human minds.

Yet Star Trek's "universal translator," or Doctor Who's "voice integrator," is every day less a fiction. And that appealing Utopian imagining might camouflage a grim threat to the infinitude of humanity.

The Global Legal Skills Conference is a project of the Global Legal Skills Institute. Conference and institute are passion projects of a long-time colleague I greatly admire, Mark Wojcik, Illinois Law, whom I first met in the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD) in 1997; and others in his coterie, including the sharp-minded Lurene Contento, Chicago-Kent Law, who moderated the panel: "Is Language Acquisition Still a Valuable Global Legal Skill?"

Colleagues and I presented on another panel at the conference, which I wrote about on June 2.

Global collab promotes teaching law without borders

Peltz-Steele, Lewinbuk, Rott-Pietrzyk, Kim, Rigó
© Used with permission

Collaborators and I had the privilege of discussing the Global Law Classroom (GLC) at the 17th Global Legal Skills Conference (GLS 17), hosted by the Global Legal Skills Institute and the Faculty of Law at Masaryk University (MUNI Law) in Brno, Czechia, last week.

The GLC is a collaboration of faculty around the world to bring together students across borders, via Zoom, to study international and comparative law and learn from each other. I wrote about the GLC here at The Savory Tort about a year ago, after a 2022 pilot run and just before we executed the first official program over eight weeks in fall 2024. I used the GLC as a one-credit component of my Comparative Law class, and I will again in the upcoming fall 2025.

© Used with permission

© Used with permission

In presenting on the GLC to our GLS 17 colleagues in Brno on Thursday, we provided a demonstration hypothetical in data protection for attendees to discuss in small groups. I developed the fact pattern initially with Cristina Blasi Casagran, Autonomous University of Barcelona, and we used it in the fall 2024 GLC human rights module to demonstrate divergence in U.S. and EU approaches to privacy.

For GLS 17, I created a video narrative (below) and briefed the audience on the salient doctrine of the respective legal systems (inset below video) (both CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The GLC is the brainchild of Melanie Reid, Lincoln Memorial Law, who could not join us in Brno, but will lead a discussion of the project later this summer at the annual conference of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS).

The GLC faculty team in Brno was led by Rosa Kim, Suffolk Law, and also comprised Katerina Lewinbuk, South Texas College of Law; Balázs Rigó, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) (Hungary), and Ewa Rott-Pietrzyk, University of Warsaw (Poland). It was great fun for the five us to be together IRL after so much labor together on Zoom.

I'll have another report from GLS 17 here at The Savory Tort on Wednesday, June 4.

Updated 'TORTZ' features latest on Amazon liability, Texas 2-step, DaBaby defamation foes, much more

New 2025 editions of TORTZ: A Study of American Tort Law, volumes 1 and 2 are posted and ready for academic year 2025-26.

Two-volume TORTZ is free to download at SSRN: volume 1 and volume 2.

The books can be purchased in well bound, paperback hardcopy, both volumes for about US$61 plus shipping, from Lulu.com. The price is cost in the United States and just a couple dollars more elsewhere in the world.

Revisions in the 2025 edition include:

Premises Liability

• Discussion of Varley v. Walther (Mass. App. Ct. 2025) on "open and obvious" dangers in premises liability.

Product Liability

• Discussion of Amazon's product liability exposure, including the 2025 order of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
• Discussion of the Texas two-step, including its rejection In re LTL Mgmt., LLC (3d Cir. 2023), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-R.I.) bill, the Ending Corporate Bankruptcy Abuse Act.

Life and Death

• Revised explanation and distinction of "wrongful birth," "wrongful life," and "wrongful conception" actions.
• Discussion of the waning "suicide rule" in the context of the wrongful death suit by the family of Boeing whistleblower John M. Barnett in Stokes v. Boeing (D.S.C. 2025).
  

Government Immunity

• Discussion of Justice Clarence Thomas's displeasure with the Feres doctrine, dissenting from denial of certiorari in Carter v. United States (U.S. 2025).
• Discussion of 17 plaintiff families' victory in the bellwether Pearl Harbor-Hickam AFB water contamination trial, in Feindt v. United States (D. Haw. 2025).
  

