PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

What Is Empathy? Obama’s Philosophy of Law and the Next Supreme Court Justice

There has been a lot of discussion on what President Obama meant when he said he wanted to choose a person who would judge with “empathy” for the U.S. Supreme Court.   When articulating his decision to vote against Chief Justice John Roberts, Obama noted that 95 percent of cases would be relatively straightforward where most […]

Family Privacy Rights in Death-Scene Images of the Deceased

In Newsweek, Jessica Bennett tells the tragic story about a family being harassed by the spread of death-scene images of their daughter, who was killed in an automobile accident. The photos of Nikki Catsouras were particularly gruesome — Nikki was decapitated in the crash. According to the article, soon after the crash, photos taken by […]

CCR Symposium: Anonymity and Traceability

In an interesting and thoughtful critique of Danielle Citron’s Cyber Civil Rights, Michael Froomkin argues that Danielle’s proposal to require ISPs to maintain records of IP addresses will spell “the complete elimination of anonymity on the US portion of the Internet in order to root out hateful speech.” Anonymous speech should be strongly protected, as […]

Should We Have Professional Juries?

According to Legal Profession Blog: The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed an $876,000 plaintiff’s verdict in a slip-and-fall case where the plaintiff had fallen while looking for pantyhose in aisle five of a supermarket owned by the defendant. . . . [T]he jury foreperson was a New Jersey State Senator, full-time law professor and lawyer […]

Rethinking Free Speech and Civil Liability

When does civil liability for speech trigger First Amendment protections? Recently, Professor Neil Richards and I posted on SSRN our new article exploring this question: Rethinking Free Speech and Civil Liability, 109 Columbia Law Review (forthcoming 2009).