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Protecting Our Nation’s Children in the Technological Age: Arguing For An Interpretation of “Sexual Activity” in 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) That Does Not Require Physical Contact
Get PDFOur Nation’s justice system values “equal protection under the law.” This represents the belief that all individuals should be treated equally under the law regardless of personal characteristics. Traditionally, we think about this in a context of things like race, gender, or ethnicity. However, this also encompasses the general idea that individuals nationwide should be accountable to and protected by the same laws. As it relates to criminal law, this notion highlights the importance of uniformity in a criminal justice system. Without consistent application and execution, a criminal justice system will never be fair or “equal.”
The federal child enticement statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b), criminalizes the coercion or enticement of a minor to engage in “any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” The statute was initially enacted as part of the Mann Act to punish the prostitution of females, but it has since been expanded to target sexual harms against children regardless of gender and to account for the growing risk of online harms stemming from the rise in the Internet, social media, and other technology. Notably, the statute carries a 10-year mandatory minimum term of imprisonment.
When the statute was enacted, Congress did not provide a definition for the phrase “sexual activity.” As a result, a circuit split is emerging among the federal jurisdictions about how the term “sexual activity” should be properly interpreted. The Seventh Circuit is the only circuit thus far to hold that “sexual activity” as it is used in section 2422(b) requires interpersonal physical activity between individuals. Conversely, the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits held that “sexual activity” does not require interpersonal physical contact between individuals, so sexual crimes that only occur online could constitute an offense.
This Note argues that the proper interpretation of “sexual activity” is the broader definition endorsed by the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits that does not require interpersonal physical contact between individuals. First, this Note argues that this interpretation is more appropriate because it conforms with the traditional canons of statutory interpretation unlike the reasoning underlying the narrow interpretation endorsed by the Seventh Circuit. Second, this Note argues that the broader interpretation is necessary because children have become more vulnerable due to developments in technology and because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, this Note argues that by adopting a broader interpretation of “sexual activity,” section 2422(b) can serve as a stronger prosecutorial tool and will help fill in gaps in the justice system left by the federal trafficking statute codified in 18 U.S.C. § 1591. Lastly, this Note addresses potential problems with this interpretation and some solutions to address these
The Death Dignity Demands: The Eighth Amendment Requires Incarcerated People Decide Their Method of Execution
Get PDFRecently, there have been a number of incarcerated people on death-row challenging their method of execution and proposing an alternative: usually, firing squad. Courts are hesitant to grant this request for a number of reasons, including the rare use of the firing squad. But there is substantial evidence this method is the most humane. Additionally, it appears incarcerated people think so, which is why so many in recent years chose—or petitioned for—death by firing squad rather than lethal injection or electrocution. As pharmaceutical companies halt their drugs’ distribution to prisons, prisons are forced to come up with their own—often more dangerous and less humane—drug cocktails, or revert back to the use of the electric chair, which has led to many botched and painful executions. Questions about the humaneness of execution methods the United States has used for more than fifty years are once again being raised. Already, there are some states, including Alabama and South Carolina, who allow for incarcerated people to petition for a method of execution other than the standard, and the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that incarcerated people can file a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 petition to receive an execution method their state does not currently provide.
While this mid-point is a step in the right direction, many of these petitions for alternative methods of execution are denied; some of those incarcerated people who petitioned and were denied another method ended up experiencing painful, inhumane deaths. Society’s interest in humaneness demands serious consideration on widespread availability of the firing squad as a method of execution for incarcerated people on death row. This Note will specifically argue that the Eighth Amendment demands an incarcerated person’s right to choose how he dies
Dilemmas in Digital Abuse
No full textDigital abuse is on the rise. People are increasingly using networked technologies to engage in harassment, stalking, privacy invasions, and surveillance. The law will often adapt to deal with harmful technologies, but is it adapting quickly enough? Is law even the right tool to confront digital abuse? If it is, which laws work best and who should enforce them?
One of the pressing challenges of our time is deciding whether and how to regulate digital abuse. Through a range of “dilemmas” involving digital abuse, this book will interrogate responses to various harms enabled by networked technologies, exploring issues related to civil rights, consumer protection, cybercrime, free speech, privacy, and private self-governance. In covering these topics, this book confronts issues related to gender, race, class, sexuality, and intersectionality, all of which are crucial to understanding how our society shapes and is shaped by technology.
