CS+Law
Research Workshop

When: Third Friday of each month at Noon Central Time (sometimes fourth Friday; next workshop: May 19)

What: First 90 minutes: Two presentations of CS+Law works in progress or new papers with open Q&A. Last 30 minutes: Networking.

Where: Zoom

Who: CS+Law faculty, postdocs, PhD students, and other students (1) enrolled in or who have completed a graduate degree in CS or Law and (2) engage in CS+Law research intended for publication.

A Steering Committee of CS+Law faculty from Berkeley, Boston U., U. Chicago, Cornell, Georgetown, MIT, North Carolina Central, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn, Technion, and UCLA organizes the CS+Law Monthly Workshop. A different university serves as the chair for each monthly program and sets the agenda.

Why: The Steering Committee’s goals include building community, facilitating the exchange of ideas, and getting students involved. To accomplish this, we ask that participants commit to attending regularly.

Computer Science + Law is a rapidly growing area. It is increasingly common that a researcher in one of these fields must interact with the other discipline. For example, there is significant research in each field regarding the law and regulation of computation, the use of computation in legal systems and governments, and the representation of law and legal reasoning. There has been a significant increase in interdisciplinary research collaborations between researchers from CS and Law. Our goal is to create a forum for the exchange of ideas in a collegial environment that promotes building community, collaboration, and research that helps to further develop CS+Law as a field.

Workshop 16: Friday, April 21, 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. Central (Chicago) Time

Please join us for our next CS+Law Research Workshop online on Friday, April 21 from Noon to 2:00 p.m. CT (Chicago time).

Workshop 16 organizer: Berkeley (Rebecca Wexler)

Link to join on Zoom: Will be circulated to Google Group

Agenda:

20-minute presentation - Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project

25-minute Q&A

20-minute presentation - Davi Liang, associate research scholar at the Digital Interests Lab at NYU

25-minute Q&A

30 minutes networking and small-group discussions

Presentation 1:

Automating Police Misconduct Databases

Presenter: Barry Scheck

Abstract:

Professor Scheck will discuss work relating to the Community Law Enforcement Accountability Network, also known as CLEAN, which is a first-of-its-kind partnership of journalists, lawyers, computer engineers and academic institutions. CLEAN is working to develop and automate a database of police misconduct records that can be easily accessed by news organizations and the general public.

Reading in advance of talk: The Integrity of Our Convictions

Ezra Klien Interview: A Link to Ezra Klein’s interview with Alondra Nelson last week (also available as a podcast) and pages viii to xxv in a Preface I wrote for the Georgetown Annual Review of Criminal Procedure that describes the history of police misconduct databases and the idea for creating public facing and defender databases in municipalities and the state of de-certification databases, nationally and among states. These materials provide a good history of how these misconduct databases started in NYC and Chicago.

Bio:

Professor Barry Scheck is co-founder of The Innocence Project and is known for his landmark litigation that has set standards for forensic applications of DNA technology. Since 1988, his and Peter Neufeld's work in this area has shaped the course of case law across the country and led to an influential study by the National Academy of Sciences on forensic DNA testing, as well as important state and federal legislation. Scheck is a commissioner on New York's Forensic Science Review Board, a body that regulates all of the state's crime and forensic DNA laboratories. He is the first vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and serves on the board of the National Institute of Justice's Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. In addition to the work he has done through Cardozo's Innocence Project, which has represented dozens of men who were exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, Scheck has represented such notable clients as Hedda Nussbaum, O. J. Simpson, Louise Woodward, and Abner Louima. Prior to joining the Cardozo faculty, he was a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York.

Presentation 2:

Challenging Algorithms: How Courts have Judged Challenges to Algorithmic Decision making

Presenter: Davi Liang 

Abstract: 

Without properly acknowledging the limitations and issues of modern AI tools and the associated problems, the US criminal justice system risks putting too much credibility into flawed technology. Recent court cases have demonstrated contentment with permitting algorithmic decision-making without full transparency or evaluation, emblematic of other cases scrutinizing algorithms used for processing evidence or determining recidivism in criminal cases. Solutions to mitigating algorithmic harms proposed by researchers and writers have not been followed by judicial opinions. This article explores how challenges to the use of algorithms in criminal courts have developed rules and limitations to the use of algorithms to comply with Constitutional due process rights, and how these rules and limitations require further development to guarantee trust and equity in their use.

Bio:
Davi Liang is an associate research scholar with Professor Anne Washington at the Digital Interests Lab at NYU. They graduated from Washington and Lee School of Law in 2022 and has a focus on algorithmic discrimination, data privacy, IP, and Blockchain regulation. 

Join us to get meeting information

Join our group to get the agenda and Zoom information for each meeting and engage in the CS+Law discussion.

Interested in presenting?

Submit a proposed topic to present. We strongly encourage the presentation of works in progress, although we will consider the presentation of more polished and published projects.

2022-23 Series Schedule

Friday, September 23, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Northwestern)
Friday, October 28, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Cornell)
Friday, November 18, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: UCLA)
Friday, December 16, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Boston University)
Friday, January 20, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: MIT)
Friday, February 17, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: U. Chicago)
Friday, March 17, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Penn)
Friday, April 21, Noon to 2:00 p.m. Central Time (Organizer: Berkeley)
Friday, May 19, Noon to 2:00 Central Time (Organizer: Georgetown)

Background - CS+Law Monthly Workshop

Northwestern Professors Jason Hartline and Dan Linna convened an initial meeting of 21 CS+Law faculty at various universities on August 17, 2021 to propose a series of monthly CS+Law research conferences. Hartline and Linna sought volunteers to sit on a steering committee. Hartline, Linna, and their Northwestern colleagues provide the platform and administrative support for the series.