Discussion of AI and political persuasion

This is a synthetic workshop discussion of two new papers:

• Hackenberg et al., The levers of political persuasion with conversational artificial intelligence, 390 Science 1016 (2025), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea3884.

• Lin et al., Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues, Nature (2025), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09771-9.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated adapted “workshop hot bench” template and authored by Claude Opus 4.5).

Abstract for Hackenberg et al.: “There are widespread fears that conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. In this work, in three large-­ scale experiments (N = 76,977 participants), we deployed 19 large language models (LLMs)—including some post-­ trained explicitly for persuasion—to evaluate their persuasiveness on 707 political issues. We then checked the factual accuracy of 466,769 resulting LLM claims. We show that the persuasive power of current and near-­ future AI is likely to stem more from post-­ training and prompting methods—which boosted persuasiveness by as much as 51 and 27%, respectively—than from personalization or increasing model scale, which had smaller effects. We further show that these methods increased persuasion by exploiting LLMs’ ability to rapidly access and strategically deploy information and that, notably, where they increased AI persuasiveness, they also systematically decreased factual accuracy.”

Abstract for Lin et al: “There is great public concern about the potential use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for political persuasion and the resulting impacts on elections and democracy. We inform these concerns using pre-registered experiments to assess the ability of large language models to influence voter attitudes. In the context of the 2024 US presidential election, the 2025 Canadian federal election and the 2025 Polish presidential election, we assigned participants randomly to have a conversation with an AI model that advocated for one of the top two candidates. We observed significant treatment effects on candidate preference that are larger than typically observed from traditional video advertisements. We also document large persuasion effects on Massachusetts residents’ support for a ballot measure legalizing psychedelics. Examining the persuasion strategies9 used by the models indicates that they persuade with relevant facts and evidence, rather than using sophisticated psychological persuasion techniques. Not all facts and evidence presented, however, were accurate; across all three countries, the AI models advocating for candidates on the political right made more inaccurate claims. Together, these findings highlight the potential for AI to influence voters and the important role it might play in future elections.”

Workshop on Sohoni’s “In CASA You Missed It”

Mila Sohoni, In CASA You Missed It.

Solum’s Download of the Week for November 29, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5799882.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using the new Claude Opus 4.5).

Abstract: “This Essay’s purpose is to show how Trump v. CASA  should be read—and how it emphatically should not be read. While CASA rejected one pathway to universal injunctive relief on statutory grounds, the decision simultaneously left intact a number of alternative routes to broad relief, including complete relief injunctions, universal remedies under the APA and other statutes, class actions, and relief based on associational and state standing. 

The Trump Administration, however, has consistently advanced inflated readings of CASA, characterizing it as a far more sweeping limitation on remedial scope than the decision actually was. But a close examination of CASA’s holding, reasoning, and limitations reveals why it is a grave error to portray lower courts issuing broad remedies in the wake of CASA as acting in defiance of the decision.  Lower courts that are correctly perceiving CASA’s metes and bounds and conscientiously grappling with them across widely varied legal and factual contexts are not defying CASA’s mandate, but rather are doing the work that CASA left them no choice but to do. Those who depict this judicial work as insubordination whenever it results in a broad-gauged remedy against the executive branch have fundamentally misunderstood the task that CASA left to the lower courts.

By framing legitimate judicial deliberation as defiance and insubordination, the Trump Administration’s rhetoric threatens to poison intra-branch dialogue within the Article III judiciary and to corrode the legitimacy of judicial review by casting legitimate judicial intervention as illegitimate political resistance. Ultimately, CASA’s most significant danger may lie not in its holding, but in the Trump Administration’s instrumental use of the decision as part of its broader effort to undermine judicial review across the board. A correct understanding of CASA’s actual scope—including its limitations and unresolved questions—is essential both for fending off strategic misrepresentations of the decision and also for preserving the foundational principle that in America, all government officers, ‘from the highest to the lowest, are creatures of the law and are bound to obey it,’ United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882).”

Workshop on Kavanagh’s “Keeping It Real in Constitutional Theory”

Aileen Kavanagh, Keeping It Real in Constitutional Theory.

