Written by Maxwell Meltzer

The most virtuous aspect of the United States justice system is not that the guilty party is always caught, but rather that they are sometimes let go when the government fails to respect their rights. The Fourth Amendment is one of the essential tools people can use in their defense when protecting themselves from unreasonable search and seizures. However, like with so many rights, the convenience and subtlety of the digital age is causing these rights to slowly slip through our fingers. In this Note, I will discuss the “inventory search,” a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment that allows the government to conduct warrantless searches of lawfully impounded vehicles and their contents as part of standardized police procedures.

Written by Calyx Prohias

“Mommy let you use her iPad, you were barely two, and it did all the things we designed it to do. Now look at you.” — Bo Burnham. The ongoing and persistent presence of social media has posed challenging questions for parents and legislators alike who seek to regulate the behavior of minors online. Several studies show that internet use by minors can lead to serious issues like lower selfesteem, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, perverted views on interpersonal relationships, and cyberbullying. Mental disorders among teenage internet users are accentuated by exposure to graphic and violent content online. In response, government officials have stepped up efforts to regulate online activities. Louisiana’s Act 440, passed in 2022, requires companies to implement “reasonable age verification” and holds them liable for “knowingly and intentionally publish[ing] or distribut[ing] material harmful to minors on the internet.” Beyond graphic content, there is an emerging interest in states to regulate social media, such as Utah’s HB 464, which seeks to hold platforms accountable for negative mental health impacts on minors. At the federal level, the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, which cleared the Senate but stalled in the House, would have banned children under thirteen from social media altogether.

Written by AJ Apfel

Émile Borel was an early twentieth-century mathematician studying probability and the progression of complex mathematical systems. The complicated concepts he wrote about were difficult for the laymen and the most educated alike to conceptualize. Because of this, in 1913 he introduced a comical metaphor to more simply explain a theoretical concept found in his article “Statistical Mechanics and Irreversibility”: the infinite monkey theorem. The idea is simple: If you gather a bunch of monkeys in a room and let them randomly bash the keys of a typewriter over an infinite period of time, this would eventually lead to the creation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The monkeys could achieve this not by grasping an understanding of the English language and Shakespearian writing but simply due to the passage of an incomprehensibly long amount of time. In fact, not only would they likely write Hamlet, but with enough time and enough monkeys, the math suggests they would eventually rewrite every text ever written, from Dostoevsky to your favorite Harry Potter fanfiction. The infinite monkey theorem is a cute metaphor that was meant to help people better understand math, statistics, and the fantastical probabilities an infinite time span presents. Yet, the fantastical nature of the metaphor seems to have dissolved with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI).

Written by Max Holschneider

In recent years, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to the development and deployment of unsupervised learning algorithms across many different industries. These algorithms have the potential to revolutionize decision-making processes and improve efficiency across many sectors. As modern AIs become increasingly capable, there are a growing number of voices calling for their use in different facets of our justice system. This is not without reason. Proponents argue that AI in the future could support our overburdened justice system, doing the legwork of applying our views of justice to many situations which our current institutions simply do not have the bandwidth to address. However, the lack of transparency and the potential for bias in these algorithms raises significant legal and ethical concerns, particularly in the context of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. In response to historical challenges with unsupervised learning leading to biased outcomes, a new class of AI algorithms have been proposed to improve the likelihood of detecting bias.