Public Nuisance

• Note of Trumbull County v. Purdue Pharma (Ohio 2024), according with Okla. v. Johnson & Johnson (Okla. 2021), on opioids and product liability, excerpted in the book.
• Note of the Virgin Islands public nuisance lawsuit against Coca-Cola and Pepsico over single-use plastics, Commissioner v. Pepsico (V.I. Super. Ct. filed 2025).
• Note of Oklahoma's dismissal of a public nuisance claim over the Tulsa Race Massacre in Randle v. Tulsa (Okla. 2024).

Media Torts

• Discussion of the latest developments and Rule 11 sanctions in the battery and defamation litigation between promoters and rapper DaBaby, pending appeal from Carey v. Kirk (S.D. Fla. 2025).
• Update on impeached South African Judge John Hlophe's vendetta against former High Court colleague Judge Patricia Goliath, who innovated on anti-SLAPP in Mineral Sands Resources Ltd v. Reddell (High Ct. Wn. Cape Feb. 9, 2021) (upheld).
• Update on the enactment of revenge porn legislation in Massachusetts, the 49th state adopter, and the latest data protection bill in Massachusetts.

'DaBaby' Jonathan Kirk
HOTSPOTATL via Wikimedia CC BY 3.0

Business Torts

• Discussion of the expansion of civil RICO by the Supreme Court in Medical Marijuana v. Horn (U.S. 2025).

Civil Rights

• Discussion of the landmark decision in climate change litigation in Europe, VKSS v. Switzerland (Eur. Ct. Hum. Rts. 2024), in contrast with the dismissal of Juliana v. United States (9th Cir. 2024).
• Note of the plaintiff victory in the Abu Grahib torture case, Al Shamari v. CACI (E.D. Va. 2024).
• Update on the real-life "Hotel Rwanda" protagonist's lawsuits against Rwanda and GainJet, the former defendant dismissed, Rusesabagina v. Rwanda (D.D.C. 2023), and the latter case, Rusesabagina v. GainJet (W.D. Tex. 2024), now pending appeal.

New Resources

• References to new audiovisual productions related to tort law and cases, such as "What Happened to Karen Silkwood?" on Impact x Nightline (2024); the latest on table saws from NPR: Planet Money (2024); Nicole Piasecki's "Dear Alice" from This American Life (2024); the documentaries Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022), and Youth v Gov (2020) (re Juliana v. United States), both now available on Netflix.
• References to recently published work on tort law and theory by Ken Abraham & Catherine Sharkey; Andrew Ackley; Christopher Ewell, Oona A. Hathaway, & Ellen Nohle; Dov Fox & Jill Wieber Lens; Kate Falconer, Kit Barker, & Andrew Fell; Jayden Houghton; Michael Law-Smith; Anatoliy Lytvynenko; Michael Pressman; Joseph Ranney; and Sarah Swan.

As in past editions, the coverage includes all of the fundamentals of common law tort, as well as full introductory treatments of  

• defamation, 
• privacy,  
• interference, and  
• private and public nuisance, 

and introductions to  

• business torts, 
• the Federal Tort Claims Act, 
• 'constitutional tort,' and  
• worker compensation and alternative compensation systems. 

Printed in color, Tortz is replete with

•   'RED BOX'   treatments of fundamental rules to help students prepare for the bar exam, 
•   'BLUE BOX'   bibliographies of suggested further readings,
•   'YELLOW BOX'   assignments to online readings and audiovisual materials, and
•   'GRAY BOX'   state differences for Massachusetts bar candidates, or as demonstrative.

'Take It Down' Act purports to redress revenge porn, but invites censorship by only incentivizing take-down

Derived from Google Gemini, RJ Peltz-Steele CC0

President Trump signed into law bipartisan federal revenge porn legislation Monday—alas, not in time for inclusion in 2 Tortz (2025 ed.)—but all is not sunshine and rainbows.    

