PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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Should We Get Rid of the Law School In-Class Essay Exam?

Law School Exam

I’ve long been unhappy with the typical law school exam format. The entire grade for the class is based on one 3-hour in-class essay exam. The problem with this format is that many students aren’t particularly adept at writing very quickly under immense time pressure. So the exam tests, in part, the ability to write […]

Can the First Amendment Serve as a Source of Criminal Procedure?

Constitution First Amendment

Typically, when we think of the constitutional criminal procedure that regulates government information gathering, we think of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But many government investigations involve collecting information about speech, association, religion, and the consumption of ideas. The NSA surveillance of telephone calls, for example, involves speech. National Security Letters can be used to […]

Orin Kerr on the Fourth Amendment

Police

Anybody familiar with Fourth Amendment law knows that it is utterly incoherent. In his new paper, Four Models of Fourth Amendment Protection, my colleague, Orin Kerr (GW Law School) argues that this incoherence is actually a good thing. He attempts to sort out the muddle that currently exists in Fourth Amendment law into four models. From […]

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

Shakespeare

Today’s Washington Post contains two articles taking different sides to the question of whether Shakespeare is the true author of his works. An article by Roger Stritmatter (vice chairman of the Shakespeare Fellowship and a professor of English at Coppin State University) rehearses the doubts as to Shakespeare’s authorship: