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Body Cameras and the Path to Redeem Privacy Law
Get PDFFrom a privacy perspective, the movement towards police body cameras seems ominous. The prospect of a surveillance device capturing massive amounts of data concerning people’s most vulnerable moments is daunting. These concerns are compounded by the fact that there is little consensus and few hard rules on how and for whom these systems should be built and used. But in many ways, this blank slate is a gift. Law and policy makers are not burdened by the weight of rules and technologies created in a different time for a different purpose. These surveillance and data technologies will be modern. Many of the risks posed by the systems will be novel as well. Our privacy rules must keep up.
In this Article, I argue that police body cameras are an opportunity to chart a path past privacy law’s most vexing missteps and omissions. Specifically, lawmakers should avoid falling back on the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. Instead, they should use body cameras to embrace more nuanced theories of privacy, such as trust and obscurity. Trust-based relationships can be used to counter the harshness of the third party doctrine. The value of obscurity reveals the misguided nature of the argument that there is “no privacy in public.”
Law and policy makers can also better protect privacy by creating rules that address how body cameras and data technologies are designed in addition to how they are used. Since body-camera systems implicate every stage of the modern data life cycle from collection to disclosure, they can serve as a useful model across industry and government. But if law and policy makers hope to show how privacy rules can be improved, they must act quickly. The path to privacy law’s redemption will stay clear for only so long
Trump\u27s harsh immigration policies are a gift for human traffickers
No full textIn a dramatically ironic summer marked by vivid scenes of family separation and heart-wrenching pleas from immigrant parents, Ivanka Trump and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, stood smiling before a packed pressroom on June 28th to release the 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report
Ganesh Sitaraman’s Idealized American History
Get PDFA popular theme among patriots is to celebrate America’s special virtues, which distinguish it radically from European models. Ganesh Sitaraman tells us that political constitutions have generally been designed to prevent socially destabilizing class warfare between the rich, who seek greater domination, and the poor, who would like to redistribute the former’s wealth. America’s Constitution is distinctive because it was consciously designed for a society in which the middle class is large enough to preserve social stability. That is why Sitaraman calls it a “middle-class constitution.
The Real Reason the Investor Class Hates Pensions
Get PDFNo issue in America today better illustrates the divergent interests of working Americans and the 1 percent than pension reform. Substantial empirical evidence shows that America’s favored retirement vehicle — the 401(k), recently renounced by its own inventors — is grossly inadequate and will leave tens of millions of Americans with insufficient retirement assets. And yet states and cities are busy converting traditional pensions into these failing 401(k)s or equivalents, to the great benefit of money managers and the finance class
How Religious Refusal Laws Are Harming Sexual Minorities
No full textThis week, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the US Supreme Court was presented with the question of whether being denied any service demeans gay and lesbian populations. The Court avoided deciding on important constitutional questions, instead choosing to admonish the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for failing to provide the “religious neutrality that the Constitution requires.” The Court affirmed that service denials can result in “community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations,” but permitted such stigma to persist in the 12 states that have service denial laws. New research demonstrates the ongoing harm to health associated with these laws.