First, it must be noted, and news media seem widely oblivious to the fact that, Congress, per the Commerce Clause, created a federal civil action for revenge porn already in 2022, in the quinquennial reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The law is codified at 15 U.S.C. § 6851.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law Monday, ups the stakes by criminalizing revenge porn at the federal level. The law also is broader in scope than existing law. With the new act, the federal government joins the majority of states in tackling deepfake sexual images, besides authentic images. And as Sunny Gandhi and Adam Billen explained for Tech Policy Press, Take It Down extends to "nude images published with the intent to 'abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade' a minor rather than only 'sexually explicit' images."

The law's means, though, subordinate free speech to purported privacy rights. Right there in the name, Take It Down introduces a requirement that platforms remove non-consensual intimate imagery within 48 hours of a complaint. As Jason Kelley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) observed, that's hardly enough time to investigate the context of an image or rights to it, even if a platform were so inclined. 

Rather, Take It Down emulates the notice-and-take-down regime of the intellectual property system, which has resulted in excessive removal of content upon complaint at the expense of fair, authorized, and otherwise protected uses. A poster is afforded little or no opportunity to object to take-down, or to remediate any perceived wrong; rather, the system errs on the side of censorship.

In Take It Down, the addition of criminal penalties further incentivizes prophylactic take-down, with no corresponding incentive to hear an objection or to exercise judgment. The penalties if wrongfully posted content remains online are severe, while there is no risk in excessive removal. As Kelley further observed, for large platforms such as Meta, that calculus incentivizes the blunt use of AI and automation to effect take-down, errors be damned.

Worse, an automated, prophylactic take-down process is susceptible of ill intentioned manipulation.

"President Trump himself has said that he would use the law to censor his critics," Kelley reminded readers.

Take It Down seeks to address a real problem, but takes the easy way out. The law panders to advocates for protective legislation, allowing legislators to take credit for "solving" the problem. Meanwhile, the law gives the corporatocracy a pass on meaningful responsibility and invites political opportunists to obliterate free speech and sow misinformation in its place. 

O Congress. "Bipartisanism ain't all it's cracked up to be."

Appeal in slip'n'fall points to deeper mysteries of historical 'open and obvious' danger doctrine

Google Gemini CC0

Rejecting the phrase "open and obvious" as magical incantation, the Massachusetts Appeals Court Friday affirmed a slip-and-fall jury award for an apartment dweller against her landlord.

The plaintiff injured her ankle when she left her apartment because, she alleged and the jury agreed, the landlord had removed a platform that usually stood outside the door, thus increasing the height of the step.

The defendant argued that the absence of the platform was an "open and obvious" condition, thus negating the duty a landlord usually owes to a renter. Maybe so, the court opined, but the proposition only raises a question of fact appropriate for resolution by the jury. And the jury here decided that the defendant should have foreseen the plaintiff's unawareness of the platform's absence.

"Open and obvious" is a term oft used in the law in different contexts, with seemingly magical effect, so it's important to specify first that the term arises here in the context of landowner negligence. Its use even in this vein is historically and persistently ambiguous.

The ambiguity arises in part from the fact that "landowner negligence" is often described in terms of the duty that a landowner owes to one who comes onto the land. But functionally, the rules of landowner negligence operate as rules of breach of the standard of conduct, or defendant's "negligence." The distinction is theoretical and often functionally insignificant. But it can be procedurally important, because the existence of a duty is—not exclusively, but let's gloss that over—a question of law for the court to decide, while breach presents a question of fact for the jury to decide.

The rules that American common law has evolved for landowner negligence sensibly require some degree of plaintiff's unawareness of the danger. Depending on the plaintiff-defendant relationship, the plaintiff's unawareness might be tested according to the defendant's reasonable anticipation, the plaintiff's reasonable anticipation, or the plaintiff's subjective knowledge. Whatever the test, bearing the burden of proof, the plaintiff alleges that unawareness. The defendant may declare in response that the danger was "open and obvious," thus making clear that the plaintiff's allegation cannot be believed.

What has not been clear in common law, historically, is the procedural impact of the declaration. Was the "open and obvious" declaration an affirmative defense, for which the burden of proof shifted to the defendant, or merely a refutation of the plaintiff's proof of unawareness? Was the "open and obvious" declaration equivalent to a "no duty" argument that the court must resolve expeditiously as a matter of law, or is the declaration a factual description that must be placed in the hands of the jury? Courts answered these questions variably, creating confusion.

