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The Mask Wars and Social Control: Lessons from the 1927 Unveiling Campaign in Soviet Uzbekistan
Get PDFLegal Uncertainty: The Need for Evidence-Based Abortion Policy in the United States and Mexico
Get PDFInternational Intercollegiate Athletes: A Legal Pathway to Benefit From their Name, Image, and Likeness in the United States
Get PDFThe Dignitary Confrontation Clause
Get PDFFor seventeen years, the Supreme Court’s Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has been confused and confusing. In Crawford v. Washington (2004), the Court overruled prior precedent and held that “testimonial” out-of-court statements could not be admitted at trial unless the defendant had an opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, even when the statement would be otherwise admissible as particularly reliable under an exception to the rule against hearsay. In a series of contradictory opinions over the next several years, the Court proceeded to expand and then seemingly roll back this holding, leading to widespread chaos in common types of cases, particularly those involving statements to law enforcement officers and written affidavits of crime lab technicians. In these cases, for apparently pragmatic reasons, various pluralities of the Court appear to have redefined “testimonial” to mean, at least in part, “potentially unreliable,” thereby contradicting the goal of Crawford.
To help courts resolve this confusion, this Article proposes an overlooked, residual constitutional value, distinct from reliability, implicated in cases where defendants cannot confront witnesses who testify against them. Integrating historical and narrative analysis of the confrontation right’s origins in Anglo-American law with the psychological literature on guilt and deceit, it argues that a criminal defendant has a relational interest in asserting their moral presence against a potentially deceitful witness. It further argues that this interest harmonizes with the contemporary function of dignity in criminal constitutional jurisprudence. The Article concludes that criminal defendants have a distinct dignitary interest in confronting witnesses against them. It urges courts to untangle the contradictory web of Crawford and its progeny by considering the dignitary dimensions of the Confrontation Clause
The Fiction of NFTs and Copyright Infringement
Get PDFIn the first quarter of 2021, the sales of art in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (“NFTs”) reached over $200 billion dollars. The arrival of NFTs in the mainstream art market has profoundly shaped the way artists exploit their works. This sensational boom has attracted some of the world\u27s biggest names across pop culture and sports, including celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, Post Malone, Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, to create their own NFT art. Director Quentin Tarantino has also capitalized on this craze through the creation of an NFT collection based on the film Pulp Fiction. However, Production company Miramax has sued Tarantino over these NFTs, accusing him of violating the company’s copyright. This is the first instance where a court will have to opine as to the extent an unauthorized NFT may be considered copyright infringement.
This Essay explores the nature of NFTs and to what extent, if any, they may be considered unauthorized copies or derivatives of the underlying work. NFTs are digital tokens that do not themselves include a copy of an associated work. At best, NFTs might include a link to a digital copy of a work. As such, this Essay concludes that NFTs are not unauthorized copies or derivatives of the underlying work and as such are not subject to copyright infringement claims
Digitalization and the Future of the Ghana Legal System
No full textAs a people, we have become accustomed to enjoying the ever-increasing benefits of our technologically mediated lives. We live in a digital world, a place where engagement with digital devices, social media platforms, online commercial transactions and work have become commonplace for many of us. The overall theme of the three lectures is that, like individuals, legal systems are not immune to the impact of digital technology or the digital world that it has created. The lectures call for the Ghana legal system to embrace digital technology to advance its functions and goals.
Lecture I examines the access to justice deficit in Ghana, arguing for a broader conception of access to justice and exploring the leveraging of digital technologies to create new pathways to justice in Ghana. It argues for restrictions on advertising of legal services to be removed and for substantial investment in justice-technologies.
Lecture 2 examines the skills, knowledge, and competencies that legal education institutions must provide for students, in order to enable them to practice or work in a world that is increasingly marked by digitalization. It also explores the potential of digital technology to transform the delivery of legal education in Ghana.
Lecture 3 examines how digital technology challenges the Ghana legal system\u27s regulatory function. It focuses on consumer protection in the digital marketplace and new working methods organized through digital labour platforms such as Uber and Bolt. It argues for statutory and judicial interventions to protect consumers and platform workers
The Legal Role in Building Sustainable Public Health (Symposium Transcript)
Get PDFThe article presents a discussion of food as a public health issue, beginning with why science matters and utilizing science to solve food as a public health issue, especially as it relates to sustainability and climate change. Consumer misperceptions of the risk created by new scientific technologies (e.g., GMOs), or even older scientific technologies, may thwart use of such technologies to solve sustainability problems. The talk addresses why consumers might inappropriately assign risk to certain scientific applications and ways that we might want to think about resolving that issue or closing the divide between consumer misperception of risk and evidence-based assessment of risk with possible interventions
Solving the Settlement Puzzle in Human Rights Litigation
Get PDFIn human rights litigation, there are no formal standards to guide lawyers and their clients when they are considering whether to settle a case. Moreover, there is a paucity of published data on human rights settlements. This Article provides a quantitative assessment of recorded settlements in human rights cases litigated under the Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victim Protection Act. It examines both confidential and public settlements. It then considers how and why these cases settled. Finally, this Article proposes a set of standards for assessing proposed settlements. When cases involve fundamental rights and individuals have suffered immeasurable harms, litigants, lawyers, and judges should know whether the costs of settlement are worth the price
