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On 13 June 2024, the Historical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy held a one-day conference exploring questions of access to and preservation (including digital preservation) of Irish historical records and archives. Dr Maeve O’Rourke, a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Young Academy Ireland, was a member of the conference organising committee. The event was supported by the Irish Centre for Human Rights and by Boston College, the ARINS Project, Justice for Magdalenes Research, the Irish Committee for Historical Sciences, and the Archives and Records Association. Speakers included archivists, historians, civil servants from Ireland and Northern Ireland, and human rights experts. Access to the publicly and privately held records and archives of Ireland’s institutional and family separation abuses was the focus of one half of the day. The conference proceedings can be viewed here. A post-event report will be published later this year. Dr Maeve O’Rourke gave an invited lecture entitled ‘Institutional archives and human rights implications of lack of access to them’. Her presentation not only addressed current barriers to information access; it also explored the international and European human rights law, and EU GDPR, norms that should underpin the management of historical abuse information and the future operations of the National Centre for Research and Remembrance at Sean McDermott Street in Dublin 1. Dr O’Rourke’s lecture was covered by Fintan O’Toole, ‘Failure to prevent destruction of records is a further insult to those whose identities were stolen’ The Irish Times (18 June 2024).

The Technology and Rights panel at the Law School’s Research Day 2024  

This session is part of a Masterclass Series run by the Centre for Creative Technologies at University of Galway. Further details on the series can be found at: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/creative-tech/ This talk provides a ten-cent tour of copyright doctrine in the US & Europe, particularly as it is impacted by the development of Gen AI. The rights of authors, creators, and artists will be explored, as well as those of intermediary businesses like publishers. It then moves to the various litigation ongoing in the US and UK brought by publishers, artists, authors and newspapers. The outcomes of these cases are highly relevant to the survival of Gen AI models as we know them. Lastly this talk turns to the question of who copyright serves, what its purpose is, and whether there is room at the table for new types of creativity – perhaps even creativity supported by Gen AI tools. Speaker Biography Dr. Abigail Rekas is a lecturer in law & innovation in the School of Law at University of Galway, and a US attorney. She is a copyright law and policy scholar with strong views about accessibility. She is also deeply interested in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage, including digital assets. Recent research centers around access to justice for persons working in the arts, including understanding and planning for the GenAI impact. She teaches intellectual property law and several microcredential courses around law and technology at University of Galway.

The International Future of Law Association recently held its in-person event, which was a conference held in Dublin, Ireland and funded by the School of Law at the University of Galway. The event was convened by Dr Rónán Kennedy of the Technology and Rights cluster, who has been leading on the development of IFLA since its early days. The conference was opened by our keynote speaker and IFLA committee member, Professor Cat Moon of Vanderbilt University and Director of Innovation Design and the Program on Law & Innovation there. She presented food for thought on the new skills and competencies which lawyers may need in a changing world of work, and opened up the conference themes of 'Replacement or Collaboration? Imagining the Future(s) of Law, Lawyers & Justice'. The rest of the day featured panel discussions on the future of law teaching, how lawyers can work with data, the changes that are taking place in legal practice, and how we integrate concerns regarding access to justice into legal education and lawyering. It was a hybrid event, featuring speakers from across Europe, Asia and North America, with opportunities for discussion and debate. The first panel was on futures of law teaching and featured Paul Ippolito of the College of Law Sydney, Prof Andy Unger of London South Bank University, both addressing different aspects of future-proofing and modernising the curriculum; Prof Brian W Tang from the University of Hong Kong on integrating generative AI into law teaching and Dr. Liam Sunner of Queen’s University Belfast on using video games in the classroom. That was followed by a panel on the use of data in legal research and teaching, including Dr Rohit Verma of the National College of Ireland on investigating semantic textual similarity in legal documents, Prof Quisquella Addison of Northeastern University on how to train law students to use data for social change, and Jennifer Waters of University College Dublin, who suggested there is a need for a sector specific data protection impact assessment for irish legal analytics services. In the afternoon, the discussion moved to the future of legal practice. Dr Brian Barry of Technological University Dublin and Prof John Morison and Dr Ciarán O’Kelly, both at Queen’s University Belfast discussed similar research that they are conducting on the use of AI and other advanced technologies by solicitors in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Audrey Fried of Osgoode Hall Law School provided suggestions on how generative AI could be integrated into legal skills, while Marc Lauritsen of Capstone Practice Systems and Suffolk University Law School suggested that legal expertise might become 'too cheap to meter'. The final session focused on access to justice and ethics. Tereza Novotná of Masaryk University presented a project she is leading to provide online access to primary legal texts in the Czech Republic. Larry Bridgesmith of Vanderbilt University discussed principles for the responsible use of AI in the delivery of legal services which he has helped to develop. Finally, Dr Rónán Kennedy of University of Galway asked if it was ethical to use generative AI in legal teaching in light of its significant environmental footprint and the human harms caused by its development. Video recordings from the day are available on IFLA’s YouTube channel.