By Bridget C.E. Dooling

Assistant Professor of Law, The Ohio State University

Martha Coven, Princeton University

The officials surveyed ranked product quality as the area of their businesses that received the most value from implementing responsible AI management (RAIM) practices – even above more obvious choices, such as reducing regulatory and legal risk.

That answer was surprising, said one of the leaders of the survey, Dennis Hirsch, faculty director of The Ohio State University’s Program on Data Governance.

“We did not expect that the primary response for how AI governance would create value would be by improving product quality,” Hirsch said. “That’s very interesting and encouraging.”

That result was one of several important findings from the survey, which were revealed in the report Responsible AI Management: Evolving Practice, Growing Value.

The report was produced by the Program on Data and Governance, which is part of Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law and Translational Data Analytics Institute.

The corporate rush to use AI has raised alarm about potential harm and misuse, such as privacy violations, discrimination and misinformation.

The survey, sent out in early 2023, probed RAIM practices at businesses that develop and use AI. The survey was emailed to individuals identified as data governance officials at U.S. companies. Completed surveys came back from 75 people, most of whom worked at large companies with more than 1,000 employees and $10 million or more in annual revenue.

Many business sectors were represented among survey respondents, such as information technology, financial, health care and consumer goods.

Hirsch said the relatively low response rate to the survey, and the fact that most responses came from large companies, suggests that few companies today have meaningful RAIM programs in place.

“We think the largest companies have the most resources and are most engaged in AI governance,” Hirsch said.

So what exactly are the responsible AI management practices that companies are using?

The study found the most commonly reported RAIM activities included evaluating regulatory risk, identifying risk to stakeholders, building a RAIM management structure and adopting standards such as AI ethics principles and RAIM policies.

Results showed that 68% of respondents said that RAIM was either important or extremely important to their company. However, even among the large companies that responded, implementation of RAIM programs significantly lagged enthusiasm. Most respondents said that their RAIM programs were still at an early stage.

This survey was done just before the explosion of generative AI and the broad use of tools like ChatGPT, so the situation may be changing, according to Hirsch. More companies now probably understand that they need to govern the use of AI, but it is still not as widespread as it probably should be, he said.

More companies might be invested in RAIM if they knew of the experience of these larger companies and the value that they thought it brought to their businesses, he said.

Nearly 40% of those surveyed reported that their company gets “a lot” or “a great deal” of value from their responsible AI management programs. Another 38% said it produced “a moderate amount” of value. None said they got no value.

What may be most striking, though, was the fact that survey participants thought product quality was the area where RAIM brought the most value. This survey didn’t ask how RAIM improved product quality, and this finding will need more study, Hirsch said.

“Our preliminary take is that it improves product quality by promoting AI innovation and better meeting customer expectations,” he said.

A 2018 study by the Program on Data and Governance, which involved interviews with officials involved in corporate AI governance, may explain how this works.

People think of data governance as inhibiting innovation, because it restricts what people can do. But it may be the opposite, according to those interviewed in the 2018 study.

“If employees have standards and policies and guidelines about how they can use AI, they can innovate with a lot more confidence. It can actually unleash innovation, rather than dampen it,” Hirsch said.

The new report says, “These results suggest an important, new way of thinking about AI management – as a source of value and competitiveness, and not just a way of mitigating risks and costs.”

While that’s good news for companies that are instituting responsible AI management practices, Hirsch emphasized that this survey included mostly very large firms.

“I think if we looked more broadly at businesses around the country that use AI, you wouldn’t see such an optimistic picture of the view of the importance of AI governance,” he said.

AI management is still in its infancy in most businesses.

According to Hirsch, more companies need to be undertaking algorithmic impact assessments to determine whether their use of AI could harm customers or others. They also need to build a management structure and substantive policies that can help their employees determine how they can use AI.

“We need to do a lot more with companies to help them understand how to responsibly use AI,” Hirsch said.

In his new role, Barnett will be responsible for advancing the college’s reputation as a top-tier law school, furthering its student-focused philosophy and innovative scholarship, and setting strategic priorities to prepare graduates to address emerging opportunities and challenges in a quickly changing world.

“In addition to his administrative and scholarly experience, Kent brings a deep, strategic focus on reducing student debt and fostering access and affordability for law students from all backgrounds,” said Karla Zadnik, interim executive vice president and provost.

As associate dean at UGA, Barnett oversees the highly ranked School of Law’s academic programs and student affairs. An ardent supporter of accessible and affordable public education, Barnett also manages the school’s new-student orientation and teaches in the pre-orientation academic success program designed to introduce all students, regardless of background, to law school pedagogy and professional norms. Prior to joining UGA in 2012, Barnett was a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky.

“The Moritz College of Law has an established track record of serving the state and nation through its experiential programs, excellent preparation of lawyers and its ability to improve social mobility for Ohio citizens,” said Barnett. “I look forward to building on this legacy.”

As a legal scholar, Kent coauthored the textbook Administrative Law, Fifth Edition, and has appeared in numerous academic publications, including the Michigan, New York University, Duke, and Vanderbilt law reviews. Moreover, he has been cited by numerous federal courts and national media outlets, including Bloomberg Law, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal. He has taught courses on administrative and consumer law, contracts and sales, and judges and politics, and he has been recognized for his commitment to teaching excellence by receiving the UGA School of Law’s highest teaching honor.