Solum’s Download of the Week for November 22, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5760902.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using the new Google Gemini 3 Pro Preview — it will be interesting to see how this new model performs).

Abstract: “In constitutional theory, we are familiar with the claim that a good theory must fit and justify constitutional practice. However, the criterion of ‘fit’ sometimes gets lost in the quest to provide a bold normative theory about what constitutional should be. Using the debate about the legitimacy of constitutional judicial review as an example, this article warns against a problematic disjuncture between theory and practice in the domain of constitutional law. The key argument is that credible normative theorising about constitutional law should rest on a descriptively plausible foundation. Absent such grounding, there is a risk that our theories of constitutionalism become theories of a fiction. To avoid this hazard, we need to ‘keep it real’ in constitutional theory and comparative constitutional law.”

Workshop on Shugerman & Lawson’s “Presidential Removal as Article I, Not Article II”

Jed H. Shugerman and Gary Lawson, Presidential Removal as Article I, Not Article II.

Solum’s Download of the Week for November 15, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5736583.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using the new Google Gemini 3 Pro Preview — it will be interesting to see how this new model performs).

Abstract: “Article I’s Necessary and Proper clause is the starting point for both Congress’s power to create offices and the limits on that power.

Many legal scholars have demonstrated that, as a matter of original public meaning, the term ‘executive power’ did not imply a presidential removal power, and Article II did not imply an indefeasible (unconditional) presidential removal power. By contrast, Article I’s Necessary and Proper Clause is a basis for limiting congressional power that is more historically grounded in original public meaning and in early practice. Tenure protections and agency structures must be necessary and proper for executing federal power, meaning that they must be suitable means for pursuing proper ends. The debates and statutes in the First Congress reflect an analysis of means and ends in creating a small number of fully independent and mixed independent offices for specific complex tasks, often related to public debt and the public fisc. The debates recognized the tradition and the validity of semi-independent offices (i.e., a removal power with good cause requirements), and Congress passed statutes that empowered judges to remove (i.e., non-executive removal powers).

The original public meaning of the Take Care clause does not support an indefeasible presidential removal power, but it provides a similar principle for distinguishing between valid and invalid congressional conditions, also consistent with all the removal precedents and with history and tradition. These interpretations of Article I and Article II also offer a more originalist, balanced approach to the separation of powers. With complex questions about the Federal Reserve looming, a stretching of Article II would lead to a series of judicial problems and interventions. The Necessary and Proper Clause is a stronger originalist basis to replace Humphrey’s Executor, to limit congressional power, and to confirm narrow traditional exceptions for the FTC and the Federal Reserve.”

Workshop on Dixon and Landau’s “Utopian Constitutionalism”

Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, Utopian Constitutionalism.

Solum’s Download of the Week for November 8, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5620170.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using the new Google Gemini 3 Pro Preview — it will be interesting to see how this new model performs).

Abstract: “An extensive literature examines transformative constitutionalism: the growing tendency of constitutions around the world, especially in the global south, to seek to transform politics and society to reduce poverty, increase inequality, and achieve other goals. Transformative constitutionalists emphasize the creation of newer rights, including economic and social rights, environmental rights, digital rights, and beyond, as key instruments. As well, they encourage innovation in judicial decision-making as a key route for implementation of these rights. We introduce utopian constitutionalism as a potential danger for those invested in transformative constitutionalism. Transformative constitutional projects slide into utopian constitutional projects with no prospect of implementation over a realistic timeframe when there are inadequate institutional pathways to develop rights or where those rights have insufficient popular or civil society support. This article focuses on a comparison between the 1991 Colombian Constitution and the failed 2022 Chilean constitutional draft to clarify the distinction between transformative and utopian constitutionalism. It describes the risks posed by utopian constitutionism, including deflection from other forms of legal change and popular disenchantment with liberal democratic constitutionalism. And it uses utopianism to suggest improvements to transformative constitutional discourse and design, including greater resistance to rights inflation in constitutional texts, more attention to non-judicial pathways for enforcement, greater interest in the design of transitional norms, and a more careful balance between popular and elite involvement in constitution making. The very survival of liberal democratic constitutionalism hinges in part on the need to prevent transformative constitutionalism from falling into utopianism.”