In helping law students to understand the contemporary import of "open and obvious" in the multistate norms of American common law landowner negligence, my preference is to impress upon them that the term usually is not, or ought not be, a magical incantation. It's alliteration is alluring but deceptive. In contemporary doctrine, the declaration of "open and obvious" should be understood merely as a defense allegation of fact, and a refutation of the plaintiff's proof. The burden of proof does not shift, though it must be acknowledged that a credible declaration might obviate the need for a jury trial.

If the danger indeed is so open and obvious that ordinary minds could not differ on the question of plaintiff's unawareness, then the usual operation of civil procedure allows the court to decide the question of fact as a matter of law, in which case the court may do so pretrial and under the banner of duty or breach. If the answer is not so obvious as the defendant contends, then a motion to dismiss as a matter of law is properly denied, and the question is advanced to the jury as one of fact.

That's the approach that seems to have evolved in Massachusetts, though the appellate court has not always been clear about the mechanisms under the hood. In the instant case, the court wrote that the "open and obvious" declaration presented a question of fact that was properly referred to the jury for resolution. The court also described the "open and obvious" allegation as seeking to negate the defendant's duty to the plaintiff. That's not wrong, but it might be confusing, because the jury usually is charged with examining elements of breach, not duty. 

In an earlier case, Ward v. Schnurr (Mass. App. Ct. 2023) (The Savory Tort (Sept. 28, 2023)), the court affirmed dismissal of a negligence claim in favor of a landowner in part upon the defendant's allegation of "open and obvious," also referencing the duty owed, but without a jury ever having been impaneled. In that case, the plaintiff had been hired by the defendant specially to remediate the dangerous condition, so the plaintiff's assertion that it was unaware of the danger ran into trouble on the sniff test. The "open and obvious" allegation was therefore properly decided as a matter of law, even though it was a question of fact. The court did not, however, go out of its way to make that clear. 

In neither case did the court indicate that any burden shifting had occurred. I don't think it did. But there again, it would have been helpful if the court had said that.

Doctrinal confusion over "open and obvious" thus persists, in Massachusetts and elsewhere. It only makes matters worse that what I describe here as my understanding of Massachusetts law, as well as what I sell to students as multistate norms, is not the law everywhere in all circumstances. 

There is a deeper theoretical truth at work here, almost a philosophical question, one that I encourage first-year students in Torts to embrace and play with before the remainder of the "hands-on," widget-making law school curriculum beats out of them any appreciation for law as a worthwhile intellectual pursuit. The truth is that duty and breach are not really distinct things, rather, are more like two sides of the same coin. Thus, the tort scholar William Prosser once said, "Circumlocution is inevitable."

For now, to quote the scholar of popular culture Trevor Noah, "ain't nobody got time for that."

What I'd like to know more about, meanwhile, are the family dynamics behind the instant case. The defendant landowner was, the court revealed, the plaintiff renter's mom. I hope the case was motivated by access to insurance and not bad blood, though neither scenario speaks well of American civil dispute resolution.

The case is Varley v. Walther, No. 24-P-511 (Mass. App. Ct. May 16, 2025). Justice Gregory I. Massing wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel that also comprised Justices Hershfang and Tan.

LoMonte tells timely Tenn. tale of vanishing public records, legislative response in retention requirement

My friend and colleague Frank LoMonte, CNN senior legal counsel, has published a superb and timely new article, "The Race to Erase: Destruction of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-of-Information Laws," in the Seattle University Law Review.

Here is the abstract.

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law did nothing to require agencies to retain public records after receiving a request to produce them, exposing a gaping hole in right-to- know laws that goes well beyond one state.

