We explore some of the risks related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) from an actuarial perspective based on research from a transregional industry focus group. We aim to define the key gaps and challenges faced when implementing and utilising modern modelling techniques within traditional actuarial tasks from a risk perspective and in the context of professional standards and regulations. We explore best practice guidelines to attempt to define an ideal approach and propose potential next steps to help reach the ideal approach. We aim to focus on the considerations, initially from a traditional actuarial perspective and then, if relevant, consider some implications for non-traditional actuarial work, by way of examples. The examples are not intended to be exhaustive. The group considered potential issues and challenges of using AI, related to the following key themes:

• Ethical

  • ○ Bias, fairness, and discrimination

  • ○ Individualisation of risk assessment

  • ○ Public interest

• Professional

  • ○ Interpretability and explainability

  • ○ Transparency, reproducibility, and replicability

  • ○ Validation and governance

• Lack of relevant skills available

• Wider themes

This paper aims to provide observations that could help inform industry and professional guidelines or discussion or to support industry practitioners. It is not intended to replace current regulation, actuarial standards, or guidelines. The paper is aimed at an actuarial and insurance technical audience, specifically those who are utilising or developing AI, and actuarial industry bodies.

Fines and other financial sanctions are frequently imposed by criminal justice systems around the world. Yet they also raise grave concerns about economic discrimination. Unless they are perfectly scaled to defendants’ financial circumstances, they will penalize poor persons far more than rich ones—and poor defendants’ inability to pay can lead to further penalties like imprisonment or additional financial sanctions. These “poverty penalties” have received attention in domestic jurisdictions but are understudied as a global phenomenon. This Article takes up this issue and makes three contributions. First, it demonstrates that poverty penalties are prevalent in criminal justice systems around the world. Second, it shows how poverty penalties came to be overlooked in international human rights law and describes how this is starting to change. Third, the Article makes the normative case for addressing poverty penalties within human rights law and offers suggestions for how this can be achieved.

President Trump has done the impossible: he has made the international community enthusiastic about U.S. federalism. Even as they express dismay at Trump's plan to abandon the Paris Agreement, foreign leaders and internationalists have praised the efforts of  U.S. states and cities to combat climate change mitigation in accordance with the Agreement's goals. These leaders are responding to what I will call the outer face of foreign affairs federalism—the direct international engagement undertaken by U.S. states and cities. This outer face has gained visibility in recent years, spurred on not only by the exigencies of climate but also by developments in legal practice. Less noticed internationally but of great practical importance is the inner face of foreign affairs federalism—the ways in which U.S. states and cities interact with the federal government. In this contribution, I first describe these two faces of foreign affairs federalism as they relate to climate and then suggest some ways in which foreign leaders and internationalists could expand the outer face and respond to the inner face.

An uneasy equilibrium exists with respect to how the United States exits international agreements. In general, exit is easy as a matter of legal doctrine but, for important agreements, difficult as a matter of political practice. While presidents can withdraw the United States from most major international agreements, they have done so only rarely—and never yet with deep costs to the stability of our world order.

Zivotofsky v. Kerry (Zivotofsky II) is a case about the constitutional distribution of power. The narrow question is whether Congress or the President has the power to determine whether a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem can have “Israel” listed as his country of birth on his passport when the President does not formally recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel. As for the broader question—well, the case is packed with broader questions. Does the President have the exclusive constitutional authority to undertake the international legal act of recognition? Does the President have further exclusive constitutional authority to control the content of executive-branch communications with foreign nations? What powers does Congress have in foreign affairs? And are these justiciable issues for the federal courts to resolve?

Criticism of the Security Council tends to take one of two forms: first, that it does not act enough; and second, that it acts unwisely. Although these concerns are quite different, they both have partial causal roots in the Council’s voting process. Article 27 of the United Nations Charter provides that Council decisions on nonprocedural matters require “an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members.” The ability of any of the five permanent member stove to a Council resolution makes it difficult for the Council both to act in the first place and to pass corrective resolutions when existing resolutions are criticized as problematic. Indeed, the difficulty of undoing resolutions can make Council members wary about allowing the passage of resolutions at the very outset.

This chapter explores the footprint that temporary international legal regimes can leave on international law. Drawing on four different theories of state behaviour, it considers how temporary regimes can shape future permanent regimes. Under a rational design approach, temporary legal regimes influence future permanent regimes largely because they provide valuable experiences from which state actors learn. Under other theories of behaviour—historical institutionalism, constructivism, and behavioural international law—temporary legal regimes can have even more influence on permanent ones. Although these other three theories have important differences, all suggest that temporary regimes strongly shape the real and perceived possibilities for future permanent design choices. This chapter then looks at how these different theoretical approaches play out in case studies in refugee law, international criminal law, and international environmental law. While these case studies do not solely support any one theoretical account, collectively they demonstrate that temporary regimes can have outsized influence on permanent ones. This in turn has important implications for negotiators involved in regime design.

International criminal tribunals try defendants for horrific acts: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. At sentencing, however, evidence often arises of what I will call defendants’ ‘good deeds’ – humanitarian behaviour by the defendants towards those on the other side of the conflict that is conscientious relative to the culture in which the defendants are operating. This article examines the treatment of good deeds in the sentencing practices of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I show that the tribunals’ approaches are both undertheorized and internally inconsistent. I argue that the tribunals should draw upon the goals that underlie international criminal law in developing a coherent approach to considering good deeds for sentencing purposes.

The Statutes of the ICTY and ICTR provide for the review of final judgments upon the discovery of a ‘new fact’ that could have affected the judgments. The Appeals Chambers of the two Tribunals interpret the term ‘new fact’ to mean new information related to a matter that was not at issue during the original trial, as opposed to simply meaning new information of a factual nature. The article argues that this interpretation of ‘new fact’ creates a risk that review will be denied on formalistic grounds even in situations where principles of justice would make review plainly warranted. The article proposes several ways in which the Appeals Chambers could alter their case law to ensure against such injustice. Finally, the article considers the implications of this issue for other international criminal tribunals.