PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

high-tech technology background with eyes on computer display

An Interview with Dawn Nunziato on Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age

Virtual Freedom

My colleague at George Washington University Law School, Professor Dawn Nunziato, has recently published a provocative book about the First Amendment and the Internet — Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age (Stanford University Press 2009). Her book explains that, contrary to the prevailing understanding of the Internet as a haven […]

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.

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. […]

The Future of Academic Presses

Books

Academic presses are facing a difficult future. Book publishing in general is an industry that is struggling, and academic presses have it especially hard since many titles they publish will not have mass popular appeal. Unfortunately, many academic presses are no longer subsidized by their universities, including very wealthy schools like Harvard and Yale, which […]

My New Book, Understanding Privacy

Understanding Privacy

I am very happy to announce the publication of my new book, UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY (Harvard University Press, May 2008). There has been a longstanding struggle to understand what “privacy” means and why it is valuable. Professor Arthur Miller once wrote that privacy is “exasperatingly vague and evanescent.” In this book, I aim to develop a […]

Book Review: Harold Schechter’s The Devil’s Gentleman

The Devil's Gentleman

Harold Schechter, The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial that Ushered in the Twentieth Century – Ballantine Books (October 2007) Harold Schechter, an American literature professor at CUNY, has written a gripping account of the criminal trial and appeal of Roland Molineux, a case that grabbed headlines throughout the late 1890s. His book, The Devil’s […]

Book Review: Lawrence Friedman’s Guarding Life’s Dark Secrets

Guarding Life's Dark Secrets

Professor Lawrence M. Friedman (Stanford Law School) Guarding Life’s Dark Secrets: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Propriety, and Privacy (Stanford University Press, November 2007) ISBN: 978-0-8047-5739-3 Professor Lawrence Friedman‘s Guarding Life’s Dark Secrets: Legal and Social Controls over Reputation, Propriety, and Privacy is a wonderful and accessible history of the norms and law that […]