Interesting legal research topics tend to cluster in the same places: where a new statute just landed, where a court vacated an agency rule, where the Supreme Court closed one door and left another ajar, or where technology is doing something the drafters never imagined. Heading into 2026, several areas fit that description, and most of them have shifted enough in the past eighteen months that research done earlier is already stale.
AI, Authorship, and Copyright
The U.S. Copyright Office has taken a firm position that human authorship is required for copyright protection, and works created entirely by artificial intelligence are not registrable. Registration guidance issued in March 2023 requires applicants to disclose any more than minimal AI-generated material and describe what the human author actually contributed.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
What makes this a live research area is the Office’s rejection of prompt-based authorship. Writing a detailed or extensive prompt does not count, because the prompt reflects the user’s idea while the AI system controls how the idea gets expressed. Editing, arranging, or adding to AI output can produce copyrightable elements; the AI-generated portions on their own get nothing. The practical consequences for anyone building commercial creative work with generative tools are still being tested, and registration decisions are producing a growing body of material to analyze.
Section 230 and AI-Generated Output
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields online platforms from liability for content posted by their users.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S. Code 230 – Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material The statute was written in 1996 with human-posted content in mind. The open question is whether AI-generated responses count as content “provided by another information content provider,” or whether the platform itself becomes the speaker when its own system generates the output rather than merely hosting someone else’s words. Courts have not settled it. That makes this one of the cleanest research gaps in internet law.
Biometric Privacy and the State-by-State Gap
Illinois passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act in 2008, requiring written consent before companies collect fingerprints, facial scans, or iris scans. BIPA remains the most aggressive statute in the country, with damages of $1,000 per negligent violation and $5,000 per intentional violation. Several other states have adopted their own biometric privacy laws since, though most provide weaker enforcement mechanisms. The gap between states with comprehensive biometric laws and states with none is a productive area for comparative work, especially as facial recognition spreads through law enforcement with little federal regulation on top of general Fourth Amendment protections.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act
Signed into law on May 19, 2025, the TAKE IT DOWN Act created the first federal criminal prohibition on publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes. Publishing a deepfake intimate image of an adult without consent carries up to two years in prison; if the victim is a minor, the penalty increases to three years.3Congress.gov. Text – S.146 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) TAKE IT DOWN Act
The law also requires platforms to establish a removal process. Once a valid takedown request is submitted, the platform has 48 hours to remove the image and make reasonable efforts to find and remove identical copies. The definition of “digital forgery” is broad enough to cover any AI-generated intimate depiction that a reasonable person would mistake for an authentic image of the victim.3Congress.gov. Text – S.146 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) TAKE IT DOWN Act Because the statute is new, early enforcement, First Amendment challenges, and platform compliance patterns will all be worth tracking.
Software Patent Eligibility Under Alice
Getting a patent on software or an algorithm requires clearing a two-part test the Supreme Court established in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank (2014). Examiners first ask whether the claim is directed at an abstract idea, a law of nature, or a natural phenomenon. If it is, the second step asks whether the claim includes something beyond that abstraction that amounts to an “inventive concept.”4United States Patent and Trademark Office. Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Section 2106
Running an abstract idea on a generic computer does not make it patentable. The involvement of a mathematical equation or algorithm does not automatically doom a claim either. The line between “abstract idea on a computer” and “patentable application of a concept” remains genuinely fuzzy, and courts continue to draw and redraw it case by case.4United States Patent and Trademark Office. Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Section 2106 For researchers who like doctrinal unpredictability, this is one of the richest veins in patent law.
DMCA Repair Exemptions and the Right to Repair
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, bypassing digital locks on software is generally illegal, even on devices you own. Every three years, the Librarian of Congress grants temporary exemptions. The most recent round, finalized in October 2024, renewed and expanded exemptions covering vehicles, consumer electronics, commercial food-preparation equipment, and medical devices. Circumvention is allowed only when necessary for diagnosis, maintenance, or repair, and only when it is not used to access other copyrighted works.5Federal Register. Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control
The three-year cycle creates an unusual dynamic: every exemption must be re-justified from scratch or it disappears. That cycle, paired with the growing right-to-repair movement at the state level, keeps producing new material at the intersection of copyright, consumer rights, and planned obsolescence.
Non-Compete Agreements After the FTC Rule Was Vacated
The FTC’s attempt to ban non-compete clauses nationwide collapsed in court. A federal district court found the agency lacked statutory authority to issue the rule, and in September 2025 the FTC formally dismissed its appeals and agreed to vacate the regulation.6Federal Trade Commission. Federal Trade Commission Files to Accede to Vacatur of Non-Compete Clause Rule Enforceability is now entirely a matter of state law. Some states ban non-competes outright for most workers. Others enforce them broadly. The research question has shifted from federal preemption to a state-by-state patchwork, and the patchwork is actively changing.
AI in Hiring After Federal Guidance Was Withdrawn
Employers increasingly use AI tools for resume screening, hiring decisions, and performance evaluation. Federal anti-discrimination laws still apply when those tools produce disparate outcomes based on race, sex, or other protected characteristics. But the EEOC removed its AI-specific guidance from its website in January 2025, and the Department of Labor pulled back related best-practice documents around the same time. A handful of states have stepped in with their own regulations addressing AI-powered video interviews and algorithmic discrimination in hiring. The gap between what the technology does and what regulators have addressed is where most of the current scholarship sits.