My goal in publishing these dilemmas is to do my part to make legal education more affordable, accessible, and adaptable. That’s why I’m making the book available to all for free. By using a CC BY-NC license, I’m also inviting others to adapt these materials for their own use, so long as they adhere to the non-commerciality and attribution terms. (Anyone interested in “remixing” this book for their own purposes should feel free to contact me at [email protected], including if you’d like a more adaptable non-PDF version.)
You’re welcome to print any part of this book if you want a hard copy to accompany the digital version. If you do print it, I ask that you please be environmentally conscious by using double-sided pages. Because the digital version can be easily searched, it contains no index or other finding aids that are conventional for printed books. You should also be able to enhance your experience with the digital version by highlighting text, adding comments, and annotating it in any other ways you find helpful.
You may also purchase a hard copy for around $14 here. This paperback version is made and distributed by Lulu, and I make no revenue from any sales.
Given that this book focuses extensively on different forms of abuse and violence, I caution that some of the dilemmas might induce trauma or distress. I worry that providing individualized content warnings before each dilemma would reflect my own perspectives and experiences but exclude what might trigger other people, especially because the legal and social issues surrounding digital abuse challenge us to confront difficult and disturbing issues in ways I can’t always predict in advance. Individualized warnings might also bias a reader’s analysis when responding to the questions following each dilemma. As a result, I offer this general content warning here and encourage readers to be in the right headspace—whatever that might mean to you—when engaging with these dilemmas.
Finally, I welcome any reactions to this book. Please reach out if you think important perspectives are missing or if you find errors or typos. I surely have blind spots in the way I present some topics, plus I lack a professional editor to catch my linguistic blunders. You can contact me at [email protected] with any constructive criticism.
Some of the dilemmas in this book can be addressed without conducting outside research, while others build on materials covered in my Digital Abuse course. If you’d like to see the syllabus designed to accompany these dilemmas, please visit www.thomaskadri.com/digital-abuse.https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/books/1169/thumbnail.jp
Stop Carrying the Interest! A Comparison of U.S. and Chilean Taxation of Private Equity Fund Managers Under International Human Rights Law
Get PDFWhy do we tax? How do we tax? Who should we tax? While asked by
almost all of us, these questions are usually answered by a select few.
Economists who work in theoretical realities, lawyers full of jargon, and
legislators with competing interests all have different answers to those
questions. Some might even have different answers depending on who is
asking. Beyond the theory and the jargon, however, lies an underlying base of
equity and fairness that drives all citizens to ask these questions. This Note
will attempt to answer one small piece of these enormous questions by
focusing on the taxation of private equity managers in the United States
compared with that of Chile, arguing that, while the Chilean government has
complied with what little international guidance there is on tax policy, the
United States is violating international law by offering preferential treatment
for high net-worth private equity managers
Inequity in Equities: SPACs and the Expansion of the Retail Market
Get PDFFederal securities law creates a divide between the haves and the have-nots: On one side are the wealthy, who can invest in private companies; on the other side stand the rest of us, noses pressed up against the glass. Ordinary (or retail) investors are on the outside looking in because generally they can only invest in companies after they have gone public. Even the traditional process of going public typically keeps coveted initial public offering (IPO) shares in the hands of the rich. Put differently, even as a private firm debuts on the public markets, the wealthy take their cut before everyone else can get a taste.
Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) invert the traditional process by using a merger, rather than an IPO, to bring a private company public. In doing so, they allow the public access to those private companies the conventional IPO denies them. But today SPACs are in decline, due in part to pressure from scholars and regulators who argue that SPACs are nothing more than back-door IPOs.
Bucking the dominant narrative, we argue that SPACs are more than disguised IPOs. Indeed, their innovation is to radically expand the investment opportunities available to ordinary investors. Thus, SPACs offer a rare chance to reevaluate core assumptions underpinning the U.S. public securities markets— chief among them, that the law must prevent average investors from investing in anything but publicly traded securities. SPACs create a revolutionary public market in information about stillprivate companies, a situation unseen since before the Securities Act of 1933. In this Article, we use hand-collected data to empirically examine what this public market for private firms looks like. We argue that, with much-needed reform, SPACs could offer a viable, valuable, and more democratic alternative to the traditional IPO