The Future of Civil Liberties in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Symposium Schedule (September 25, 2026)

9:00 – 9:10

Opening Statement & Welcome

Hana Pham, Nebraska Law Review Symposium Editor

9:15 – 10:05

Yonathan Arbel

As AI agents play an increasing role in our lives, they will become a significant focus of government searches. In this talk, Professor Yonathan Arbel examines why searching these agents presents such a difficult problem: their activities and accumulated information may offer a revealing window into the lives of the people who rely on them. Drawing on questions raised by Chatrie, Arbel will reflect on the challenges that the growing role of AI agents poses for government search and privacy.

Yonathan Arbel is the William Alfred Rose Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law, where he directs the Program on AI and Legal Studies and co-directs the Center for Law and AI Risk. His research focuses on contracts, artificial intelligence, consumer law, and the ways emerging technologies affect legal decision-making and institutional design. His scholarship has appeared in leading law reviews and interdisciplinary journals, and his current work examines A-corps, Agentic AI corporations.

10:15 – 10:55

Kevin Frazier: AI-induced Constitutional Disequilibrium

What are the constitutional ramifications of a governor using an AI agent to issue dozens or hundreds of executive orders in a single day? How should our constitutional order deal with a legislator delegating their vote to an AI model? Are there rule of law concerns raised by a judicial clerk using AI to simulate how a decision may impact certain interest groups? Professor Kevin Frazier will explore these and related questions in his presentation on technologically-induced constitutional disequilibrium. 

Professor Kevin Frazier leads the AI Innovation and Law Program at the University of Texas School of Law and serves as a Senior Editor at Lawfare. His research focuses on the nexus of emerging technology, regulatory design, and the Rule of Law. Frazier has testified before Congress on topics ranging from AI to undersea cables; he regularly advises state and federal policymakers on governing emerging technologies. You can listen to his two cents on all things tech policy via the Scaling Laws podcast.

11:05 – 11:45

Daniel Schwarcz

In recent years, rapid advances in artificial intelligence have been celebrated for their potential to expand access to justice. Consistent with these aspirations, growing evidence suggests that individuals are indeed using general purpose AIs to assist with a wide range of legal tasks. Yet the limited reach of attorney-client privilege and the work-product doctrine often penalize these efforts to seek legal assistance from AI, pushing individuals either to retain counsel when doing so is unnecessary or to forgo understanding and asserting their legal rights. 

This talk will examine the emerging legal framework governing whether AI-assisted legal work by non-lawyers is protected by attorney-client and work-product doctrines, while considering how courts and legislatures might reform these doctrines to promote the ability of individuals to safely use AI to navigate legal complexities.

Professor Daniel Schwarcz is the Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law and a Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. His scholarship focuses on insurance law, financial regulation, consumer protection, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in legal practice and legal education.

Schwarcz’s work has appeared in many of the nation’s leading law reviews, including the University of Chicago Law Review (three times), Virginia Law Review (twice), UCLA Law Review, Southern California Law Review (twice), Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review (three times), and Iowa Law Review (three times). His scholarship has also been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Law and Empirical Analysis (twice), and the Journal of Legal Education (three times).

His research has received numerous honors, including the American Law Institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal, awarded to law professors whose work shows exceptional promise in shaping public policy and improving the law. Schwarcz has repeatedly been recognized among the most cited scholars in tort and insurance law and consistently ranks among the most downloaded law professors on SSRN.

12:00 - 1:00

Lunch Break

1:00 - 1:45 

Keynote Address

Matthew Tokson: Artificial Intelligence and Near-Total Law Enforcement

Imagine, in the future, that police have access to powerful surveillance systems that can detect virtually all crimes committed outside of the home. Such systems would radically transform the practice of law enforcement, enabling near-total crime deterrence while also threatening privacy harms and authoritarian abuses on an unprecedented scale. This promising and unsettling future, once purely hypothetical, increasingly resembles current law enforcement practice. Countries around the world, from the United States to China, now employ networked camera systems that use artificial intelligence to monitor cities and detect crimes and other unwanted behavior. As these systems grow more ubiquitous and capable, they will ultimately transform law enforcement itself.

This keynote presentation examines the legal, theoretical, and political implications of near-total law enforcement in the age of artificial intelligence. It describes how fully automated surveillance systems may circumvent existing Fourth Amendment restrictions on pervasive surveillance. It analyzes the political dynamics of law enforcement that targets everyone rather than a narrow set of people. It then weighs the potentially enormous benefits and enormous risks of near-total law enforcement, and offers a set of proposals for regulating advanced law enforcement systems to secure many of their upsides while mitigating their risks.

Professor Tokson's research focuses on the Fourth Amendment and its application to new technologies and social contexts, as well as artificial intelligence and its potential future impacts. He has also written about broader theoretical issues in privacy, judicial decisionmaking, and criminal punishment. Professor Tokson's articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Michigan Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Georgetown Law Review, and the Minnesota Law Review. His article Knowledge and Fourth Amendment Privacy was discussed at oral argument in the Supreme Court case Carpenter v. United States.

2:00 - 2:40

Paul Weitzel

Professor Weitzel will discuss AI safety, making the argument that "regulated" does not mean "safe" and "unregulated" does not mean "unconstrained." Prof. Weitzel will look at non-regulatory constraints on catastrophic risk and the civil liberty risks of regulation.

Professor Paul Weitzel joined the University of Nebraska College of Law faculty in 2022. Prior to that he worked in Silicon Valley and the Middle East conducting international transactions on six continents. His most notable deal was the initial public offering of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, the largest initial public offering to date. Professor Weitzel’s experience covers mergers and acquisitions, international and domestic capital markets, venture capital and infrastructure. Professor Weitzel’s research focuses on corporate theory and artificial intelligence. His scholarship considers corporate principles—such as agency, liability and control—in the context of corporate governance, developing technologies and AI agents.

Panel Discussion

This panel will discuss how AI may affect privacy, government surveillance and free speech. 

Moderated by Professor Paul Weitzel with panelists Professors Lori Hoetger, Greg Dickinson, and Kyle Langvardt. 

Closing Remarks