This Article looks at the state of records-retention law in the United States and how the lack of forceful and well-enforced retention requirements can frustrate the good-government objectives of FOI laws. Part I lays out the animating principles behind right-to-know laws, how they operate, and how requesters have productively used public records to uncover government secrets. Part II examines the state of records-retention laws and regulations, and how their lack of clarity—particularly when it comes to emails, texts and other twenty-first-century electronic communication methods—has led to frustrating results for requesters. Part III looks at the meager remedies under federal and state law to enforce records retention requirements; paradoxically, these remedies provide hidebound government officials with an incentive to destroy, rather than just withhold, embarrassing records. Part IV focuses on the special case of police personnel files and body-cam videos, which hold promise as tools of accountability if the public can actually obtain them. This Part uses a recent California dispute—in which a municipal police department destroyed video footage of officers removing homeless people’s campsites while a requester was still fighting to obtain the footage—to exemplify the larger problem of inadequately rigorous retention laws. Finally, the Conclusion discusses what a legislative remedy to patch this hole in the public’s information safety net might look like, returning to the example of the Chattanooga Times Free Press’ unfulfilled request and the legislative response it inspired.

LoMonte's apt paean to record retention is nicely complemented by a new release from UNC's David Ardia pressing for a constitutional dimension to the freedom of information (HT @ Professor Robert Steinbuch).

I am grateful for references in LoMonte's article to something I wrote many years ago on record retention. I oft lament that my early-career work from flyover country on record retention and court record access are rarely if ever cited, even while they represent first publication of many points later repeated in the literature. Attorney and Georgia law professor LoMonte seems set on taking the wind from my whiny sails.

At the same time, I observe and lament that our strange times—with such as the firing of the National Archivist, the disappearance of federal records, and a privacy-obsessed generation baffled by the custom of open courts—have sent researchers scurrying for past findings in these areas. Who knew.

Iglesia celebra ordenación en comunidad quechua

Pastor Cruz a la izquierda, con Pastor Zhulleima y su esposa y hijos.
Capture from video at BBC RI media

En mi iglesia de Rhode Island el domingo, fuimos testigos de la ordenación de Gabriel Zhulleima.

Barrington Baptist Church (BBC) dio la bienvenida a la gente de varias iglesias, de Massachusetts y el estado Nueva York, tan lejos como Albany. Las iglesias que se unieron con nosotros incluyen en particular la gente Quechua que viven en esta región. Un grupo de mujeres quechuas honró el evento con una actuación musical en la tradición indígena.

Nuestro propio pastor y misionero Aurelino Cruz, de origen brasileño, sirvió como maestro de ceremonias y traductor del español al inglés. El pastor y misionero Antonio DeLaZerda dío el mensaje, o sermón, a la iglesia en español. Cruz y DeLaZerda ambos sirven con la organización Missions Door.

En el mensaje, Pastor DeLaZerda dijo que lo que describrió como la forma en que América está "cambiando" el mundo crea un problema para cristianos. No dio más detalles, y no quiero atribuirle mi propia interpretación. Pero yo también he tenido inquietudes sobre la incompatibilidad entre la política exterior estadounidense y las enseñanzas de Jesús.

Esto no significa que la religión deba dictar políticas. Pero la ayuda exterior es el motor del "evangelismo" estadounidense sobre la democracia y el estado de derecho. Terminación arbitraria de la ayuda está diezmando nuestros objetivos políticos, a la vez que cobra un precio horrendo en sufrimiento humano. A veces, lo que enseña la Biblia es simplemente bueno juicio.

Dios bendiga el ministerio de Pastor Zhulleima. Una grabación del servicio y la ordenación en la BBC estará disponible en línea esta semana. (UPDATE, May 20: Video publicado.)

Commencement speakers envision new beginnings

Commencement at UMass Law yesterday featured a couple of great speeches. And I'm not an easy critic.

Both speakers implicitly recognized the nature of a "commencement" as a new beginning.

Giving the student address, graduate Jack Lovely, now JD, an accomplished alumnus of my Comparative Law class, spoke eloquently to inspire his class on the road, and opportunities, that lie ahead in their professional careers. 

I especially liked Lovely's use of a quote from Jon Stewart: "[T]he unfortunate and truly exciting thing about your life is there is no core curriculum. The entire place is an elective." The quote often is, as here, taken a bit out of context—Stewart was speaking more to how young people mature at university than after—but the extrapolation is fair, and the spirit fits.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Serge Georges Jr. impressed on graduates that they have the opportunity, and should endeavor, to shape the law, not just use it, and certainly not just reap benefits without giving back. He admonished, "The law is not a monument. It's a living promise."

