PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

high-tech technology background with eyes on computer display

Rationalizing Law

Problems with Eyewitness Testimony

For quite a long time, extensive empirical work in psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics has been revealing that many of the law’s most cherished rules are faulty. They are based upon mistaken assumptions about human behavior. They are often flat out wrong. And yet they persist.

Chief Justice Roberts and Legal Scholarship

Justice Roberts and Legal Scholarship

In response to questions after giving a speech, Chief Justice Roberts expressed how he generally ignores legal scholarship.  According to the WSJ Blog: Roberts said he doesn’t pay much attention to academic legal writing. Law review articles are “more abstract” than practical, and aren’t “particularly helpful for practitioners and judges.”

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

Supreme Court

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 […]

Should We Have Professional Juries?

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

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).

A-Rod, Rihanna, and Confidentiality

Confidentiality

Over at Emergent Chaos, Adam Shostack raises an interesting issue regarding Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) and confidentiality. According to the rules in place about the baseball steroid testing back in 2003, the results of these tests were supposed to be confidential. According to Gregg Doyel at CBS:

Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty

Innocent Punished More than the Guilty

The AP reports on a really tragic case of wrongful conviction: A man who died in prison while serving time for a rape he didn’t commit was cleared Friday by a judge who called the state’s first posthumous DNA exoneration “the saddest case” he’d ever seen. . . . [Timothy] Cole was convicted of raping […]

William Cuddihy’s The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791

The Fourth Amendment

I’m delighted to announce the publication of William J. Cuddihy’s The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602 – 1791 (Oxford University Press, January 2009). The book has just come out in print, hot off the press, and it’s an absolutely essential volume for any scholar of constitutional history, criminal procedure, or the Fourth Amendment. […]