Worker classification remains the foundation underneath all of this. The Fair Labor Standards Act’s protections for minimum wage and overtime apply only to employees. The Department of Labor uses an “economic reality” test: if the worker is economically dependent on the employer, that worker is an employee regardless of what the contract says.7eCFR. 29 CFR Part 795 – Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act Classification also drives access to workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, and employer-sponsored benefits, and remote work has layered a separate problem on top. When an employee lives in one state and works remotely for an employer in another, paid leave, workers’ compensation, and unemployment insurance are generally governed by the state where the work is performed.8USAGov. Workplace Laws Determining where remote work is “performed” is the harder question, and multistate employers face overlapping obligations on wages, leave, and benefits.9U.S. Department of Labor. Summary of the Major Laws of the Department of Labor
Federal Tax Law After the 2025 Act
The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act, signed on July 4, 2025, made permanent the individual income tax framework from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including the lower individual rates, the enhanced standard deduction, and the 20% deduction for pass-through business income.
Two features of the new law have reshaped planning work. The estate and gift tax exemption, which many taxpayers expected to revert to roughly $7 million per person, instead increased to $15 million per individual for 2026, meaning married couples can pass up to $30 million free of federal estate tax.10Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax The higher exemption changes the calculus on trust structures, gifting strategies, and generation-skipping transfers. Separately, the Form 1099-K reporting threshold reverted to its pre-2021 level. For 2026, third-party payment platforms must report a seller’s transactions only when the gross amount exceeds $20,000 and the seller completes more than 200 transactions.11Internal Revenue Service. IRS Issues FAQs on Form 1099-K Threshold Under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill; Dollar Limit Reverts to $20,000 Sellers under the threshold still owe tax on their income; they simply won’t receive an automatic 1099-K.
EMTALA and State Abortion Bans
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act requires every Medicare-participating hospital with an emergency department to screen anyone who arrives and to stabilize patients with emergency medical conditions, regardless of ability to pay.12Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) It has been federal law since 1986 and applies to nearly every hospital in the country.
EMTALA became a flashpoint after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. Federal guidance issued under the Biden administration affirmed that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide stabilizing abortion care when a pregnant patient faces a medical emergency, including in states with abortion bans. The Trump administration rescinded that guidance in June 2025. The statute itself has not changed. The removal of federal guidance has created uncertainty about exactly when EMTALA’s stabilization requirement overrides state prohibitions, and this intersection is now one of the most actively litigated areas of healthcare law.
Climate Disclosure After the SEC Withdrawal
The SEC adopted rules in March 2024 requiring public companies to disclose climate-related risks that materially affect their business, strategy, or financial condition, with large filers also required to report certain greenhouse gas emissions data.13U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Adopts Rules to Enhance and Standardize Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors Those rules never took effect. The SEC stayed enforcement pending legal challenges, and in March 2025 the Commission voted to withdraw its defense of the rules entirely.14U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Votes to End Defense of Climate Disclosure Rules No federal climate-disclosure mandate currently applies to public companies, and research now focuses on whether state-level requirements or international reporting standards will fill the gap.
Voting Rights and Gerrymandering
Federal voting protections prohibit denying or restricting the right to vote based on race or color and provide tools for challenging discriminatory voting procedures in federal court.15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 U.S.C. 10101 – Voting Rights The enforcement landscape changed dramatically after the Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula that determined which jurisdictions needed federal approval before changing their voting rules.16Justia Supreme Court. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013) Congress has the authority to write a new coverage formula but hasn’t. What enforcement mechanisms remain effective without preclearance is a central research question.
Gerrymandering sits in a similar posture. The Supreme Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that partisan gerrymandering claims are political questions federal courts cannot resolve.17Supreme Court of the United States. Rucho v. Common Cause, No. 18-422 That closed the door on federal partisan challenges but left racial gerrymandering claims under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment intact.18Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated Partisan disputes now play out in state courts under state constitutional provisions, while racial cases stay in the federal system.
Rights of Nature
The “rights of nature” movement seeks to grant legal personhood to ecosystems so they can be represented in court. Since 2006, more than a dozen U.S. communities and tribal nations have adopted some form of rights-of-nature law. The Yurok Tribe recognized the legal rights of the Klamath River in 2019, and Toledo, Ohio, approved a Lake Erie Bill of Rights the same year. Enforcement has been difficult, but the movement represents a genuine expansion of who and what can hold legal standing, and it sits alongside the common-law Public Trust Doctrine and federal statutes like the Clean Air Act.19Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S.C. Chapter 85 – Air Pollution Prevention and Control
Pretrial Detention Algorithms and No-Knock Warrants
Federal pretrial detention operates under a statute that directs judges to choose the least restrictive conditions that will reasonably ensure a defendant appears in court and does not endanger the community.20Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3142 – Release or Detention of a Defendant Pending Trial A growing number of jurisdictions, at least 60 across the country, now use algorithmic risk-assessment tools to help judges decide. The constitutional problem is that these tools rely on historical arrest data that carries existing racial disparities. Courts have begun grappling with whether defendants have a due process right to inspect the algorithm’s scoring, and at least one state supreme court has held that defendants must receive the specific questions, answers, and scores used in their assessment.
No-knock warrants raise a parallel Fourth Amendment problem. The standard rule is that officers knock, announce themselves, and wait a reasonable time before entering. Under the Supreme Court’s framework, police need reasonable suspicion that knocking would be dangerous, pointless, or would allow destruction of evidence to skip that step.21Cornell Law Institute. No-Knock Warrant The “reasonable suspicion” standard is more flexible than courts typically require for other privacy intrusions, and after several high-profile incidents, a number of states have moved to restrict or ban the practice. The result is one of the more active areas of Fourth Amendment scholarship right now.