Too bad I’m not teaching criminal law this semester, as this case would surely be a topic of discussion. From the Associated Press:
Anybody familiar with Fourth Amendment law knows that it is utterly incoherent. In his new paper, Four Models of Fourth Amendment Protection, my colleague, Orin Kerr (GW Law School) argues that this incoherence is actually a good thing. He attempts to sort out the muddle that currently exists in Fourth Amendment law into four models. From the abstract:
Kudos to my friend Chris Hoofnagle (Samuelson Clinic at Berkeley Law School) who had his paper on SSRN written about by the New York Times:
Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha (law, St. John’s) writes:
A few months ago I found myself in a fix over a book review I had committed to. When the Editor asked me to do the review, I readily agreed because I have known the author (in a collegial way) for many years, and I admire his work. I expected that the book, which I had not yet seen, would be excellent. Unfortunately, after reading the book, I had very serious reservations about the argument. . . .
From now on, to avoid being in these situations, I have resolved to only write reviews for books that I truly like (which I have done with pleasure a number of times). I feel like a coward, shirking my responsibility as an academic.
I haven’t always been reluctant to offer pointed criticisms of academic work, and I still do so—as I recently did in a post about the “judicial politics” field—if I think that a useful point would come of it. But I am becoming increasingly gun shy about the whole “honest academic debate” enterprise.
One reason for my reluctance is that I know I have offended people in the past—people I like and admire—by giving my honest critical opinion on an academic matter, an opinion which I meant as a part of an intellectual exchange but which they took personally. Although I was careful to not articulate my objections in personal terms, we all take our own ideas seriously, and thus it is easy to be put off personally by criticisms of the ideas. . . .
It’s not as much fun as it used to be to have a frank exchange of ideas, at least for me. More importantly, if we all start censoring our critical thoughts out of a desire not to offend others, or to avoid provoking a backlash, academic discourse will suffer. For this reason, I hope others do not share in my cowardice.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr mulls the question of why judges are citing fewer law review articles these days than in the past. He refers to an article in the New York Times about the topic:
Today’s Washington Post contains two articles taking different sides to the question of whether Shakespeare is the true author of his works.
An article by Roger Stritmatter (vice chairman of the Shakespeare Fellowship and a professor of English at Coppin State University) rehearses the doubts as to Shakespeare’s authorship:
An anonymous former executive editor at a law review writes in a comment to my recent post about pet peeves in law review editing:
It’s that time of the year again. Every spring, law professors court law reviews. The relationship is initially filled with mutual infatuation — law professors eagerly try to get their articles accepted by the top law reviews and law review editors eagerly seek out interesting articles. It’s a springtime puppy love that sadly will not last. Soon after articles are betrothed to law reviews, the editing process starts. And that’s where some discord can set in.
Professor Neil Richards (Washington University School of Law) and I have posted on SSRN our new article, Privacy’s Other Path: Recovering the Law of Confidentiality, 96 Georgetown Law Journal __ (forthcoming 2007). The article engages in an historical and comparative discussion of American and English privacy law, a topic that has been relatively unexplored in America.
As many of the recent revelations of government surveillance and information gathering are revealing, government agencies such as the FBI and NSA are violating the law. Recently, the DOJ investigation into the FBI’s use of NSLs reveals many violations of law. So where are the penalties?
In the latest surveillance scandal, the FBI says that it is sorry. According to the New York Times:
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