The Legal Eagle’s fall 2025 issue contains articles on the deepfakes, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision concerning ghost guns, and teens voting in school board election in Newark. A PDF of the Legal Eagle’s fall 2025 edition can be downloaded or individual articles can be read and/or printed from The Legal Eagle’s blog, The Lowdown.
Any questions, contact the editor of The Legal Eagle, Jodi L. Miller. She can be reached via email at jmiller@njsbf.org.
Here are the headlines from The Legal Eagle’s Fall 2025 Issue:
Becoming a Lifelong Voter In New Jersey Could Start at Age 16
Thomas Jefferson once said, “We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” For the most part, those who can participate in government by exercising their right to vote are citizens that are 18 years of age or older, as cited in the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Some cities across the country, however, are expanding the right to vote for those younger than 18 in certain elections. For example, in January 2024, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed the New Voter Empowerment Act into law. The law allows 17-year-olds to vote in primary elections as long as they will turn 18 years of age on or before the general election. The law takes effect on January 1, 2026. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 21 states and Washington, D.C. have similar laws. READ MORE
Grappling with Ghost Guns
The legal landscape of gun safety faces a new frontier centering around the “ghost gun.” While the term ghost gun may be catchy, the official name is “privately made firearms” (PMFs), and these untraceable weapons present a significant challenge for courts and law enforcement.
PMFs are firearms that people build themselves, often from kits bought online. The key component in a ghost gun kit is called an “80% receiver” or frame, which is deliberately left unfinished. The “80%” refers to the amount of work already completed when someone purchases the kit. READ MORE
New Law Regarding Deepfakes Says, “Take It Down”
In October 2023, male students at Westfield High School in New Jersey were caught distributing nude images of several female classmates in group text chats.
The images in question were not real, but rather so-called “deepfakes”— images or videos that have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI) with such accuracy that they appear to be real. Students behind the cyberbullying attack in Westfield used deepfake technology to blend the girls’ faces, sourced from real social media photos, onto realistic-looking, AI-produced nude bodies. READ MORE
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