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An Exploration of the Jurisprudence of the National Bank Through Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian Legal Lenses
No full textNavigating the Equal Terms Maze: Reconciling Circuit Splits on RLUIPA\u27s Land Use Protections
No full textShowdown in the Black Hills: The Sioux Nation’s Continued Land Claims Battle Against the US Government
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Lawyers and Public Service: Duty, Faith, and the \u27Good Republican\u27 in The West Wing
No full textPopular culture reveals much about the perceived role of lawyers in contemporary life. In this article, I draw lessons from the portrayal of lawyers in Aaron Sorkin\u27s classic television series, The West Wing. As a drama centred around a Democratic presidential administration, Republicans often provide the foil. From time to time, however, the show lionizes what might be termed ‘the good Republican’. That ‘good Republican’ is most often a practicing lawyer whose desire to serve is grounded in duty or faith. In this essay, I use a trio of these characters to explore the role of lawyers in public service. At first glance, these lawyers may seem to achieve goodness through a readiness to abandon their political views, particularly Republican views – suggesting that lawyers’ beliefs are malleable if not mercenary. At a deeper level, however, these characters and their experiences vividly convey idealized but worthwhile ideals of public service as a valuable and honourable career choice, particularly for lawyers
Video Analytics and Fourth Amendment Vision
No full textWhat does the Fourth Amendment have to say about video analytics running on citywide camera systems? Video analytics (also known as computer vision) involves hardware and software in cameras that turns video surveillance streams into useful data, identifying, categorizing, matching, and alerting police about objects, people, and incidents. Video analytics can identify objects (e.g., hat, backpack, person, car) and track that person or thing back in time and through the streets using video surveillance footage. For police officers conducting virtual patrols or retrospective investigations, video analytics lets police scan thousands of linked cameras for suspicious behavior or a particular suspect, thus drastically enhancing police surveillance power.
The Fourth Amendment question is whether this form of police investigation is a search, violating a reasonable expectation of privacy. Traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine has long allowed video cameras in public under the theory that people have negligible expectations of privacy in public areas. The open question is whether a digital video analytics system that allows for city-wide continuous object identification, classification, matching, tracking, sorting, and storing of images changes the constitutional analysis.
This Article argues that video analytics presents a different constitutional problem than traditional video surveillance. Properly understood what is happening behind the scenes with video analytics should alter the reasonable expectation of privacy analysis. This Article builds upon recent Supreme Court cases to develop a theory for when digital surveillance becomes a Fourth Amendment search.
The Article also uses video analytics to explore the limits of Fourth Amendment doctrine. Interestingly, the tension in applying the existing Fourth Amendment framework to the puzzle of video analytics reveals several unstated but important
A Promise Yet Unfulfilled: The Yates Memo’s Impact on Individual Accountability for Corporate Wrongdoing Eight Years On
No full textCrown Attorneys, the Attorney General, and Judicial Discipline: A Comment on \u3ci\u3eLauzon v Ontario (Justices of the Peace Review Council)\u3c/i\u3e
No full textShould the consequences for judicial misconduct be different depending solely on the identity of the person who makes a complaint? In a surprising decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal in Lauzon v Ontario (Justices of the Peace Review Council) holds that dispositions downstream from complaints by Crown attorneys (or any other member of the executive branch of government) should be lower than other dispositions because the vindication of such complaints is inherently dangerous to judicial independence and the separation of powers. In this comment, I look closely at the reasoning in Lauzon and respectfully suggest that that reasoning is problematic. In particular, I note that judicial councils operate independently and that Crown attorneys are subject to high standards as identified both by courts and by law societies as their professional regulators. I also suggest that the identification of this novel proposition was unnecessary to decide the appeal
17 going on 23 : Sentencing Young People to Life in Canada
No full textThis paper analyzes reported Canadian cases from 2008 to 2022 in which young people were sentenced for murder. It shows that, at least in these reported decisions, sentencing young people as adults for murder is not rare. The Crown routinely seeks life sentences for young people and the court orders them in the vast majority of cases in which they are sought. Life sentences for young people have become normalized and expected in murder cases, rather than exceptional. This paper delves into the case law to get a better picture of why and how this is happening