Last month, one of us co-authored a new study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, which examines the health implications of religious refusal laws that permit the denial of services to same-sex couples. The study indicates that there was a 46 percent increase in the proportion of sexual minority adults experiencing mental distress in states that implemented religious refusal laws. The research provides data underlining how dignity, and ultimately individual well-being and health, is harmed by the denial of services based on sexual orientation
Charlotte School of Law Sues ABA, Arguing it was Never Out of Compliance with Bar Pass Rule
No full textFollowing the Florida Coastal School of Law lawsuit filed against the American Bar Association last week, another InfiLaw school, the now-shuttered Charlotte School of Law, has sued the organization, arguing the ABA violated the law school\u27s due process rights when it placed the law school on probation in November 2016
Race, Disability and the Vote
No full texthttps://scholarship.law.bu.edu/clark_speakers/1090/thumbnail.jp
Distribuzione (commerciale) e diritto: variazioni su tema
Get PDFNel febbraio 1988 Roberto Pardolesi festeggiava il suo quarantesimo compleanno circondato da un gran gruppo di studenti, tutti galvanizzati dalla sua presenza e dalla sua proverbiale energia. Unico e inimitabile, era brillante e alternativo, una forza anti-sistema all’interno di un ateneo ricco di menti acute ma anche di convolute gerarchie. Dall’Università di Chicago – sede del suo LL.M. nel 1976 – aveva importato non solo l’analisi economica del diritto, ma anche improbabili magliette a strisce, un forte spirito di iniziativa, e un’attitudine radicalmente antiformalista nel diritto come nella vita. Gli regalammo il libro I miei primi quarant’anni di Marina Ripa di Meana, allora in gran voga, ed altri oggetti di maggior valore anche se non necessariamente di miglior gusto. Tante cose sono cambiate da allora, ma nutro a tutt’oggi enorme gratitudine per quella miscela di rigore accademico e di scanzonatezza che Roberto aveva saputo inventare. Erano per molti di noi anni difficili. Si trattava di scegliere che cosa fare di noi stessi e di una generica e inflazionata laurea in giurisprudenza. Roberto non dava ordini, ma prendeva straordinariamente sul serio sia noi in quanto persone sia ogni riga che scrivevamo, e soprattutto si proponeva, più o meno consapevolmente, quale role model. Il lavoro accademico del tipo da lui esemplificato richiedeva enorme dedizione, studio assiduo, gioco di squadra e propensione all’interdisciplinarità. La finalità di questi sforzi era partecipare al gioco delle scienze sociali: capire il ruolo del diritto nelle dinamiche del mercato e collocare ogni regola giuridica, ogni pronuncia giudiziale da annotare per Il Foro Italiano, all’interno di un grande e complicato mosaico di scala globale. Era un progetto irresistibile, che avrebbe influito profondamente sulle nostre scelte accademiche e di vita
Prejudice, Constitutional Moral Progress, and Being On the Right Side of History : Reflections on Loving v. Virginia at Fifty
Get PDFWhat does it mean to be on the “right” or “wrong” side of history? When Virginia’s Attorney General explained his decision not to defend Virginia’s “Defense of Marriage Law” prohibiting same-sex marriage, he asserted that it was time for Virginia to be on the “right” rather than “wrong” side of history and the law. He criticized his predecessors, who defended the discriminatory laws at issue in Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, and United States v. Virginia. Loving played a crucial role in the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, even as the dissenters disputed its relevance; it continues to feature in post-Obergefell controversies over religious liberty and LGBT rights. Looking back at the record in Loving, this article argues that Loving illustrates a theme of generational moral progress in constitutional interpretation: laws once justified by appeals to nature, history, tradition, divine law, and the well-being of children and society are repudiated as rooted in prejudice. Virginia sought to distance its antimiscegenation law from prejudice and white supremacy by appealing to social science that identified problems posed by “intermarriage” -- particularly for children -- and rejected the idea that intermarriage was a path toward progress and freedom from prejudice. Countering with narratives of constitutional moral progress, the Lovings and their amici argued that Virginia’s law was an odious relic of slavery and a present-day reflection of racial prejudice, unsupported by modern science. The article concludes with a look at Obergefell, and the competing arguments southern states made about Loving and the lessons of history
Quarantine and the Federal Role in Epidemics
Get PDFEvery recent presidential administration has faced an infectious disease threat, and this trend is certain to continue. The states have primary responsibility for protecting the public’s health under their police powers, but modern travel makes diseases almost impossible to contain intrastate. How should the federal government respond in the future? The Ebola scare in the U.S. repeated a typical response—demands for quarantine. In January 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued final regulations on its authority to issue Federal Quarantine Orders. These regulations rely heavily on confining persons who may or may not be ill, raising serious questions about federal commitment to due process protections as well as the scope of statutory authority to impose quarantine. As the Supreme Court has stated in United States v. Salerno, “liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.” Unconstrained use of quarantines undermines both the rule of law and public confidence in government decisions in times of crisis. This article analyzes the regulations and argues for a rights-based approach to infectious disease control that also protects public health. By respecting constitutional rights, the federal government can encourage public trust and cooperation and minimize harm, both essential requirements for controlling an epidemic