A Kentucky native, Barnett earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Kentucky College of Law and his Bachelor of Arts in art history from Centre College, both summa cum laude. Prior to joining the UGA School of Law faculty in 2012, Kent was a lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Heygood, Orr & Pearson. He also served as a law clerk for Judge John M. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Founded in 1891 and consistently the top-ranked law school in Ohio, the Moritz College of Law is known for its rigorous academic programs, devotion to student success, the pioneering research of its world-class faculty and deep commitment to teaching, professional training and the development of future leaders.

The college’s more than 11,000 graduates include federal judges, U.S. senators and representatives, governors, attorneys general, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, law professors, members of all levels of the state court system and prominent attorneys in various legal fields.

“Moritz is a jewel in Ohio State’s crown because of the university’s longstanding support and the community’s deep engagement,” said Barnett. “Its dedicated students, alumni, faculty, staff and university administration have a shared vision of a world-class public law school — one whose graduates have limitless opportunities.”

“I am grateful to the members of the search advisory committee, chaired by Trevor Brown, dean of the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, for their counsel and dedication to finding our next dean,” said Zadnik. “I also extend my deep appreciation to L. Camille Hébert, the Robert J. Lynn Chair in Law, for her service as acting dean of Moritz College of Law.”

Congressional Conversations is an initiative of Moritz College of Law and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs that brings prominent federal legislators to Ohio State on a regular basis. The event is co-sponsored by the Moritz Program on Law and Leadership, the Office of Government Affairs and the Institute for Democratic Engagement and Accountability (IDEA). 

Conversations focus not on the day’s partisan talking points but rather on improving the legislative process, public policy and leadership. Trevor Brown, dean of the Glenn College, and law student Aditya Medicherla moderated the discussion.

“One of the important roles of a public university and the Congressional Conversation series is to create an environment where we can have conversations about difficult and contentious issues in a civil and respectful manner that contributes to our understanding and welcomes and fosters a diversity of viewpoints,” Brown said.

Last year, Carey and Beatty relaunched the Congressional Civility and Respect Caucus. Originally established by Beatty and former U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, the goal of the bipartisan caucus is to encourage all members of Congress to act with civility and respect in their political discourse.

Beatty and Carey have preached the message to businesses and civic organizations across central Ohio to help promote respectful dialogue on challenging issues. 

“It was to hopefully demonstrate that we don’t have to agree, but we don’t have to not be civil. We don’t have to say things about people’s families or disparaging things about individuals that are really not true,” Beatty said.

Carey said it has been a privilege to share the message with fellow representatives in central Ohio and around the country. He said he would be participating in a civility event in suburban Chicago later this year with Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider.

“It really all started because of what Joyce and Steve decided to do. This is our 18th event. I actually went to a Republican fundraiser, and I said … I feel very strange being in a room with all of you people in central Ohio and Joyce Beatty’s not on stage with me. That’s how many times you’ll find us working together,” he said.

Beatty and Carey both expressed hope that Congress will be able to find a solution to looming funding deadlines in early March. They also expressed frustration with the challenges of changing leadership in the House and razor-thin voting margins.

Audience members asked the representatives their views on student protests, and both said they agreed with the right to protest when the issues were important.

The final question for the representatives was about the advice they would offer to students who want to advocate for themselves or others. Both representatives noted there are opportunities to serve outside of elected office. Beatty said some of the most important laws begin at the smallest level.

“For those in Glenn College, I think you should help us with public policy. And I recommend that if you have thoughts on public policy issues, most pieces of legislation come from the district, an idea, a family or a name, like the Amber Alert,” Beatty said. “If you think about all the [laws] that get named, it’s because some nurse, some students, some public policy person weighed in.”

Carey encouraged students to “get in the arena.”

“Whether you run for office yourself, whether you go into a congressional office or state representative office, city council, county commissioner, I just think it really gives you the opportunity to be part of what we need in this country, which is change.”

By Dakota Rudesill, The Ohio State University

Donald Trump and his allies have responded with a variety of objections to his federal indictment, brought in June 2023 by special counsel Jack Smith. The federal charges – the first against a former president – listed 37 counts of obstruction of justice and wrongful retention of classified documents after Trump left office in January 2021.

Trump pleaded not guilty.

The objections made by Trump and his allies: The former president simply cannot be charged, the indictment is political “weaponization” of the justice system, the charges are groundless and the charges are unfair. The unfairness claim often involves a comparison to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent, who was not charged in an investigation into her handling of government documents.

As a scholar of secrecy law and a longtime national security practitioner, based on all that is known, I do not see merit in those claims.

A former president can be charged

Trump and his allies have argued that it is completely inappropriate for the former president to be charged.

But no part of the Constitution, no statute and no Supreme Court precedent sets a former chief executive above the law. Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist Papers, stated the founders’ view that a former president is “liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.” Hamilton added that a former president would be no different in this respect from a state governor.

American history is replete with criminal charges against state officials, vice presidents – a former one during the founding era, and a sitting one in the 1970s – members of Congress and other prominent politicians.

Not a partisan prosecution

Trump is right that his is inevitably a sensitive case because of his continued presence in the political arena.

What he does not acknowledge is that maintaining the bedrock legal principle of equal justice requires avoiding twin hazards: politically motivated prosecutions and exempting elite politicians from the law.