Workshop on West’s “Abstract Review in Article III Courts”

E. Garrett West, Abstract Review in Article III Courts.

Solum’s Download of the Week for November 1, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5620170.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5).

Abstract: “Federal courts are supposed to engage in judicial review only in concrete cases and controversies.  Many European constitutional courts, by contrast, engage in abstract review of legislation.  But a combination of features of adjudication in the United States produces something functionally like abstract review of government policies, even while the formal justification for judicial review remains the dispute-resolution function.  The result is decentralized abstract review of the legality of federal and state legislation, federal administrative rules, and executive orders.  And the risk for judicial review is that decentralized abstract review increases the number, scope, and intensity of conflicts between the judiciary and political actors.  I propose centralizing reforms that could rationalize abstract review without departing from the formal requirements of Article III.  The reforms include presumptive stays pending appeal, certification from courts of appeals to the Supreme Court, a mechanism to transfer cases from federal district courts to the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction, and a specialized court composed of trial and appellate judges drawn from throughout the country to resolve certain challenges to major government policies.”

Workshop on “Fragmentation and Multithreading of Experience in the Default-Mode Network”

Fahd Yazin, Gargi Majumdar, Neil Bramley, & Paul Hoffman, Fragmentation and Multithreading of Experience in the Default-Mode Network, 16 Nature Communications, 8401 (2025), available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63522-y.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Claude Sonnet 4.5).

Abstract: “Reliance on internal predictive models of the world is central to many theories of human cognition. Yet it is unknown whether humans acquire multiple separate internal models, each evolved for a specific domain, or maintain a globally unified representation. Using fMRI during naturalistic experiences (movie watching and narrative listening), we show that three topographically distinct midline prefrontal cortical regions perform distinct predictive operations. The ventromedial PFC updates contextual predictions (States), the anteromedial PFC governs reference frame shifts for social predictions (Agents), and the dorsomedial PFC predicts transitions across the abstract state spaces (Actions). Prediction-error-driven neural transitions in these regions, indicative of model updates, coincided with subjective belief changes in a domain-specific manner. We find these parallel top-down predictions are unified and selectively integrated with visual sensory streams in the Precuneus, shaping participants’ ongoing experience. Results generalized across sensory modalities and content, suggesting humans recruit abstract, modular predictive models for both vision and language. Our results highlight a key feature of human world modeling: fragmenting information into abstract domains before global integration.”

Workshop on Gold and Smith’s “Managing Legal Concepts”

Andrew S. Gold and Henry E. Smith, Managing Legal Concepts: Maintenance, Modulation, Modification.

Solum’s Download of the Week for October 24, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5620170.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5).

Abstract: “Functionalists, especially those inspired by American Legal Realism, downplay the importance of abstract concepts and their interrelations as playing a role in legal reasoning. Hence, they stress shallow, narrow, and isolated concepts in order to be close to the facts in a transparent way. In this paper, we will address an often-overlooked function of the law: managing legal concepts themselves. That is, one aspect of the law is partially self-referential. Various devices involved in legal reasoning are designed to make the system of legal concepts work better, from finetuning the results of the use of concepts to tinkering with the concepts themselves. This requires us to look at the law as a system, but one that is both inward-looking and operating on itself, and, at the same time, concerned with how law operates in the real world.

The law also uses various devices to manage the system of concepts, and these devices in turn serve various functions. These functions include maintenance, modulation, and modification of concepts, depending on the actual or potential misfiring of the concepts in question. As we will suggest, this offers deeper insight into the role that legal fictions, equity, and presumptions play in the law.”

Workshop on “Sycophantic AI”

