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Benjamin, Tiffany

Reevaluating Fourth Amendment Protections in the Digital Age

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UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice 
Volume 22 Number 2 Article 2 
5-2025 
Editorial Forward 
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Editorial Forward, 22 UC LAW SF RACE & ECON. JUST. L.J. 255 (2025). 
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_race_poverty_law_journal/vol22/iss2/2 
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[255] 
EDITORIAL FORWARD  
 
“If we fail, we shall at least have the satisfaction of believing that our 
work has been honestly done in the interest of the law school and of its 
alumni.”1 
These words were among the first ever printed in a student-run law 
review.2 Nearly 150 years on, it is worth considering the role of our 
publication and its continued commitment to advancing not only the interests 
of our institution and its alumni, but the public interest more broadly.  
Student-run academic journals are peculiar to law, and come with 
unique responsibilities. Unlike in other disciplines,3 law students are 
entrusted with directly shaping the legal academy before we have formally 
entered the profession. When we select articles for publication, we establish 
the priorities and parameters of professional and scholarly debate in a field 
in which we have the least experience and expertise. And when we select 
articles that express politically unpopular perspectives, we do so without the 
protections of tenure or long-term professional status in the field. This 
arrangement is all the more unusual considering law’s far-reaching impacts 
on society, and those impacts are especially salient today.  
So, what does it mean for us, law students in 2025, to do this work 
“honestly”? Let us begin by speaking honestly about what has happened in 
the US and in our profession as we prepared this issue for publication: 
We have continued to watch a genocide, funded largely by our own 
government, live-streamed on the internet.4  
The deportation and detention of non-citizens has accelerated, 
increasingly predicated on pure political speech.5   
 