Navigating these shoals is challenging because under the U.S. Constitution, the executive branch is headed by the sitting president, and it includes the Justice Department. That means there will always be at least a potential risk of “weaponization” of prosecution – or just the risk of that allegation – when the defendant is in a different party from the president.

But if a former president who is a political adversary of the current president cannot be charged, then that former president can commit any federal crime they please. That is the opposite of the founders’ intent, and not the law.

Sorting this out requires careful analysis of the facts and law.

Here, the “weaponization” allegation lacks substance. All it has are the circumstances of President Joe Biden’s position atop the executive branch, and Trump’s challenge to Biden’s candidacy. In contrast to President Thomas Jefferson’s detailed direction of the prosecution of political adversary and former Vice President Aaron Burr, there is no credible evidence that Biden is telling the prosecutor what to do.

The charges have merit

Trump claims that he had an “absolute right” to take the documents. In reality, when Trump left office he lost the presidency’s authority to possess presidential records and national security documents. The indictment presents strong evidence that the documents Trump held on to contained extremely sensitive secrets, including U.S. war plans, and that Trump knew it and worked to block recovery of all of them by the government.

By law, documents of former presidents and national defense information must be stored by the National Archives or other federal agencies. Instead, the indictment alleges that the former president stored classified information at the busy Mar-a-Lago resort in a room accessible from the pool, an office, ballroom stage, bathroom and shower.

The indictment lays out clear evidence of Trump’s knowing refusal over many months to comply fully with lawful requests, and a subsequent court-issued subpoena, for the return of all the documents. It includes pictures, and a recorded statement in which Trump checks all the boxes for criminal liability: knowing possession after leaving office of documents he calls “secret” and showing of those documents to people not authorized to see them – plus admitting that he could have declassified them while president but did not.

Not comparable to Biden, Pence or Clinton

That recording and other contents of the indictment will be powerful evidence at trial of Trump’s state of mind.

The law concerning government documents and national defense information requires willfulness for criminal liability – basically, keeping documents you know you should not. Other statutes criminalize lying to investigators, other obstruction of justice and getting others to commit crimes.

It is Trump’s alleged knowingness and obstruction that make complaints of unfairness fall flat.

President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence both instructed aides to return documents with classification markings after such records were discovered in files that had been quickly packed and went home with the former vice presidents at the end of their terms as veep.

A federal investigation of Pence was dropped in June 2023. One of Biden likely will be, too. Both former vice presidents wrongfully retained national defense information, but not knowingly. Neither was obstructive.

In Trump’s 2016 campaign, he criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of private email systems, including to send emails with classified information. The FBI concluded that she had been extremely careless rather than knowing or obstructing.

Echoes of Reality Winner and Edward Snowden

The evidence of Trump’s knowing retention of secret documents and obstruction makes his case quite like many in which people have faced fines or prison. Those include cases in which people once had lawful access to secrets but knowingly stole and shared them to make political points.

A junior Air Force linguist, Reality Winner, unlawfully removed one top-secret document and sent it to the media because she thought the public should know about it. Winner was prosecuted during Trump’s presidency and sentenced to five years in prison. The law in question? One of the same Espionage Act provisions under which Trump has been charged with over 30 counts.

Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked tens of thousands of classified documents to inform the public about secret U.S. surveillance activities, was also charged under another very similar section of the same statute before fleeing to Russia.

Trump’s case also looks a lot like those of other senior officials who have been prosecuted for knowingly mishandling secret documents, plus lying and other obstruction.

The indictment alleges that Trump, after leaving office, showed classified information to a biographer. That recalls then-CIA Director David Petraeus’ giving his biographer – who was also his lover – top-secret papers.

Both Trump and Petraeus were charged under the same Espionage Act sections and the same law criminalizing lying to investigators. After being fired as CIA director, Petraeus pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, paid a fine and got two years’ probation.

Trump’s situation strikes me as worse than Petraeus’. Trump’s documents are more numerous. Prosecutors allege that Trump’s were viewed by more people and were stored less securely. Trump’s obstruction also appears far greater.

A final category of cases also suggests Trump is in big trouble: the prosecutions of hoarders. There are multiple instances of U.S. intelligence personnel having been indicted, like Trump, for keeping troves of secret documents at home. Their mental health defenses failed. During Trump’s presidency, sentences in these cases included five years and nine years in prison.

Despite all of that, Trump and his allies will likely argue that indictment of a former president violates an important tradition against such prosecutions.

The real tradition is that former presidents tend not to break the law. The considerable evidence of the former president’s hoarding of secret documents and obstruction have forced the justice system either to exempt an elite politician from the law – or proceed with the well-merited prosecution that is now underway.

Dakota Rudesill, Associate Professor of Law; Senior Faculty Fellow, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Dennis Hirsch and Piers Norris Turner, The Ohio State University

In the absence of legal guidelines, companies need to establish internal processes for responsible use of AI. Oscar Wong/Moment via Getty Images

The rush to deploy powerful new generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT, has raised alarms about potential harm and misuse. The law’s glacial response to such threats has prompted demands that the companies developing these technologies implement AI “ethically.”

But what, exactly, does that mean?

The straightforward answer would be to align a business’s operations with one or more of the dozens of sets of AI ethics principles that governments, multistakeholder groups and academics have produced. But that is easier said than done.