Myra Cheng, Cinoo Lee, Pranav Khadpe, Sunny Yu, Dyllan Han, and Dan Jurafsky, Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01395.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Both the general public and academic communities have raised concerns about sycophancy, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) excessively agreeing with or flattering users. Yet, beyond isolated media reports of severe consequences, like reinforcing delusions, little is known about the extent of sycophancy or how it affects people who use AI. Here we show the pervasiveness and harmful impacts of sycophancy when people seek advice from AI. First, across 11 state-of-the-art AI models, we find that models are highly sycophantic: they affirm users’ actions 50% more than humans do, and they do so even in cases where user queries mention manipulation, deception, or other relational harms. Second, in two preregistered experiments (N = 1604), including a live-interaction study where participants discuss a real interpersonal conflict from their life, we find that interaction with sycophantic AI models significantly reduced participants' willingness to take actions to repair interpersonal conflict, while increasing their conviction of being in the right. However, participants rated sycophantic responses as higher quality, trusted the sycophantic AI model more, and were more willing to use it again. This suggests that people are drawn to AI that unquestioningly validate, even as that validation risks eroding their judgment and reducing their inclination toward prosocial behavior. These preferences create perverse incentives both for people to increasingly rely on sycophantic AI models and for AI model training to favor sycophancy. Our findings highlight the necessity of explicitly addressing this incentive structure to mitigate the widespread risks of AI sycophancy.”

Workshop on “A Definition of AGI”

Dan Hendrycks et al., A Definition of AGI, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18212.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “The lack of a concrete definition for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) obscures the gap between today's specialized AI and human-level cognition. This paper introduces a quantifiable framework to address this, defining AGI as matching the cognitive versatility and proficiency of a well-educated adult. To operationalize this, we ground our methodology in Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory, the most empirically validated model of human cognition. The framework dissects general intelligence into ten core cognitive domains-including reasoning, memory, and perception-and adapts established human psychometric batteries to evaluate AI systems. Application of this framework reveals a highly ‘jagged’ cognitive profile in contemporary models. While proficient in knowledge-intensive domains, current AI systems have critical deficits in foundational cognitive machinery, particularly long-term memory storage. The resulting AGI scores (e.g., GPT-4 at 27%, GPT-5 at 58%) concretely quantify both rapid progress and the substantial gap remaining before AGI.”

Workshop on Coan’s “The Appellate Void”

Andrew Coan, The Appellate Void.

Solum’s Download of the Week for October 17, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5571120.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “What would it actually look like for the executive branch to defy a court order? The standard picture involves a dramatic confrontation between the President and the Supreme Court. But recent events suggest a more mundane possibility that has been largely overlooked: After an adverse ruling, the government might simply ignore the district court’s order and refuse to appeal. As the prevailing party, the plaintiffs could not appeal. The result would be an appellate void, in which lower federal courts lack effective tools for enforcing their decisions against a recalcitrant executive and higher courts lack any obvious path to intervene.

This Article provides the first map of this unfamiliar terrain. It explains the jurisdictional dynamics that create the appellate void and why contempt sanctions offer little practical remedy. It then analyzes why a President might find this strategy tempting: confronting a single district judge rather than the Supreme Court fundamentally changes the politics of interbranch conflict. In effect, the appellate void constitutes a reverse Marbury v. Madison. Instead of the Supreme Court asserting the power of judicial review, while leaving the President powerless to push back, the President would assert the power to defy the federal courts, while leaving the Supreme Court powerless to respond. The Court’s recent decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., opens the door to a more subtle variant of this strategy. After CASA, an administration could comply with court orders only as to specific plaintiffs, while continuing to enforce the challenged policies against everyone else. By refusing to appeal, the President would deny higher courts any opportunity to weigh in, without actually defying any binding judicial order.

These scenarios are not inevitable. Courts and litigants have many potential responses. But if successful, the appellate void strategy would have dramatic implications for judicial review, separation of powers, and the rule of law.”

Workshop on Ahmed’s “The Two Faces of Representation”

Ashraf Ahmed, The Two Faces of Representation.

Solum’s Download of the Week for October 10, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5122328.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5).

Abstract: “In pluralistic democracies, representation is the process that mediates difference and translates the preferences of free and equal citizens into political will. Despite broad judicial and scholarly agreement that representation is central to election law, the Supreme Court is deeply ambivalent in how it treats the concept. This Article explains this ambivalence and shows its theoretical stakes for the field and public law more generally. It argues that the Court’s approach to representation is Janus-faced. Its first face, which it terms the ‘skeptical tradition’ is decidedly anti-theoretical. Largely confined to the Fourteenth Amendment, the skeptical tradition counsels the Court against deciding cases that require theorizing representation for epistemic, institutional, and interpretive reasons. The Article then turns to the second face of representation where the Court, under the First Amendment, routinely theorizes core facets of representation. In cases regulating campaign finance and the associational rights of parties, the Court expounds on the formation of public opinion, the relative standing and efficacy of different speakers, the nature of representational failure, and the role of political parties. The two faces of representation thus reveal a deep disjuncture between the Court’s self-conception and its actual work.

Beyond its descriptive insight, this Article also makes a further theoretical claim: the skeptical tradition must be rejected on jurisprudential grounds. Taken to its extreme, the skeptical tradition threatens any judicial role in election law doctrine, since it would entail judicial abstention in any case that involved theorizing representation. By rejecting the skeptical tradition, this Article both shows how to preserve the jurisprudential integrity of election law doctrine and reaffirms in a more conceptually grounded way an enduring lesson of the field: the need for judges to theorize representation to decide election law cases. Regardless of doctrinal silos, election law is unified by its underlying object: political representation. The two faces offer two further lessons about public law. First, the case of representation is an example of a more general conceptual demand for a theory of the regulated object. When judges apply a general legal principle to a specific entity, whether it is an institution, individual, or process, they need some account of the object being regulated. Second, the conceptual demands of election law pose a problem for theories of judicial minimalism in constitutional law, especially for the notion of ‘incompletely theorized agreements.’ The two faces suggest that theoretical minimalism is both descriptively naïve, because it misses implicit theoretical work in the mine-run of cases, and normatively vulnerable, since conceptual shortfalls in election law—descriptive or normative—can be democratic deficits, insofar as election law seeks to constitute the democratic process. Ultimately, this Article suggests a theoretical reckoning is in order for election law doctrine.”

Workshop on Bray’s “Remedies in the Officer Removal Cases”

Samuel L. Bray, Remedies in the Office Removal Cases.

Solum’s Download of the Week for October 3, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5515261.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4.5).

Abstract: “When a federal officer challenges her removal by the president, what forms of interim relief and what final remedies are available? This Article considers those questions. It shows that the appropriate remedy for a prevailing officer will typically be a declaratory one, either a declaratory judgment or quo war-ranto. The interim relief question is harder. The suggestion here is that if an officer sues immediately to challenge her removal, and remains the de facto officer, there should be a presumption that the district court should prevent her removal during the pendency of the litigation. But if the officer fails to sue immediately, and is no longer the de facto officer, the presumption should be against any interim relief. This suggestion is subject to some qualifications, but it would prevent “flipping” back and forth during the liti-gation with respect to who occupies the office and exercises its powers. These presumptions are supported by historical practice with respect to injunctions and quo warranto, by equitable considerations such as laches, and by norma-tive concerns that are especially strong in the officer-removal context.”

Workshop on Tsesis’s “Originalist Framing Of Free Speech Doctrine”

Alexander Tsesis, Originalist Framing Of Free Speech Doctrine.

Solum’s Download of the Week for September 20, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5317849.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Claude Sonnet 4).

Abstract: “The Supreme Court has increasingly signaled the importance of history and tradition to constitutional interpretation. Reliance on original meaning and understanding appears in a broad array of cases that stretch the gamut from abortion and gun rights. Often those references, however, sound conclusory rather than the careful articulation and contextualization of constitutional norms.

The newest trend on the Court has led some scholars to argue that the meaning of constitutional provisions, phrases, and clauses is tied almost exclusively to views of nation’s founders or to the linguistic understandings of the American people at fixed events of the nation’s constitutional development, such as at the points of ratification of the Bill or Rights or Reconstruction Amendments.

This Essay demonstrates that, at least in the area of free speech law, the Supreme Court’s recent efforts to connect doctrine to original meaning are on shaky historical ground. Indeed, a purely originalist interpretation of the First Amendment would undermine core doctrines of free expression.”

Interdisciplinary Workshop on “Genome Language Models”

Samuel H. King, Claudia L. Driscoll, David B. Li, Daniel Guo, Aditi T. Merchant, Garyk Brixi, Max E. Wilkinson, and Brian L. Hie, Generative design of novel bacteriophages with genome language models, available at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.12.675911v1.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (using an AI-generated interdisciplinary workshop template and authored by Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Many important biological functions arise not from single genes, but from complex interactions encoded by entire genomes. Genome language models have emerged as a promising strategy for designing biological systems, but their ability to generate functional sequences at the scale of whole genomes has remained untested. Here, we report the first generative design of viable bacteriophage genomes. We leveraged frontier genome language models, Evo 1 and Evo 2, to generate whole-genome sequences with realistic genetic architectures and desirable host tropism, using the lytic phage ΦX174 as our design template. Experimental testing of AI-generated genomes yielded 16 viable phages with substantial evolutionary novelty. Cryo-electron microscopy revealed that one of the generated phages utilizes an evolutionarily distant DNA packaging protein within its capsid. Multiple phages demonstrate higher fitness than ΦX174 in growth competitions and in their lysis kinetics. A cocktail of the generated phages rapidly overcomes ΦX174-resistance in three E. coli strains, demonstrating the potential utility of our approach for designing phage therapies against rapidly evolving bacterial pathogens. This work provides a blueprint for the design of diverse synthetic bacteriophages and, more broadly, lays a foundation for the generative design of useful living systems at the genome scale.”

Workshop on Cross’s “The Amended Statute”

Jesse Cross, The Amended Statute.

Solum’s Download of the Week for September 20, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5426276.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (Workshop Hot Bench template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “We live in a republic of amended statutes. In each Congress, our laws are amended tens of thousands of times. Individual statutes make amendments that number in the thousands. As a result, the amended statute has become the central democratic text of our age—a remarkable development for a type of document unknown at the Founding. Yet the amended statute has been relegated to an afterthought in legal theory. This is incredible neglect for an essential source of modern law—one that anchors innumerable rights in U.S. society. 

This Article demonstrates that, instead, the amended statute belongs at the center of public law. To that end, it undertakes three projects with respect to the amended statute: documenting, theorizing, and interpreting. 

It begins with documenting. Through a study consisting of over seven hundred searches of the Statutes at Large, it identifies—for the first time—the nearly half-million amendments made to federal statutes since the Founding. In so doing, it tells the story of statutory amendments in U.S. law. It is a story of remarkable transformation: from a statutory corpus with no amendments through the 1830s to one that now undergoes over eight thousand amendments each year. Contemporary statutes, it reveals, typically are amended statutes. 

Next, the Article theorizes amended statutory law. Despite its neglect in current legal theory, the amended statute was transformative. It created a new idea of the ‘statute’ in the United States—introducing a new document, and one with different traits than the traditional statute. The Article theorizes the key changes this introduced into: (1) legislation, (2) the legislative process, (3) the institution of the legislature, and (4) statutory interpretation. These changes include enabling the rise of textualism, making methodological originalism impossible in interpretation, and divorcing the drafter from the legislator. The Article chronicles these many theoretical insights. 

Finally, the Article asks how to interpret amended statutory law. Revisiting two recent classics of statutory interpretation, Niz-Chavez v. Garland and Van Buren v. United States, it uncovers the unknown amendatory stories behind these landmark cases. In so doing, it shows the contemporary Supreme Court's troubling inability to locate democratic decisions beneath the amended statute. And it models a competing method of interpretation—one more appropriate for a republic of amended statutes.”

Workshop on “Plutocratic Democracy, Elon Musk, and the Limits of Campaign Finance Reform”

Guy-Uriel E. Charles & Farris Peale, Plutocratic Democracy, Elon Musk, and the Limits of Campaign Finance Reform.

Solum’s Download of the Week for September 13, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5397907.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (variation of the Workshop template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Politicians appear to be increasingly dependent upon a group of ultra-wealthy elites who not only fund their campaigns but are critical for the functioning of public governance. These ultrawealthy individuals provide the indispensable infrastructure, expertise, and communication that are critical to modern electoral politics. These ultra-wealthy individuals want more than influence, seeking instead to govern even though the voters do not elect them. This chapter describes this process and argues that the campaign finance literature, which is mired in a debate about corruption and equality, is not well-positioned to address this contemporary challenge to representative democracy. The piece refers to this challenge as "plutocratic democracy," and uses Elon Musk as a case study.”

Workshop on Kadri and West’s “Deepfake Torts”

Thomas Kadri and Sonja West, Deepfake Torts: Emerging Tort Frameworks in U.S. Deepfake Regulation.

