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Truth and torture in the war on terror
No full textThe Report, Scott Z Burns new thriller, adopts one of two conflicting narratives about post-9/11 torture by the USA. The “Cheney–Brennan narrative” is that torture is a “black art” that must be deployed in national security emergencies to save lives. The counter narrative, the human rights and science-based narrative, is that torture is a crime against humanity that produces only false information. When images of torture become public, they are horrifying and provoke outcry. For example, the 2004 photographs from Abu Ghraib of US Army troops brutally abusing Iraqi prisoners were devastating to the reputation of the USA. The Abu Ghraib photos taught the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was running its own torture programme at “black sites” around the world at that time, that videotapes of waterboarding could not become public
Identifying the Impact of Labor Market Opportunities on Criminal Behavior
No full textIn this paper, we study the relationship between labor market conditions and criminal behavior. We begin by qualitatively replicating key results in Raphael and Winter-Ebmer (2001), an influential paper that provided some of the first causal evidence connecting the state of the labor market (as measured by the unemployment rate) to criminal behavior (as measured by reported offense rates). Raphael and Winter-Ebmer find statistically significant positive effects of unemployment on property crime rates and a weaker and less consistent relationship between unemployment and violent crime rates. We build on this seminal work by exploring whether these estimated relationships continue to hold in more recent data. In carrying out our analysis, we find reason to consider alternative identification strategies (especially in the later period of the extended sample). We also investigate the impact of adding wages to the model, and we conduct a number of additional robustness checks. We conclude that the broad themes of Raphael and Winter-Ebmer\u27s work remain valid, and yet additional research has the potential to reveal a more intricate and nuanced relationship between labor markets and crime
Environmental Determinism: Functional Egalitarian Spaces Promote Functional Egalitarian Practices
Get PDFEgalitarian, place-based thinking belongs at the table when considering approaches to improving early childhood. Places connect people’s lives. They also generate patterns that organize, and can re-organize, our social order and behavior. Places can spark and support the development of self-governance and cultivate a political voice grounded in the needs of the same community that place generates. Whether considered as community schools, community centers, or more ambitiously, community housing developments designed to include services that meet the needs of residents, the spatial dimensions of early childhood policy require explicit consideration
Byrd v United States: Unauthorized Drivers of Rental Cars Have Fourth Amendment Rights? Not as Evident as it Seems
Get PDFNo discerning student of the Supreme Court would contend that Justice Anthony Kennedy broadly interpreted the Fourth Amendment during his thirty years on the Court. His majority opinions in Maryland v. King, Drayton v. United States and his willingness to join the three key sections of Justice Scalia’s opinion in Hudson v. Maryland, which held that suppression is never a remedy for knock-and-announce violations, are just a few examples of Justice Kennedy’s narrow view of the Fourth Amendment.In light of his previous votes in search and seizure cases, surprisingly Justice Kennedy, in what would be his final Fourth Amendment opinion for a majority of the Court, authored an opinion in favor of a criminal defendant. In Byrd v United States a unanimous Court rejected the government’s argument that unauthorized drivers always lack an expectation of privacy in a rental car and thus can never challenge a police search of the car. Byrd was driving a rental car in violation of the rental agreement but with the permission of the renter; the police searched the trunk of the car, allegedly without consent or probable cause, and found heroin and body armor. The Court in Byrd held that the search was unlawful because “as a general rule, someone in otherwise lawful possession and control of a rental car has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it even if the rental agreement does not list him or her as an authorized driver.” This article takes a closer look at Byrd to examine what it means for Fourth Amendment doctrine. It demonstrates that the Court’s holding is not as simple as it seems, and I consider whether the crucial elements of Justice Kennedy’s analysis affect the logic of prior precedents and the Court’s understanding of standing under the Fourth Amendment. While Justice Kennedy wants us to think that the reasoning and holding in Byrd is obvious, his opinion relies on property interests and societal norms that are hardly evident. Despite what Byrd says (and some scholars urge), property rights should not control the meaning and scope of the Fourth Amendment. The Court could have reached the same result in Byrd without relying on property interests or debatable social norms. Police cannot search a motorist’s vehicle unless probable cause exists that the vehicle contains evidence of criminality. If Byrd’s operation of the vehicle was not a crime, why should he not have the same Fourth Amendment rights as other lawful drivers? The Court could have ruled simpliciter that unauthorized drivers (who are not car thieves) occupy the same seat as other drivers: police cannot search their vehicles without probable cause. Period. No need to ponder “property concepts” like a right to exclude third parties. If there is no probable cause, there can be no search. That approach would have avoided future confusion for police, judges, and the public. And it would have promoted a traditional view of the Fourth Amendment: police should not have unbridled discretion to invade the privacy of motorists
Sexual Privacy
Get PDFThose who wish to control, expose, and damage the identities of individuals routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms and “up their skirts.” Such images are used to coerce people into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography. Each of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors, expectations, and choices that manage access to and information about the human body, sex, sexuality, gender, and intimate activities. Most often, women, nonwhites, sexual minorities, and minors shoulder the abuse. Sexual privacy, this Article contends, is a distinct privacy interest that warrants recognition and protection. It serves as a cornerstone for sexual autonomy and consent. It is foundational to human dignity and intimacy, and its denial results in the subordination of marginalized communities. Traditional privacy law is increasingly insufficient to protect this interest. Its efficacy is eroding just as digital technologies magnify the scale and scope of the harm. The Article suggests a new approach to protecting sexual privacy that focuses on law and markets. Law should provide federal and state penalties for all types of sexual-privacy invasions, remove the statutory immunity from liability for certain content platforms, and work in tandem with hate-crime laws. Market efforts should be pursued if they enhance the overall privacy interests of all involved