We and our colleagues spent two years interviewing and surveying AI ethics professionals across a range of sectors to try to understand how they sought to achieve ethical AI – and what they might be missing. We learned that pursuing AI ethics on the ground is less about mapping ethical principles onto corporate actions than it is about implementing management structures and processes that enable an organization to spot and mitigate threats.

This is likely to be disappointing news for organizations looking for unambiguous guidance that avoids gray areas, and for consumers hoping for clear and protective standards. But it points to a better understanding of how companies can pursue ethical AI.

Grappling with ethical uncertainties

Our study, which is the basis for a forthcoming book, centered on those responsible for managing AI ethics issues at major companies that use AI. From late 2017 to early 2019, we interviewed 23 such managers. Their titles ranged from privacy officer and privacy counsel to one that was new at the time but increasingly common today: data ethics officer. Our conversations with these AI ethics managers produced four main takeaways.

First, along with its many benefits, business use of AI poses substantial risks, and the companies know it. AI ethics managers expressed concerns about privacy, manipulation, bias, opacity, inequality and labor displacement. In one well-known example, Amazon developed an AI tool to sort résumés and trained it to find candidates similar to those it had hired in the past. Male dominance in the tech industry meant that most of Amazon’s employees were men. The tool accordingly learned to reject female candidates. Unable to fix the problem, Amazon ultimately had to scrap the project.

Generative AI raises additional worries about misinformation and hate speech at large scale and misappropriation of intellectual property.

Second, companies that pursue ethical AI do so largely for strategic reasons. They want to sustain trust among customers, business partners and employees. And they want to preempt, or prepare for, emerging regulations. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which Cambridge Analytica used Facebook user data, shared without consent, to infer the users’ psychological types and target them with manipulative political ads, showed that the unethical use of advanced analytics can eviscerate a company’s reputation or even, as in the case of Cambridge Analytica itself, bring it down. The companies we spoke to wanted instead to be viewed as responsible stewards of people’s data.

The challenge that AI ethics managers faced was figuring out how best to achieve “ethical AI.” They looked first to AI ethics principles, particularly those rooted in bioethics or human rights principles, but found them insufficient. It was not just that there are many competing sets of principles. It was that justice, fairness, beneficence, autonomy and other such principles are contested and subject to interpretation and can conflict with one another.

This led to our third takeaway: Managers needed more than high-level AI principles to decide what to do in specific situations. One AI ethics manager described trying to translate human rights principles into a set of questions that developers could ask themselves to produce more ethical AI software systems. “We stopped after 34 pages of questions,” the manager said.

Fourth, professionals grappling with ethical uncertainties turned to organizational structures and procedures to arrive at judgments about what to do. Some of these were clearly inadequate. But others, while still largely in development, were more helpful, such as:

• Hiring an AI ethics officer to build and oversee the program.
• Establishing an internal AI ethics committee to weigh and decide hard issues.
• Crafting data ethics checklists and requiring front-line data scientists to fill them out.
• Reaching out to academics, former regulators and advocates for alternative perspectives.
• Conducting algorithmic impact assessments of the type already in use in environmental and privacy governance.

Ethics as responsible decision-making

The key idea that emerged from our study is this: Companies seeking to use AI ethically should not expect to discover a simple set of principles that delivers correct answers from an all-knowing, God’s-eye perspective. Instead, they should focus on the very human task of trying to make responsible decisions in a world of finite understanding and changing circumstances, even if some decisions end up being imperfect.

In the absence of explicit legal requirements, companies, like individuals, can only do their best to make themselves aware of how AI affects people and the environment and to stay abreast of public concerns and the latest research and expert ideas. They can also seek input from a large and diverse set of stakeholders and seriously engage with high-level ethical principles.

This simple idea changes the conversation in important ways. It encourages AI ethics professionals to focus their energies less on identifying and applying AI principles – though they remain part of the story – and more on adopting decision-making structures and processes to ensure that they consider the impacts, viewpoints and public expectations that should inform their business decisions.

Ultimately, we believe laws and regulations will need to provide substantive benchmarks for organizations to aim for. But the structures and processes of responsible decision-making are a place to start and should, over time, help to build the knowledge needed to craft protective and workable substantive legal standards.

Indeed, the emerging law and policy of AI focuses on process. New York City passed a law requiring companies to audit their AI systems for harmful bias before using these systems to make hiring decisions. Members of Congress have introduced bills that would require businesses to conduct algorithmic impact assessments before using AI for lending, employment, insurance and other such consequential decisions. These laws emphasize processes that address in advance AI’s many threats.

Some of the developers of generative AI have taken a very different approach. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, initially explained that, in releasing ChatGPT to the public, the company sought to give the chatbot “enough exposure to the real world that you find some of the misuse cases you wouldn’t have thought of so that you can build better tools.” To us, that is not responsible AI. It is treating human beings as guinea pigs in a risky experiment.

Altman’s call at a May 2023 Senate hearing for government regulation of AI shows greater awareness of the problem. But we believe he goes too far in shifting to government the responsibilities that the developers of generative AI must also bear. Maintaining public trust, and avoiding harm to society, will require companies more fully to face up to their responsibilities.

