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Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law

University of Miami School of Law, Rm. G-382
+1 (305) 284-4285
Snail mail E-mail Short bio Full c.v. SSRN page
Winner 2020 University of Miami Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award



Current Interests

Current Writing

Recent or Future Writing & Projects

  • Surveillance
  • Anonymity
  • Regulation of Drones

Founding & Editing


Fellow & Advisor


Teaching

The University of Miami is not actually in Miami, but in nearby Coral Gables. Here is the City Beautiful’s homepage and a map of our neighborhood and a close-up. Visit our webcams and see our weather.

At present, I plan to do all my teaching virtually in the 2024-25 academic year. I regret losing some of the personal element that comes with in-person meetings, but my doctors have told me to be very careful, as due to recent medical troubles I’m currently immunocompromised.

Fall 2025

LAW 200: Administrative Law (4 credits) — ONLINE – Fully Synchronous – M/T/Th 10:40am-12:10pm

Most laws that Congress passes require implementation. Very often implementation is via a federal agency. As a result, in the United States a multitude of governmental agencies exercise authority over the economy, and over the lives of every American. These agencies have the power to make legally binding rules (aka “regulations” or “red tape”), to issue valuable permits and licenses, to levy fines, and to adjudicate. Indeed, one agency, the Social Security Administration, adjudicates more cases every year than all the state and federal courts combined. This is a course about laws and rules that bind federal agencies, and thus about the extent to which federal agencies can make rules and decisions that bind us. It surveys the means by which people (and their lawyers) can challenge or influence administrative exercises of authority in the face of often broad or ambiguous delegations of authority from Congress, and in particular how and when agency decisions are subject to judicial review. Always lurking is the question of how we reconcile our dependence on an unelected, expert bureaucracy with our commitments to a government that is democratically accountable and legitimate.

Administrative Law is vitally important for anyone contemplating a practice that might involve federal regulations in any way. It is particularly valuable for students who are considering a practice involving highly regulated areas such as: Communications, Disability, Energy, Environment, Family and Child Services, Financial Markets or Securities, Immigration, Labor, Housing, or Land Use, but it is also relevant to almost every other area of practice.

Today, Administrative Law is undergoing a period of painful ferment as a series of Supreme Court decisions have upended decades of established doctrine. Changes are afoot as to how courts review agencies exercise of discretion, notably when it comes to statutory interpretation. More significantly, recent Supreme Court decisions threaten to upend the administrative state by greatly limiting the power Congress to give agencies broad remedial delegation, and also limiting the power of agencies to experiment or make new rules. Meanwhile, lower courts have been enjoining Trump Administration actions in ways unprecedented since at least the New Deal. Administrative Law is in turmoil — which makes it exciting, but also implicates fundamental questions about how we organize our government.

Grading will be based on participation, and on an 8-hour take-home final exam.

This course satisfies a requirement for Concentrations/Areas of Focus in Environmental Law and Social Justice & Public Interest

LAW 641: Constitutional Crisis Seminar – Online – Fully Synchronous – Mon 3:10-5:10

The United States currently faces widespread and intense challenges to our constitutional checks and balances: While courts and scholars have wrestled with the expansion of executive powers and worried about Congressional delegation of its legislative powers, the current administration has taken these challenges to new levels. Today we see unprecedented assertions of executive power, including powers to ignore statutes, impound funds and cancel signed contracts, shutter executive departments, fire independent officials, and make highly creative invocations of emergency authority. Behind many of these are Constitutional claims for the power of the “unitary executive” and (although much remains to be seen) an alleged executive authority to ignore federal judicial orders. Complicating matters is Congressional silence, if not paralysis, in the face of executive power grabs, and an historic dependence on often unwritten constitutional and statutory norms that have been cast aside.

This seminar will look at the legal system’s ongoing reaction to this massive reordering of federal power and individual constitutional rights, with a focus on the legal systems’ reaction to current controversies. In addition to placing current events in historical context, we will look at the theoretical and structural constitutional causes for the crisis and what we might to do prevent a repetition or undo its most malign effects. We will examine how the legal system, primarily the courts, but also other institutions such as the bar and civil society, have reacted to these new challenges, and what law and legal theory has to offer as to their causes and perhaps cures.

Although there will be a number of guest speakers, students will be expected to lead discussions (number to be determined by enrollment), participate in class, and write two reaction papers on topics other than those for which they lead the discussion. This course will not provide writing credit unless you agree with your instructor in the first two weeks of the semester on a plan to write a more extensive paper.

All classes will be held exclusively on zoom.


Spring 2026

Law 724A: AI Law & Policy (3 credits) — ONLINE – Fully Synchronous – Time TBA

˜Artificial Intelligence” (AI) includes a variety of technologies, notably GOT-chat,”machine learning” systems such as IBM’s Watson, which won a “Jeopardy” match, Google’s Ultra Go, which trounced a Go Master, and a plethora of systems designed to predict tumors, shopping habits, and even criminality. Robots increasingly feature varying degrees of autonomy, including systems like self-driving cars, military drones, and robo-surgeons. Behind many robots lies an embodied or even remotely connected AI, making the two new technologies intertwined.

AI presents a number of ethical, social, and legal challenges that are inciting a wide variety of responses. Representative examples of problems include: Who is responsible for invidious discrimination by an AI? What should the liability (and ethical) rules be for accidents involving autonomous vehicles? Is existing malpractice law ready for AI doctors? Should AIs and/or Robots have “rights”, whether human rights, animal rights, or some sui generis set of rights? Should we permit AI-controlled robots to carry lethal weapons? The course will thus treat AI Law as a distinct subject,and also attempt to put it into the context of the law’s ongoing encounter with new technology.

Most law courses seek to give you mastery of a relatively well-defined body of law. This course is different: it will seek to give you a taste of what it is like to work in areas with little or no clearly defined law (as such–the task then is to borrow or invent it), or new law, or where the law is in the process of being created and assembled–and where you could have a hand in making it, or interpreting it. Much like acrobatics without a net, this can be thrilling but it can also be scary. Crashes are always a possibility.

Grading will be based on class participation which depending on class size may involve a presentation or two, a short (five page) reaction paper during the term, and a circa 10-page final writing.

This course can satisfy a requirement for The Business of Innovation, Law and Technology: BILT Concentration


Contact me if you wish me to supervise a paper. I will gladly see you (for now, virtually) by appointment.

Past Teaching
  • Law & Games Seminar (MMPORGs, not “gaming”)
  • Intellectual Property in the Digital Era Seminar
  • Internet Governance Seminar

I have some unofficial advice about course selection in law school and some idiosyncratic writing tips. I’ve also got a half-written FAQ for people thinking about law school.


Publications

 

AI & Robots
Privacy & Cryptography E-Commerce Other
Internet Governance & Governance
Generally
Administrative Law Discourse.net

Latest drafts:

  • Towards Identity Bankruptcy (in progress).
  • Robot Law 2 (forthcoming 2024) (edited with Ryan Calo and Kristen Thomasen).

AI & Robots

Privacy & Cryptography

Internet Governance & Governance Generally

E-Commerce

Administrative & Constitutional Law

Teaching, Blogging, Online Games, and Other Fun Stuff


Miscellany



Non-standard disclaimers may apply. Beware of these fallacies…and and these too! This personal Web page is not an official University of Miami Web page. See disclaimer.

Last modified: Sept. 08, 2024