Attorney as Accompagnateur: Resilient Lawyering When Victory is Uncertain or Nearly Impossible
Get PDFSocial justice lawyers come to the profession intending to make a difference through the instruments of law. And gloriously, they often make a difference in people’s lives for the better. They make our world a more just, compassionate, and tolerant place. But there is no denying that, in poverty law practice, legal success can be illusive, ephemeral, or perhaps a mirage. How does that lawyer feel when the legal remedies at her disposal, even if “successful,” fail to mitigate the injustices suffered by her clients? Are there definitions of professional satisfaction and success that are enduring, even if legal success or social justice is not attainable? This article comprises a set of essays that explore the lawyer’s capacity to persevere in the face of legal loss that is so regular that pessimism, indifference, and exhaustion set in. Our quest is to describe the contours of a lawyer’s role that gives the poverty lawyer professional identity and purpose, despite repeated loss. That role is the accompagnateur. Our hypothesis: a lawyer’s internalization of her role as accompagnateur to her clients can gird and enable her to sustain motivation to fight the good fight. Namely, the first or foundational professional value is to accompany her client—stand beside, stand up for, and give respect and voice to the client’s story—irrespective of victory. In so doing, the lawyer’s deepest source of professional identity and purpose is in accompanying the client well. It is more about serving as an accompagnateur than it is about legal victories and vanquishing injustice, per se. That sounds harsh. Our thesis is that accompaniment, done well, makes one a better lawyer for her client and simultaneously nourishes the lawyer enough to withstand inevitable losses. This collection of writings from students, a veteran public interest lawyer, and practice faculty (clinic and field placement) explore aspects of the accompaniment role for lawyers working on behalf of clients from marginalized communities, with a special focus on individual representation. The collection traces an arc of a career: from the vantage of a decades-long career of a public interest lawyer encrusted with ennui to the perspectives of the wide-eyed law students energized and empowered by their ability to use newly acquired legal skills to serve their clients. Other essays in the collection speak to a set of skills that help the practitioner and law student to be client-effective and personally resilient through the accompagnateur role
Common Ownership and Executive Incentives: The Implausibility of Compensation as an Anticompetitive Mechanism
Get PDFMutual funds, pension funds and other institutional investors are a growing presence in U.S. equity markets, and these investors frequently hold large stakes in shares of competing companies. Because these common owners might prefer to maximize the values of their portfolios of companies, rather than the value of individual companies in isolation, this new reality has lead to a concern that companies in concentrated industries with high degrees of common ownership might compete less vigorously with each other than they otherwise would. But what mechanism would link common ownership with reduced competition? Some commentators argue that one of the most plausible mechanisms is executive pay design. The idea is that executive pay at companies in concentrated industries with high common ownership may be designed to dampen the incentives of the companies’ managers to compete aggressively with peer firms. This essay challenges both the theoretical and empirical bases for this argument and contends that executive pay design is actually an implausible mechanism linking common ownership with reduced competition. For example, I show that, contrary to the claims of some commentators, the use of competition-enhancing executive relative performance evaluation as a compensation tool has increased dramatically in parallel with the increase in common ownership, exactly the opposite of what one would expect if common owners sought to dampen competition through pay design. Despite voicing skepticism regarding a possible association between common ownership and executive pay design, this essay also offers suggestions for improving empirical analyses going forward that should help to resolve the debate. If, however, as this essay argues, executive pay design is an implausible mechanism, this determination tends to undermine the broader claim that common ownership dampens inter-firm competition
We need to fix our broken asylum system
No full textConjuring images of duct tape and kidnapping, the president offered an insistent call to action about human trafficking at the border. The White House on twitter noted that, “[t]his is an urgent humanitarian issue” and that “[a]nyone who says there is no border crisis needs to talk to victims who have lived it.
As an immigrant child in America, there are 3 ways to die
No full textAs an immigrant child seeking asylum in America today, there are three ways to die. You can die trying to get here — in the desert, without access to water, or attempting to swim the Rio Grande. You can die while waiting in Mexico to seek asylum at a port of entry. Or you can die in U.S. immigration custody — in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, succumbing to the flu, dehydration or a respiratory infection
MacArthur Genius Danielle Citron on Deepfakes and the Representative Katie Hill Scandal
No full textWhen Danielle Citron began studying online harassment more than a decade ago, her argument that online mobs and coordinated harassment constituted civil-rights violations didn’t make sense to many of her colleagues. Now, the legal scholar works with some of the most important tech companies and lawmakers on finding ways to minimize harassment, which has grown from posting standard lies and insults to revenge porn and “deep fakes.” Earlier this year, Citron received a MacArthur “genius” grant for her work in the field. She spoke with Intelligencer about what’s changed over the last few years and what hasn’t