Dennis Hirsch, Professor of Law and Computer Science; Director, Program on Data and Governance; core faculty TDAI, The Ohio State University and Piers Norris Turner, Associate Professor of Philosophy & PPE Coordinator; Director, Center for Ethics and Human Values, The Ohio State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The review, due to be completed in January 2023, will also consider how to alter the agency’s approach to support appropriate use of opioid painkillers in an expanded public health context, said Patricia Zettler, associate professor in Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, who is the subject matter lead for the team review.

“The focus of our review is forward-looking,” Zettler said. “How could the FDA use the authority it has to better serve its public health mission, and what additional legal authorities might be useful to improve opioid regulation?” 

An average of 44 people in the United States died each day from prescription opioid painkiller overdoses in 2020, accounting for almost 18% of all opioid overdose deaths that year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 16,000-plus overdose deaths in 2020 represented a single-year 16% increase in prescription opioid-involved deaths. 

A report on national strategies to address the opioid epidemic issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in 2017 recommended that the FDA seek this external review. The NASEM report, which was requested by the FDA, generally recommended that the FDA use a comprehensive approach for incorporating public health considerations into the regulatory framework for prescription opioids, including accounting for benefits and risks to patients, households and society as well as incorporating such considerations at the clinical development stage. 

“One of the really challenging things is that these are not products without benefits,” Zettler said. “Prescription opioids have important benefits for a lot of patients under many different circumstances. So there is a need to figure out how to best maximize those benefits while also minimizing the really serious risks of the products.” 

Ohio State is home to a collection of scholars with the right mix of expertise in law, public health, pharmacy and medicine to address the many policy considerations at issue, said review team member Micah Berman, associate professor in the College of Public Health and Moritz College of Law. Both Zettler and Berman have worked at the FDA in the past, and Zettler was a consultant to the NASEM committee that issued the 2017 report. 

“We have the interdisciplinary skills to look at the whole process all the way from the clinical trial to design to some of the post-marketing issues, but also to look at questions of legal authority and how the FDA might want to reconsider the standards it uses for approvals or any new authority that it might need,” Berman said. “It’s a pretty broad mandate to look at all of those things – the process the agency used and the decisions that it came to, and the broader lessons that can be gleaned from the FDA’s past experience regulating opioids – and to approach those questions from the research side, the clinical side and the legal side all at the same time.” 

Ohio State scholars joining Zettler and Berman for the review are Kathy Lancaster, associate professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health; Macarius Donneyong, assistant professor of outcomes and translational sciences in the College of Pharmacy and College of Public Health; and Marty Fried, clinical assistant professor of internal medicine in the College of Medicine. 

In a recent blog post, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf described the upcoming review. 

“While the FDA’s previous strategies have largely focused on opioid use and overdoses, the evolving nature of the overdose crisis calls for both a new approach and honest reflection about what the FDA can do differently moving forward. … We have initiated this review with the intended goal of understanding what revisions are needed to support appropriate use of opioid analgesics. Our ‘lessons learned’ will actively inform our future approach,” he wrote. 

The opioid crisis was determined in 2017 to be a public health emergency, and that designation is still in effect, Califf wrote, noting that illicit opioids – particularly heroin, fentanyl and compounds with similar chemical structures – are huge contributors to the problem of misuse and overdose deaths. 

For the purposes of this review, the focus will remain on regulatory activities related to existing prescription opioid medications – as well as new pain-management products that will come up for approval in the future. 

“It’s laudable for the government to seek external input on its approach, particularly for a problem this large and this complicated,” Zettler said. “Although there isn’t likely to be one solution, we’re looking forward to using our expertise to help serve the public health and help inform the agency’s regulatory decisions.”

“Rethinking Systems Design for Racial Justice” is presented by the Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, in partnership with The Ohio State University’s Divided Community Project and Harvard University’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. Another co-presenter is Stanford Law School’s Gould Center for Dispute Resolution, which kicked off the series on Feb. 25, with a focus on local and statewide commissions in California deeply engaged in this work.  

“I anticipate this symposium and series and the resulting publications will promote discussions on these important topics that are always critical, but are particularly critical today,” said Lincoln L. Davies, dean of Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law.

“When I joined Ohio State in the summer of 2019, our community was already engaged in deep conversation about diversity, inclusion, equity and justice, particularly on matters of race,” he said. “I’m so proud of our students, our staff and our faculty who have committed and recommitted themselves to that endeavor. And this symposium is no small part of the recognition and a symbol of that.”

Ohio State’s participation in the “Rethinking Systems Design for Racial Justice” series is part of a research effort by the university’s Divided Community Project to identify ways to overcome barriers to collaborative efforts to advance racial equity, encompassing the law, social science and several other disciplines. The research effort received a 2021 Catalyst grant through the President’s Research Excellence program, which provides seed money for initiatives that address large, societal challenges.

During the March 11 symposium, panelists shared best practices on how to incorporate dispute resolution in law enforcement training and discussed case studies on how truth and reconciliation commissions have worked to examine and improve police-community relations and inequities in housing and health care in the four communities, from small towns to big cities.  

“We looked at policing and drilled down on that issue,” said Carl Smallwood, director of the Divided Community Project and one of the symposium organizers. “And then we zoomed out to look at commissions, governmentally created commissions and grassroots commissions, that look at structures and designs to deal with these systemic issues in communities as small as Carlisle, Pa., and as large as New York City.”