Solum’s Download of the Week for September 6, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5325857.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (variation of the Workshop template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “As deepfake technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and accessible, American lawmakers are responding with a flurry of urgent legislative action to address its potential harms. Our 50-state survey of proposed and enacted deepfake legislation reveals a complex regulatory landscape in which jurisdictions are adopting a range of legal approaches, including criminal punishments, civil remedies, or a combination of methods. We also find that legislators are frequently turning to tort-law frameworks to address the harms of deepfakes.

This article explores the current landscape of tort-based regulations of deepfakes. In addition to providing an overview of the most recent legislative developments, we unpack and compare the various tort-law methods arising at the state and federal level. We further consider how lawmakers are modifying existing tort laws to address the unique concerns raised by deepfakes. While individualistic tort remedies allow victims of deepfakes to seek direct recourse through familiar private rights of action, our analysis also identifies practical and conceptual limitations with this approach. Traditional tort frameworks struggle to address key challenges posed by deepfakes, including anonymous creation, viral distribution at technological scale, and harms affecting both individuals and society broadly.

In light of these limitations, legislators are innovatively adapting traditional tort concepts—such as standing, mental states, causation, immunities, and remedies—to address deepfakes’ unique characteristics. Yet the very need for these adaptations reveals some of tort law’s shortcomings and suggests a space for complementary regulatory approaches. We consider some potential approaches that could provide this more complete framework, like tort liability for entities that enable deepfake creation and circulation, and civil enforcement mechanisms that empower state actors to vindicate both individual and societal interests. Ultimately, our findings suggest that while tort law provides a valuable foundation for addressing deepfake injuries, comprehensive protection will require additional regulatory frameworks beyond traditional tort remedies.”

Workshop on Bradley and Siegel’s “The Supreme Court Under Threat”

Curtis Bradley and Neil Siegel, The Supreme Court Under Threat: Early Lessons in Judicial Self-Protection.

Solum’s Download of the Week for July 19, 2025. Available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5325857.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (variation of the Workshop template, using Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “This Essay explores how the U.S. Supreme Court, despite being vulnerable to defiance of its decisions and political retaliation, has developed tools of judicial self-protection to preserve its institutional authority as well as the Constitution and the rule of law. Arguing that the Court performs not only a legal role that requires interpretation of the law but also a political one that demands institutional preservation, the Essay examines how the Court has historically navigated political threats by using a range of tools—including avoidance, delay, narrow rulings, strategic dicta, and rhetorical appeals. The Essay focuses on three nineteenth-century episodes: the Jeffersonian backlash following the election of 1800, Georgia’s defiance in the Cherokee Cases in the 1830s, and controversies over military trials during Reconstruction. In each instance, the Court adjusted its behavior in response to political threats from the Executive, states, or Congress, and it used the tools of self-protection to avoid direct confrontation while maintaining or even enhancing its authority. The Essay acknowledges the risks and imperfections of such an approach including compromised legal reasoning and potential long-term concessions but it contends that the Court must be politically attentive to be effective. It also cautions against formalist critiques of such judicial behavior that overlook the political foundations of judicial power.”

Workshop on surprising findings in “Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity”

Joel Becker, Nate Rush, Elizabeth Barnes, David Rein, Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity.

Available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using the Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Despite widespread adoption, the impact of AI tools on software development in the wild remains understudied. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how AI tools at the February-June 2025 frontier affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers. 16 developers with moderate AI experience complete 246 tasks in mature projects on which they have an average of 5 years of prior experience. Each task is randomly assigned to allow or disallow usage of early 2025 AI tools. When AI tools are allowed, developers primarily use Cursor Pro, a popular code editor, and Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet. Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%--AI tooling slowed developers down. This slowdown also contradicts predictions from experts in economics (39% shorter) and ML (38% shorter). To understand this result, we collect and evaluate evidence for 20 properties of our setting that a priori could contribute to the observed slowdown effect--for example, the size and quality standards of projects, or prior developer experience with AI tooling. Although the influence of experimental artifacts cannot be entirely ruled out, the robustness of the slowdown effect across our analyses suggests it is unlikely to primarily be a function of our experimental design.”