Much has already been written about David Segal’s article in the N.Y. Times, What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering. I join the strong critiques of this piece in condemning it as a lousy piece of journalism — more of a one-sided hack job, riddled with errors. It belongs on the op-ed page of a trashy paper.
The Supreme Court has long held that there is no expectation of privacy in public for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. Because the Fourth Amendment turns on the existence of a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Court’s logic means that the Fourth Amendment provides no protection to surveillance in public. In United States v. Jones, the Court will confront just how far this logic can extend. FBI agents installed a GPS tracking device on Jones’ car and monitored where he drove for a month without a warrant. Jones challenged the warrantless GPS surveillance as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The D.C. Circuit agreed with Jones. United States v. Jones, 615 F.3d 544 (D.C. Cir. 2010). Other federal circuit courts have reached conflicting conclusions on GPS, and now the Supreme Court will resolve the conflict.
Lior Strahilevitz, Deputy Dean and Sidley Austin Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School recently published a brilliant new book, Information and Exclusion (Yale University Press 2011). Like all of Lior’s work, the book is creative, thought-provoking, and compelling. There are books that make strong and convincing arguments, and these are good, but then there are the rare books that not only do this, but make you think in a different way. That’s what Lior achieves in his book, and that’s quite an achievement.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Lior about the book.
In United States v. Jones, FBI agents installed a GPS tracking device on Jones’ car and monitored where he drove for a month without a warrant. Jones challenged the warrantless GPS surveillance as a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The D.C. Circuit agreed with Jones.
I just posted my new forthcoming essay on SSRN called Fourth Amendment Pragmatism, 51 Boston College Law Review __ (forthcoming 2010). Here’s the abstract:
Professor Paul Schwartz (Berkeley Law School) and I have just posted our new article to SSRN: The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information, 86 N.Y.U. L. Rev. — (forthcoming Nov. 2011). Here’s the abstract:
There are some new details emerging in the Tyler Clementi cyberbullying case at Rutgers. The case involves freshmen at Rutgers University. Dharun Ravi used a webcam to film and broadcast online an intimate encounter between his roommate Tyler Clementi and another man.
A recently-passed law in Missouri attempts to ban teachers from friending students on social network websites. According to the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act:
I thoroughly enjoyed Jack Balkin’s Constitutional Redemption, and I found myself largely in agreement with many of Jack’s major claims. But overall, I find it hard to share his optimism.
At its core, Balkin’s constitutional jurisprudence is one founded upon faith — a faith in redemption. He concludes his book with the following paragraph (SPOILER ALERT):
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently upheld a school’s discipline of a student for engaging in off-campus cyberbullying of another student. In Kowalski v. Berkeley County Schools, — F.3d — (4th Cir. July 27, 2011), a student (Kara Kowalski) created a MySpace profile called “S.A.S.H.,” which she said was short for “Students Against Sluts Herpes.” Another student, however, claimed it really stood for “Students Against Shay’s Herpes,” referring to a student named Shay N. Kowalski invited about 100 people to join the page, and about 24 people joined.