1. 1 HARV. L. REV. 35 (1887). 
2. See Michael I. Swygert & Jon W. Bruce, The Historical Origins, Founding, and Early 
Development of Student-Edited Law Reviews, 36 HASTINGS L.J. 739, 763-764 (1985) (noting the 
common misconception that Harvard had the first student-published law review and pointing to 
Albany Law School’s in 1875).  
3. In other professions, “scholarly journals are edited by recognized authorities in the field and 
works are selected for publication by a panel of expert referees.” Swygert & Bruce, supra note 2, at 
740.  
4. See, e.g., Amnesty International Investigation Concludes Israel is Committing Genocide 
Against Palestinians in Gaza, AMNESTY (Dec. 5, 2024), 
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-
committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/.  
5. See Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Yeler Pager & Hamad Alaeziz, As Trump Broadens Crackdown, 
Focus Expands to Legal Immigrants and Tourists, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 21, 2025), 
256 UC LAW JOURNAL OF RACE AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE Vol. 22:245 
Facing political pressure, many elite law firms have rolled over, 
abandoning their stated commitments to equity and reshaping their pro bono 
practices in President Trump’s image.6 
Our country’s High Court has continued its abrogation of rights7 at the 
expense of democracy.8  
Under the unelected leadership of the world’s wealthiest man,9 right-
wing efforts to eviscerate the administrative state, upon which poor and 
vulnerable people could already barely depend,10 have intensified. 
Since our last publication, which focused on the intersections of race, 
law, and political economy in education, Title I funding for low-income 
schools has been slated for a 25% cut at a time when child poverty is on the 
rise.11  
This list is far from comprehensive. And yet it suffices to underscore the 
power we hold and our collective duty to use it. Ours is an era of 
compounding crises, each shaped by law and marked by accelerating racial 
and economic injustice. We are a journal focused on the intersections of law, 
race, and the economy. And we labor from within an academy built on wealth 
and prestige. With the means to publish and the keys to an ivory tower in our 
hands, we have a duty to face the urgency of this moment head-on. To fail in 
this moment would be to cower in silence in the face of rising 
authoritarianism, to “obey [tyrannical directives] in advance,”12 and to 
operate under the delusion that we can somehow preserve our rights by 
relinquishing them.  
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/trump-immigration-visa-
crackdown.html#:~:text=To%20deport%20people%20living%20in,studying%20and%20teaching
%20at%20Georgetown; New Filings: Government Admits It Had No Warrant for Mahmoud Kahlil 
When Agents Took Him, ACLU (Apr. 24, 2025, 4:00 PM), https://www.aclu.org/press-
releases/new-filings-government-admits-it-had-no-warrant-for-mahmoud-khalil-when-agents-
took-him.   
6. See Dan Cotter, Law Firm Independence Under Attack With Executive Orders, AM. CONST. 
SOC’Y (Apr. 10, 2025), https://www.acslaw.org/inbrief/law-firm-independence-under-attack-with-
executive-orders/.  
7. See, e.g., Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Women’s Health, 597 US. 215, 223 (2022) (overturning 
Roe v. Wade).  
8. See Gilda R. Daniels, Democracy’s Distrust: The Supreme Court’s Anti-Voter Decisions as 
a Threat to Democracy, 134 YALE L.J. F. 1062 (2024).  
9. See Laura Barrón-López, Ian Couzens & Taylor Bowie, Elon Musk’s Influence in the White 
House Grows as Trump Hands Him More Power, PBS (Feb. 12, 2025, 6:35 PM), 
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/elon-musks-influence-in-the-white-house-grows-as-trump-
hands-him-more-power.  
10. See Jasjit K. Mundh, With Loper Bright, the Supreme Court Guts the Administrative State 
and Shifts Power to the Courts, A.B.A. (July 1, 2024), 
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/labor_law/resources/magazine/2024-summer/loper-bright-
supreme-court-guts-administrative-state/.  
11. See Michael C. Bender, Funds for K-12 Students Are on the Chopping Block in Trump’s 
Budget, N.Y. TIMES (May 2, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/us/politics/trump-
budget-education-cuts.html.  
12. TIMOTHY SNYDER, ON TYRANNY 1 (2017).  
May 2025 EDITORIAL FOREWORD 257 
By refusing to do so, our journal joins a long tradition, both within and 
beyond the field of law. That tradition predates (and will outlive) the 
relatively recent emergence of Critical Race Theory as a boogeyman of 
“wokeness” in America’s culture war,13 and holds the work of historicizing 
and critiquing our legal institutions as one important component of building 
systemic change. We publish with the understanding that “[k]nowledge 
emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, 
impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, 
with the world, and with each other.”14 To this end, we ask our writers, our 
readers, and our fellow law students to write honestly and courageously about 
what is happening in the world; to build an understanding of legal systems 
rooted in the reality of those who are directly impacted by them; to elevate 
the voices of those who are marginalized by them; and to call out the role of 
the legal academy and our shared profession in creating and deepening the 
crises that define our time. Most importantly, we call on our peers to dream 
up new and bolder strategies for social justice legal practice, and to practice 
them together.  
The two student authors whose work comprise this issue exemplify 
these principles. In Hashtags, Handcuffs, and Hush Money, Karina Devi 
Etminani explores the race, class, and gender dimensions of electronic 
surveillance under the Fourth Amendment. In The Racial Justice Act: A Real 
Solution or a Just Step in the Right Direction?, Addison Lyons examines a 
California law that promised to stem the tide of racially motivated criminal 
convictions and assesses its practical utility for grassroots organizations and 
racial justice lawyers. We are honored to bring these pieces to their rightful 
home in the social justice legal literature.  
 
In Community,  
 
UC Law San Francisco Journal of Race and Economic Justice  
2024-2025 (Vol. 22) Executive Board 
 
 
  
 
13. Taonga Leslie, What History Teachers Us About “Critical Race Theory” Bans, AM. 
CONST. SOC’Y (May 11, 2023), https://www.acslaw.org/expertforum/what-history-teaches-us-
about-critical-race-theory-bans/.  
14. PAULO FREIRE, PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED 72 (1970) (emphasis added).  
258 UC LAW JOURNAL OF RACE AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE Vol. 22:245 
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