Lazarus had it easy. Not so for Laura Todd, who has been trying to come back from the dead for nearly a decade. According to WSMV News in Nashville [link no longer available]:
We are thrilled to offer readers of Concurring Opinions an interview with Ron Moore and David Eick, creators of the hit television show Battlestar Galactica. Daniel Solove, Deven Desai, and David Hoffman ask the questions. We would like to thank Professor John Ip for suggesting some of the torture questions. Our interview lasts a little over an hour, and we’ll be providing it to you in several parts over the next few days.
According to the AP:
Amtrak will start randomly screening passengers’ carry-on bags this week in a new security push that includes officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains.
The initiative, to be announced by the railroad on Tuesday, is a significant shift for Amtrak. Unlike the airlines, it has had relatively little visible increase in security since the 2001 terrorist attacks, a distinction that has enabled it to attract passengers eager to avoid airport hassles.
In the March issue of Money Magazine, I’m interviewed as part of their profile series “The Big Idea.” From the interview by Joe Light:
From CNN:
The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.
But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.
The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.
Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is “important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in.”
But it’s unnerving to privacy experts.
“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.
The FBI already has 55 million sets of fingerprints on file. In coming years, the bureau wants to compare palm prints, scars and tattoos, iris eye patterns, and facial shapes. The idea is to combine various pieces of biometric information to positively identify a potential suspect.
Recently, I’ve been complaining about Facebook’s mishaps regarding privacy. Back in 2006, Facebook sparked the ire of over 700,000 members when it launched News Feeds. In 2007, Facebook launched Beacon and Social Ads, sparking new privacy outcries. An uprising of Facebook users prompted Facebook to change its policies regarding Beacon. For more about Facebook’s recent privacy issues, see my post here.
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Over at Fables and Understories, Andrew Malcovsky is translating some of the untranslated stories by Karel Čapek into English.
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Brian Tamanaha has just posted another interesting post in the discussion about legal education. He writes:
Most law schools now follow the elite model, striving to hire faculty and produce scholarship like research universities, when it might better serve the interests of many non-elite law schools and their students to concentrate on training good lawyers. Money now allocated to scholarship and research leaves would instead go to clinics and other practice training; professors would teach 15 hours or more a week; faculty would be hired for the desire and ability to train lawyers, not for scholarship; more law schools would look like Massachusetts School of Law (which the ABA has mightily resisted). Schools built around this alternative model would produce capable lawyers at a much lower tuition, which would be good for the students and good for society.
This vision of legal academia allows for a range of law schools, serving different needs and circumstances, rather than one academic model for all. It makes sense, but to succeed it must have the support of law professors.
The other day, I responded to a post by Brian Tamanaha regarding interdisciplinary legal study at non-elite law schools. Brian suggested that non-elite schools reconsider whether they ought to pursue interdisciplinary legal scholarship, and I argued that they should.
In a follow-up post, Brian has clarified his argument:Continue Reading
Over at Balkinization, Professor Brian Tamanaha (St. John’s School of Law) argues that most law schools should abandon their vigorous pursuit of interdisciplinary studies in law:
[P]erhaps detailed knowledge of the social sciences—anything beyond rudimentary information every educated person should possess—is irrelevant to the practice of law.
It seems evident that one can be an excellent lawyer without knowing any of this interdisciplinary stuff, while it is not obvious that learning this will make a person a better lawyer. A stronger case can be made that this information might improve the performance of judges, but a more efficient way to deliver this benefit is to set up classes (in economics, statistics, etc.) for sitting judges—programs which now exist.