In his keynote address, john powell, director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Othering & Belonging Institute, described the components of effective mediation.  (According to Berkeley, powell spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be “part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify.”)

“One, it should actually invite people to think about that universal role, not just the gap between them – what do they all need, what does everyone need? And then, what’s the process of getting there?” said powell, former director of Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. “What about the power differentiation between groups? If the power (differentiation) is too great… it distorts the outcome.”

The “Rethinking Systems Design for Racial Justice” series will conclude April 8 with a symposium hosted by Harvard’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. The series is designed to spark ongoing dialogue and research, Smallwood said.

“I’m excited about the papers that we’re going to see from a group of diverse scholars and practitioners,” he said. “We understand this work is difficult and it’s messy and it’s emotional and it’s incredibly important.”

Registration and more information about the Harvard symposium.

Brown spoke about the historic development during a March 8 event at The Ohio State University marking International Women’s Day. “A View on the SCOTUS Nomination from One First to Another: Understanding the Necessity and Anticipating the Challenges of the First Black Woman Appointed to the United States Supreme Court” was presented by the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio Union’s U.S. Bank Theater.

When President Joe Biden announced Feb. 25 that he was nominating Jackson to fill the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, McGee Brown, an alumna of Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, said she was filled with pride.

“It was just such an amazing time. It was a great time to be a Black woman lawyer in America, to see her step up, a woman who is enormously qualified,” McGee Brown said. “It’s not like she just went to law school, she went to Harvard, both undergrad and for law school. … It’s not just that she went to Harvard, she was the editor of the Law Review.”

Jackson’s nomination is unprecedented in many ways, McGee Brown said. Since the U.S. Supreme Court was established in 1789, 114 justices have served on the bench, according to Supremecourt.gov. Of those, 108 have been white men.

If confirmed, Jackson will be the third African American to serve on the Supreme Court, following Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. She will be the sixth woman, following Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett.

“It is beyond comprehension that a court that makes decisions that impact all of America is composed of people who represent less than half of America,” McGee Brown said. “If we are going to have a court that purports to make decisions that impact all of us, the court should look like more of us. I don’t think that’s an illegitimate goal at all.”

McGee Brown said she can relate to Jackson’s trailblazing status. McGee Brown was appointed to the Ohio Supreme Court by former Democratic governor Ted Strickland in December 2010 to fill the seat vacated by Justice Maureen O’Connor, whom voters elected chief justice in November 2010. McGee Brown assumed the office on Jan. 1, 2011, and was defeated in her 2012 bid to keep that office by Justice Sharon L. Kennedy.

“Ohio has had 161 Supreme Court justices,” said McGee Brown, who is now a partner in the Columbus office of law firm Jones Day. “Twelve have been women and four have been Black.”

McGee Brown recalled that her January 2011 swearing-in ceremony at the King Arts Complex in Columbus was such a momentous occasion that it drew spectators from all over Ohio.

“I remember standing up, looking out at that crowd, and in that moment, the tears just started coming,” McGee Brown said. “It was in that moment that I realized that it wasn’t really about me, it was about all of them. Those people came because it’s what they had worked for, for decades.”

While skeptics may focus on Jackson’s race and gender, her qualifications for the nation’s highest court are solid, McGee Brown said.

“She has the intellectual acumen, the training, the precision and brilliance that she’s going to be able to argue her case profoundly,” McGee Brown said. “And I know what will happen is that even when she’s on the losing side, she will write a dissent that will set the path, set the tone for the cases that come after.”

The four endowed professorships will attract and retain highly sought-after professors who are committed to scholarship, teaching and leadership in their professions and community. As an ardent supporter of both colleges, Trott created the Richard Trott Distinguished Visiting Professorship to honor her late father, Richard Trott, a 1961 architecture graduate of Ohio State.

“Kara’s ongoing support of Ohio State and continued leadership demonstrate her abiding commitment to the future of our university and is a testament to the strength and longevity of the connections our students establish during their time on campus,” said President Kristina M. Johnson. “Her remarkable gift to our colleges of architecture and law will bolster our efforts to recruit the very best, most dedicated professors as we grow the ranks of our tenure-track faculty and continue to build on our foundation of academic excellence.”

Trott, who received her law degree from Ohio State in 1991, is the founder and chief executive officer of Columbus-based Quantum Health. Launched in 1999, Quantum Health focuses on employers’ benefits delivery, helping participants better navigate the health care system and producing better health outcomes while reducing unnecessary costs. The organization serves more than 300 clients and more than 1.7 million people.

“Kara Trott’s gift to honor the memory of her late father — renowned architect Dick Trott — will contribute significantly to the enrichment of the Knowlton School’s educational mission,” said Dorothée Imbert, Hubert C. Schmidt Professor and director of the Knowlton School. “This gift further elevates the Richard W. Trott Distinguished Visiting Professorship, bringing distinguished practitioners and academics to carry sustained interactions with Knowlton students and faculty, as well as to strengthen the connection between architecture, landscape architecture, planning and urban design. Kara’s generosity will allow us to provide exceptional experiences to our design community, while strengthening Dick Trott’s legacy.”

To show appreciation for her two former law professors who helped her to succeed in law school and inspired her career path, she created The Lawrence “Larry” Herman Endowed Professorship in Law and The Morgan E. Shipman Endowed Professorship in Law, in addition to establishing the Kara J. Trott Professorship in Law.

“One professor can touch thousands of students’ lives during their career. The enduring impact of this gift will be immeasurable. Adding three new endowed professorships to our faculty is a deeply meaningful investment in the future of generations of students at Ohio State Law,” said Lincoln L. Davies, dean of the Moritz College of Law and Frank R. Strong Chair in Law. “We are so incredibly grateful for Kara’s generosity and her commitment to elevating and enriching our law school. We could not be prouder to count her as an alumna and friend.”

Since graduating from Ohio State, Trott has consistently demonstrated her dedication and commitment to the university. She currently serves as a member of The Ohio State University Foundation Board and on the Moritz College of Law National Council.

“Through Moritz, I received an amazing education, and Professors Shipman and Herman were instrumental in helping me develop my critical thinking skills,” said Trott. “My father, a pivotal force in my life, was heavily involved at the Knowlton School, and I hope that these four endowed professorships will help launch more leaders in law and architecture.”

Seven colleges have top 10 graduate and professional programs in the latest rankings: the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business (Fisher), Education and Human Ecology, Engineering, Law (Moritz), Nursing, and Public Affairs (John Glenn). U.S. News’ rankings of graduate and professional programs cover just a small portion of the programs offered at Ohio State, and not all programs are ranked each year.

“The excellence displayed across the university reflects Ohio State’s focus on developing the next generation of leaders throughout society,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron. “Our comprehensive scope and focus on collaboration across disciplines acts as a force multiplier, preparing our graduate and professional students for leadership roles.”

Ohio State enrolls more than 14,000 graduate and professional students in 90 doctoral and 110 master's programs.

The Top 10 graduate and professional programs include dispute resolution (2), pediatric primary care nurse practitioner (3), business supply chain/logistics (4), psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner (5), student counseling and personnel (5), doctor of nursing practice: administration (6), higher education administration (8), public management and leadership (8), education administration and supervision (9), business production/operations (9), nursing master’s (9), adult/gerontological primary care nurse practitioner (10), biological/agricultural engineering (10), part-time MBA (10), social stratification (10) and sociology of population (10).

Below are some highlights from U.S. News’ 2022 rankings of Ohio State graduate programs, by college.

The College of Arts and Sciences has five of its social sciences and humanities programs newly ranked this year. Political science is ranked 17th, sociology is ranked 18th, and economics, English and history are each ranked 30th among programs in the United States. Additionally, political science, which ranks sixth among programs at public universities, houses top specialties in American politics (11), international politics (12), political methodology (13) and comparative politics (20). Sociology, ranking eighth among programs at public universities, boasts two specialties ranked 10th in the nation: social stratification and sociology of population. Finally, English’s specialty in American literature after 1865 is ranked 13th.

Led by its MBA for Working Professionals Program (WPMBA), Fisher College of Business is home to two graduate programs highly ranked in the 2022 list. The WPMBA program was 10th among all U.S. programs (rising three spots), and fifth among U.S. publics — up two spots. Its full-time MBA program was 14th among U.S. publics. In addition, several specialty areas were highly ranked: supply chain management (4) and productions/operations (9).

The College of Education and Human Ecology ranks 28 out of 277 graduate education programs nationwide, putting it in the top 10% of similar programs. Three of its specialty graduate education programs were ranked in the top 10 nationally, and four additional programs made the top 20 list.

The College of Engineering’s graduate program is ranked first in Ohio and 16th among all public universities. Several departments within the college also placed among the top programs in the nation. The Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering ranked 10th among its peers within American universities. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering retained its rank of 12th overall. Other top 25 engineering disciplines at Ohio State include nuclear engineering (15), industrial/manufacturing engineering (16), aerospace engineering (19) and computer engineering (22). Overall, 216 engineering schools that grant doctoral degrees were surveyed. Ohio State Engineering is ranked 30th overall.

Moritz College of Law ranked best in Ohio and 40th in the nation out of 193 accredited law schools. The specialty program in dispute resolution is ranked second in the nation and five programs rank in the top 25 in the country: dispute resolution, criminal law, contract law, health law, and legal writing.

The College of Medicine ranked 28th in the ranking of Best Medical Schools–Primary Care, moving up 10 spots versus last year, and ranked 33rd among Best Medical Schools–Research, moving up one spot. In addition, Ohio State ranked seventh for Most Diverse Medical Schools, a new category this year. Specialty programs in surgery ranked 17th, anesthesiology ranked 18th and pediatrics ranked 21st. This recognizes the College of Medicine as one of the most diverse institutions in the country, providing top-tier medical and graduate education programs.

The College of Nursing’s master of science in nursing and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) programs were recognized for excellence in academic rigor and outcomes, with several specialization tracks singled out as top-five programs among public institutions. The rankings included ninth overall and third among public colleges for the master of science in nursing and 18th overall and eighth among public colleges for the DNP programs. This is the third consecutive year that the College of Nursing’s master’s program ranks in the nation’s top 10 and that its DNP program ranks in the nation’s top 20.

The John Glenn College of Public Affairs is ranked 13th in the country out of 285 ranked schools, placing it among the top 5% of public affairs graduate professional degree programs. No other public affairs program in Ohio is ranked in the top 50 schools. The college is also rated in eight out of 12 specialties ranked by U.S. News.

