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What Do You Do With AI-Generated Legal Scholarship?: An April 2026 Question

Part 1 of 2.

Orin S. Kerr | 4.26.2026 2:32 PM

I have a question about how to present the results of legal scholarship generated in part with AI.  I pose it as "an April 2026 question" because what AI can do is changing quickly.  I would guess that how we think about AI assistance in legal scholarship will change over time, too. But I wanted to explain why I ask, and then open it up for feedback. I'm very interested in your thoughts.

I'm going to present the question in two posts.  In this post, I'm going to explain why I turned to AI for help with a scholarly problem I had.  In my next post, I will explain what AI was able to do and present my question about what I should do with what AI produced.

Here's the context.  A few years ago, I wrote a law review article, Decryption Originalism: The Lessons of Burr, 134 Harv. L. Rev. 905 (2021).  The article sought to understand the original public meaning of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and its possible application to unlocking cell phones.  It was based on a fascinating historical coincidence: In 1807, in the treason trial of Aaron Burr, there had been an........

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