Justice Georges similarly advised, "Don't confuse having a good life with living a good life." To wit, he memorably urged graduates to distinguish superficial interaction on social media, such as food posts, from human connections that really matter: "No one cares about the calamari."

A few of my now-former students were among award winners, including: brilliant researcher and top Torts students Christopher J. Sanacore, Academic Achievement for Part-Time Student; dedicated Veterans Law Association President Timothy Trocchio, External Legal Education Award (CLEA); and Comparative Law distinguished alumna Naydin Natasha Zepeda, Thurgood Marshall Social Justice Award. My congratulations to them and all of the class of 2025.

Awards recognize law students Girouard, Riley

A moment to celebrate two of my ace former students, Kaitlyn Girouard and Jack Riley, who took home awards from the UMass Law Student Bar Association this spring.

Girouard earned the Excellence in Leadership Award, and Riley won the Outstanding Part-Time Student Award.

Girouard created this chart to help students navigate multiple liabilities.
© Used with permission. Contact RJ Peltz-Steele for licensing.

Girouard just finished out a spectacular year of service as my teaching assistant in Torts I and Torts II. I had to create a new virtual folder to keep track of student accolades for her mentoring. I asked Girouard to serve in this capacity not only because she excelled academically, but because she took a lead as a cheerful supporter of her own class in the first year. On her own initiative, for her study group, she created some terrific visuals to accompany my texts, a welcome complement to the pedagogy and indication of her talent for understanding learning styles.

Girouard is a Public Interest Law Fellow and leader in a range of student activities: president of the Criminal Law Society, president of the First Generation Law Students Association, and secretary of the Environmental Law Club. She came to law school with highest academic honors at Middlebury College, where she graduated summa cum laude in economics and environmental policy and served as an economic statistics tutor and faculty research assistant.

For all the workplaces that would relish having her, public service is on Girouard's heart. Already before law school, she worked summers in her native Concord, Vermont, for the Agency of Natural Resources, Sheriff's Department, and State's Attorney Office. Last summer, she worked a prestigious internship with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office in New Bedford. She's headed back to Vermont to work in public service again this summer, this time supported by a prestigious Michael S. Dukakis Public Service Internship Award. Next academic year, Girouard will serve as a teaching assistant in Constitutional Law, further deepening her remarkable mastery of American legal fundamentals.

While Girouard was the star of her 1L Torts day section, Riley was the star of his night section, when I taught both in 2023-24. Riley is one of those exceptional people—an elite group that would not have included me—who manage to thrive in the workplace and in law school at the same time, all while maintaining a mentally healthy home life. He is a long-time manager and executive with 15 years' experience in finance, presently working for HarborOne Bank in Massachusetts. Riley is rightly lauded by professional and academic peers for his leadership skills and commitment to community service. In the law school, he also serves as a peer mentor.

There's a lot to complain about teaching in higher ed today, and I am not reticent to voice it. At the same time, even the most frustrated of us keep coming back to the classroom every fall, and no wonder, for the opportunity to meet, to learn from, and to be inspired by people such as Girouard and Riley.

Student Shieh shakes up Brown with DOGE-like query, but universities hold fast in defense of admin 'bloat'

University Hall and Van Wyckle Gates at Brown University
Robert Barnett via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A conservative student journalist who roiled Brown University in March with a DOGE-like investigation of administrator efficacy was cleared of disciplinary charges under university policies, at least for now, WPRI reported yesterday.

In mid-March 2025, Brown sophomore Alex Shieh emailed more than 3,800 university staff—including administrators, but not faculty, nor students—with a DOGE-inspired query, "Describe what tasks you performed in the past week," the free speech-protective Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reported.

Shieh told WJAR (NBC 10 Providence) that he planned to "use[] information he gathered to launch an online database using artificial intelligence, detailing the different administrators working for the school." Writing under the banner of the conservative Brown Spectator, Shieh was unabashed in advancing his self-described "Bloat@Brown" thesis: that the sky-high price of higher education at Brown—$96,000 annual cost of attendance—could be chalked up in large part to an excess of well compensated staff.

