Professor Paul Schwartz (Berkeley School of Law) and I recently published a new book, PRIVACY LAW FUNDAMENTALS. This book is a distilled guide to the essential elements of U.S. data privacy law. In an easily-digestible format, the book covers core concepts, key laws, and leading cases.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has decided NASA v. Nelson, reversing the 9th Circuit 8-0. My thoughts about the case are here and here [links no longer available], and as I predicted, the Court rejected the 9th Circuit holding that the government employment background check questionnaires violated the constitutional right to information privacy. Fortunately, the Court kept its opinion narrow and didn’t use it as an opportunity to wipe out the constitutional right to information privacy, a right that the Court mentioned just a few times but that has taken on more of a life in the circuit courts.
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I just uploaded the final published version of my essay, Fourth Amendment Pragmatism, 51 B.C. L. Rev. 1511 (2010) to SSRN. Here’s the abstract:
I’ve been following the recent controversy over the TSA’s body imaging X-ray machines, otherwise known as the “backscatter” or “exhibit-yourself-in-the-nude” devices. It made me reminisce about an old post I wrote about the Playmobil airline screening playset.
I had not used the playset for a while. Five long years have elapsed since my post, and I had outgrown this toy and moved on to more advanced ones. But this recent controversy made me regress. . . .
The ABA Journal reports [link no longer available] that the number of libel suits has been steadily dropping in the United States:
A new poll by Common Sense Media reveals some interesting data about privacy and youth. The poll was conducted by Zogby International:
The media has been reporting on the tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University. From CNN:
“It’s just a flesh wound.”
— Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Over at Privacy & Security Source, Andrew Serwin, a leading privacy lawyer and author of an excellent treatise on privacy law, has a very thoughtful and informative post [link no longer available] about cases where courts found no harm to individuals by data security breaches. Serwin observes:
In his new book, The Fundamental Holmes: A Free Speech Chronicle and Reader (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Ronald Collins guides us through the free speech writings of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Ron is the Harold S. Shefelman scholar at the University of Washington School of Law and a fellow at the Washington, D.C., office of the First Amendment Center.
Ron’s book contains numerous excerpts from Holmes’s great judicial opinions, correspondence, essays, and books. Far from composing the book mainly of excerpts, Ron has provided very extensive commentary and background throughout. Ron is steeped in the history of his subject and has a rich understanding of the law and theory of the First Amendment. There is no better guide to help us understand Holmes’s work and thought as it relates to free speech.
I recently had a chance to talk with Ron about the book.