The College of Public Health is ranked first in Ohio and in the top 25 in the nation among 188 public health schools and programs accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health. The college’s specialty program in health care management — the Master of Health Administration — was also ranked first in the state and seventh overall in the most recent analysis of those programs.

A number of Ohio State programs earned high marks in previous years and the magazine reprints rankings from previous years in some fields.

But it wasn’t just the art itself that made an impression – it was the label that described the artwork.

The work, “Untitled” (USA Today), 1990, by the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, consisted of candies individually wrapped in red, silver and blue cellophane, arranged on the floor. Gallery visitors were encouraged to take the candies, which were then replenished by museum staff.

What struck Rub was the notation on the label that said the artwork was from “The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of the Dannheisser Foundation, 1996.”

“As someone who studies copyright and intellectual property law, that language fascinated me,” said Rub, who is a professor at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.

“In what sense was this art from MoMA? What did they own? The candies didn’t come from the Museum of Modern Art. The artist himself, who died in 1996, never touched the work that was displayed. It raised so many questions.”

The questions aren’t just academic.

In November 2015, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, announced that it acquired a similar artwork by Gonzalez-Torres called “Untitled” (L.A.), 1991. In this piece, “small, green candies wrapped in cellophane are spread across the gallery floor, so that viewers may touch, take, and consume the work, which can be endlessly replenished,” the museum announced on its website.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the museum paid $7.8 million for the piece. But what exactly did the museum get for that multimillion-dollar price?

Questions like that, and his own experience at The Jewish Museum, inspired Rub to interview 13 art industry insiders, including curators, collection managers, and senior administrators at museums and galleries, about the legal issues of ownership in the art world. He reviewed legal documents, such as contracts, published interviews with industry insiders and studied industry publications and websites. He published his findings last year in the BYU Law Review.

In the article, Rub concluded that conceptual art challenges core notions and hidden assumptions in the law in ways that other forms of art don’t. If you buy a painting by Van Gogh, you know exactly what you’re getting. You’re getting a physical object that can be transferred from one owner to another. Only one true version of that painting exists.

But conceptual art – like the works of Gonzalez-Torres – are different. In these works, the idea behind the work is more important than the actual art object itself.

The problem, though, is that ideas can’t be legally protected by copyright. Ideas can’t be owned (with few exceptions). But museums still buy and sell works of conceptual art for millions of dollars and use terms like “copyright” in ways that the law doesn’t recognize, Rub said.

“Nobody can seriously claim that copyright law protects the notion of placing green candies on a gallery floor for viewers to take,” Rub said.

So what exactly did the Crystal Bridges Museum get when it bought “Untitled” (L.A.), 1991 for $7.8 million?

“From a legal perspective, absolutely nothing,” Rub said. “When the Crystal Bridges Museum bought this piece, they bought something that the law does not recognize. It is owning nothingness.”

No law prevents any museum or gallery from buying 175 pounds of individually wrapped candies in cellophane and presenting them as a work of art, he said. The work could be visually identical to the Felix Gonzalez-Torres installation that the Crystal Bridges Museum paid $7.8 million for. Rub asks: Why wouldn’t such a work be as authentic and identical in all respects to the work that the Crystal Bridges Museum “owns”?

The reason that no museums do this is because of the very powerful social norms of the industry, Rub said. The law may not back up their claims of ownership and copyright, but that hardly matters.

“The truly crucial aspect of this norm is that the people I interviewed stressed over and over that they would never present an installation of a work like that of Felix Gonzalez-Torres without receiving permission of the pseudo-owner,” Rub said.

“When I asked people why they wouldn’t consider doing this, most of them could barely understand the question. In one way or another, they all told me it would be presenting a forgery, which I found fascinating. How can it be a forgery when there is no original?”

Social norms are one thing. But why do museums and galleries use legal terms like “copyright” when they are in these cases, as Rub says, “legal nothingness?”

Rub said he tried to explore with museum and industry officials whether they knew there was a gap between copyright law and their use of copyright terminology and copyright notices. He said their answers were often unsatisfactory and vague.

Officials said things like they “didn’t think about this before” or that using copyright terminology was “something that the [artist] wanted us to do.”

In the end, the use of legal terminology may be less about the law than it appears.

“This inaccurate use of legal terms might be a way for the industry to give even greater legitimacy to its norms,” he said. “It gives them legal cover, even if it doesn’t mean what it says.”

The disconnect between law and the social norms of the art industry doesn’t end when a piece of conceptual art is sold, Rub said.

Normally, when an object is sold, the connection between the seller and buyer is over, at least legally.

“But conceptual artists routinely exercise post-sale control over their sold works. The artists often can control how their work is shown and even who is involved in creating the presentation,” he said.

“Owners of the work are often incredibly deferential to the artists they purchased it from.”

Rub said that while the current system of ownership of conceptual art doesn’t provide the legal protections to owners that they may think it does, it doesn’t matter.

The system works because the art industry needs it. It is a community of insiders that want creativity to be rewarded. The norms of the art industry ensure that artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres can make a living, Rub said.

The norms are strong enough to protect all involved.

“It wouldn’t be the end of the world if some small gallery created an exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ work that is not authorized. They would, however, be shunned by the rest of the art community and find it hard to continue to operate,” Rub said.

“But we need to explore ways for how the law might develop to account for richer understandings of ownership including what it means to own some kinds of art.”