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A Fireside Chat with Hon. Kate Heinzelman
No full textSpeaker: Hon. Kate Heinzelman, General Counsel, Central Intelligence Agenc
We\u27re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: The Importance of Increased Shark Conservation Across Countries, States, and the High Seas
Get PDFSharks serve invaluable roles as apex predators in the world\u27s ocean ecosystems. However, the rise of the shark fin trade and incidental bycatch have drastically eliminated shark populations so that several species are close to extinction. Without substantial upgrades to existing international frameworks including CITES, CMS, and IPOA-Sharks, and regulatory bodies such as RFMOs, shark populations may pass beyond recovery. However, strengthening those regulations, along with expanding the U.S.\u27s role as a leader in shark conservation carries significant potential in protecting shark populations. Lastly, governments and conservation entities must substantially increase research and public awareness regarding the issue to ensure that there is the data and political will to serve as the foundation for the new age of shark conservation
Bodies of Evidence: The Criminalization of Abortion and Surveillance of Women in a Post-Dobbs World
Get PDFIn the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u27s Health Organization, state laws criminalizing abortion raise concerns about the investigation and prosecution of women seeking reproductive health care and about the surveillance such investigations will entail. The criminalization of abortion is not new, and the investigation of abortion crimes has always involved the surveillance of women. However, state statutes criminalizing abortion coupled with surveillance methods and technologies that did not exist pre-Roe present new and complex challenges surrounding the protection of women\u27s privacy and liberty interests—in addition to the interests of those who may provide or help pregnant people obtain reproductive care. Accordingly, surveillance, investigation, and the possibility of prosecution create new and more extensive privacy concerns than those traditionally associated with the right to decide whether to have an abortion.
What is also new and disruptive is the existence of medication abortion, which was not available pre-Roe. Medication abortion functionally allows people to self-manage abortions safely in the privacy of their own homes, and its availability undermines the efficacy of bans that target providers, aiders, and abettors. How states apply statutes that criminalize abortion and investigate abortion crimes in the context of new opportunities for safe, self-managed abortions will play out over time. This article, taking lessons about the surveillance of women from the pre-Roe era of abortion criminalization, is the first to evaluate new and existing laws criminalizing abortion post-Dobbs and consider how modern technologies directed toward the investigation of individuals self-managing abortions through medication will magnify the pervasiveness, scale, and harm of such surveillance
The Rise of Counter-Terrorism and the Demise of Human Rights
No full textProfessor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Regents Professor and Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School, will deliver the 2024 Bernstein Lecture in Comparative Law, which will address the consolidation and expansion of counter-terrorism norms and institutions since 9/11. The rise of counter-terrorism has enabled the consolidation of autocracy, sustained democratic backsliding, and undermined the capacity of civil society to function across the globe. The impact on human rights has been extensive and highly detrimental to the most vulnerable individuals and groups across the world. Drawing on Professor Ni Aolain\u27s work as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights since her 2017 appointment, the lecture will show the hard choices that must be made nationally and globally to reverse these trends. The Annual Bernstein Lecture in Comparative Law honors Professor Herbert L. Bernstein, who was a member of the Duke Law faculty from 1984 until his death in 2001, and the many contributions he made to Duke Law School and the legal community
Virtual Gaming, Actual Damage: Video Game Design That Intentionally and Successfully Addicts Users Constitutes Civil Battery
Get PDFIn recent years, there has been increased academic interest in both the neurological effects of compulsive gaming and the potential tort liability of game developers who scientifically engineer games in order to addict users. Scholars from various disciplines are currently debating the scope and potential solutions to the problems associated with Gaming Disorder, now a globally recognized illness. This article contributes to this discussion by offering a multidisciplinary analysis of the scope of video game addiction, its neurological bases, and its relation to the legal rights and responsibilities of victims and game developers. In addition, this article explores the practical significance of, as well as normative and moral foundations for, holding video game developers accountable. It argues the novel theory that video game developers who succeed in their expressed