Brown swiftly charged Shieh with conduct infractions, namely, violation of computer use policy and having inflicted "emotional harm" on staff.

The charges come right from the contemporary higher ed playbook. Even mired in the muck of early-20th-century, callow conceptions of academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as soon as the 1990s managed to perceive the misuse of "electronic communication policies," later commonly known as "acceptable use policies," as a constraint on free campus inquiry. FIRE today sometimes considers such policies in its campus free speech rankings.

The "emotional harm" claim is rich: a charge staff are encouraged to assert in a world in which there's no I in Team Corporatocracy, and which the university eagerly backs to suppress dissent. One might think a university would be cognizant of how the charge of "emotional harm"—not actionable in tort for the very reason that the law should not infiltrate and suffocate social interaction in liberal society—feeds the "snowflake" stereotype. But no, higher ed is committed blindly to its moral condescension. 

My own employer has selectively (and unconstitutionally?) enforced a university policy requiring faculty to "accord respect to ... others" (my emphasis). Calling out misfeasance is an offense, notwithstanding state whistleblower policy.

For an institutional home of so many smart people, Brown apparently couldn't see beyond its bubble to anticipate the public firestorm of support for Shieh. Turns out, Americans are fed up with our uniquely-in-the-world outrageous cost of higher education and the refusal of universities, especially well endowed private ones, even to acknowledge the problem, much less part with their wealth to redress it. Whether staff at Brown are too numerous or too well compensated, I can't say; I haven't made a study of it. But Brown's problem is that Shieh's thesis sounds credible. "Bloat@Brown" hit a nerve.

My reaction was exactly what manifested on Reddit. For example, in the r/Professors thread ("sub") "How Do We Feel About Alex Shieh?," in April, biomedical sciences associate professor the_Stick put it much more eloquently (typos corrected) than I could:

I suspect this sub will automatically dismiss him because he is an undergrad, used AI, is brash, likes the idea of DOGE removing inefficient and wasteful positions, has been interviewed by FoxNews, is Asian, dislikes DEI, and intentionally challenges the university structure. 

However, the curious aspect is that he is targeting administrative bloat with his 'investigation,' specifically positions that we on this sub have often complained about for years and years. While he indelicately lumps positions into what he classifies as DEI/woke, he also uses the term "bullshit jobs" which we have discussed here too. He also specifically does NOT target students or faculty but deanlets and administrators with complicated titles that we have made fun of here. I am NOT saying he is 100% correct, but I am saying he is making arguments we have made here for a decade about the ongoing administrative expenditures having priority over things like faculty salary and facility maintenance. His concerns appear to have arisen from working in a flooded room while observing a 50% increase in tuition over the past decade.

While his language is unrefined (as one might expect from an undergrad, even at an Ivy), I am not a big fan of the university response to him either. From various sources, he seems to have asked in his emails what is your job description or what do you actually do (without making a call for justification). We've done that here, and I know many of us have asked some administrators with a strange title what they do. But that email, perhaps because he made so many at once, is being held up as infliction of harm. The idea of misusing publicly available data seems to be a witch hunt. The charge of misrepresenting himself as a journalist goes against idea of citizen and activist journalists which have been recognized much more widely. He might be a jerk, but Brown's response seems exceedingly vindictive in tone so far.

Indeed, before I read Professor the_Stick's missive, just this week, I engaged in an annual tradition of my own: an audit of positions and salaries at my workplace, in the University of Massachusetts, using the state's public and transparent, but difficult to search, online payroll system. I say it's an "annual" tradition, but really it's more often biennial, because I can't stand to have my stomach turned every year.

I would tell you what I found, but ... I don't want to inflict any, uh, emotional harm or disrespect. It must suffice to say that there are a lot of people making a lot more money than the law faculty. Like me, many of them have "Chancellor" in their titles. But I've never seen them in a classroom doing the, you know, educating that universities are so famous for. Nor the research. In fact, many of them I've never seen.

Like the_Stick observed, Shieh's suspicion is neither new nor devoid of merit. It's rather an echo of Benjamin Ginsburg's superb The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. The 2011 book made waves, inspired demands for reform, and then effected no change whatsoever.

So it's likely to go for Alex Shieh.