intention to rewrite the neural pathways of gamers should be held liable for the intentional tort of battery. It further contends that private redress based on an intentional battery cause of action is preferable to actions grounded in negligence or failure to warn because in a battery suit, there is no need to prove that the plaintiff was harmed—offensive contact suffices. Moreover, battery claims may be preferable as a matter of public policy. Game developers will be more inclined to reconsider their actions if they are unable to pass off costs of improprieties to their insurers. Such deterrence is particularly desirable where defendants are committing intentional wrongs for financial gain. Game developers will not stop preying on the weaknesses of their users without financial motivation. Recognizing their behavior as tortious is necessary both to motivate them to behave as upstanding corporate citizens and to allow the victims their day in court. To the extent that such suits do not halt game developers’ manipulative behavior, they have the potential to lead to the use of warning labels and the adoption of educational initiatives to inform gamers (and to the extent they are minors, their parents or legal guardians) of the risks associated with these predatory games
Corporate Racial Responsibility
Get PDFThe 2020 mass protests in response to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor had a significant impact on American corporations. Several large public companies pledged an estimated $50 billion to advancing racial equity and committed to various initiatives to internally improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. While many applauded corporations’ willingness to engage with racial issues, some considered it further evidence of corporate capitulation to extreme progressivism at shareholders’ expense. Others, while thinking corporate engagement was long overdue, critiqued corporate commitment as insincere.
Drawing on historical evidence surrounding the passage of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article engages with the debate on corporate “racial” responsibility to demonstrate that corporate engagement on race is not new. Indeed, during the struggle to desegregate public accommodations, corporate social responsibility was invoked to encourage voluntary desegregation and avoid federal intervention. Segregation was good business for some; for others, maintaining white supremacy justified any pecuniary losses.
While this Article argues that corporations have a role to play in achieving racial equity, it cautions against reliance on corporate social responsibility to advance racial equality. Past and current iterations of corporate racial responsibility have often represented a market-fundamentalist, value-extractive approach to racial equity that reifies existing racial hierarchies. By valuing racial equity in terms of its potential profitability, corporate racial responsibility can subordinate human dignity to wealth maximization. This Article argues for a more meaningful corporate racial responsibility that addresses the structures and laws undergirding racial inequities within corporations and our larger society
Blight Made Right: Defects in State Condemnation Laws and a Roadmap for Reform in Alaska and Beyond
Get PDFSusette Kelo\u27s old house in New London, Connecticut is long gone, as is the entire Fort Trumbull neighborhood that once surrounded it. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case—Kelo v. City of New London—that cost her and her neighbors their homes and sparked a wave of state-level reforms to mitigate its potential damage to private property. In Kelo, the Court held that economic development as a public purpose was also a legitimate public use under the Fifth Amendment\u27s Takings Clause, which provides nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his dissent: If such \u27economic development\u27 takings are for a \u27public use,\u27 any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution. The risks to private property this approach presents are at their greatest when governments stretch the meaning of blight to essentially cover anything that impedes public progress, whatever lawmakers themselves conceive that to be.
This Article discusses the last roughly two decades of public-use jurisprudence and places Alaska\u27s response to Kelo in conversation with other states\u27. In places like New York, Arkansas, and Massachusetts, Kelo and other Supreme Court precedents have together swung state-level precedent on the topic too far in government\u27s favor. There, owners largely bear the burden of proving that the government has no good (or even decent) reason for condemning their properties.
On the other end of the spectrum, states including Florida and Michigan have read public use much more narrowly—and in a manner that far more closely reflects the original public meaning of the Takings Clause. The piece concludes with an exploration of recent efforts to expand the definition of blight in Alaska, and a discussion of judicial and popular means of protecting the status quo—or better yet improving upon it—in the fortunate event that Alaska\u27s legislature does not redefine blight, as some lawmakers have threatened in the recent past
