There are a lot of really good discussions going on in the blogosphere about law school exams recently.
Ann Althouse asks whether exams are a rewarding educational experience in and of themselves for students. Jonathan Adler offers his thoughts here. Rick Garnett chimes in at PrawfsBlawg.
In most law school courses, the grade is based on one final exam given at the end of the semester. Eugene Volokh offers a defense of this practice:
Per Paul Caron’s invitation, I’ve decided to write up a short paper based on my comments at the Harvard Bloggership Conference. It is a 5-page essay entitled A Tale of Two Bloggers: Free Speech and Privacy in the Blogosphere. It will be published as part of the symposium. From the abstract:
I’m at the panel on anonymous blogging at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference. Jonathan Adler (formerly Juan Non-Volokh) and David Lat (formerly Article III Groupie) told their stories about blogging under a pseudonym.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released its annual report on the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders, Wiretap Act orders, and National Security Letters issued in 2005.
For FISA surveillance orders, 2072 applications were made to the FISA court; none were denied. Over the past few years, the number of orders has been steadily increasing:
A while ago, I blogged about companies that were selling records of the numbers people call on their cell phones on the Internet. Congress is currently conducting an investigation into these companies.
Today, Bob Sullivan at MSNBC reports:
It’s time to modernize the lyrics to some old Beatles songs. The University of Colorado police are using a website to post surveillance photos of students and other individuals it wants to identify for smoking pot on Farrand Field. Apparently, there’s a tradition at the University of Colorado for students to spoke pot on Farrand Field on April 20th of each year. According to the Rocky Mountain News:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post criticizing an essay by William Stuntz (law, Harvard) in The New Republic. Today, he has responded to my post in The New Republic Online.
I’ll reply briefly here to a few of Stuntz’s points in response. Stuntz observes:
Yes, Dorothy, you really can tell your doctor about sex in Kansas. A while ago, I wrote about the Kansas Attorney General’s interpretation of a law prohibiting sex with minors under the age of 16 as requiring doctors to report any sexual activity by people under 16 to the state authorities (here and here).
Recently, a federal district court judge concluded in Aid for Women v. Foulston:
There’s a new British import to America, and sadly, it isn’t a rock band. It’s CCTV. In many of Britain’s cities, there is an elaborate network of thousands of surveillance cameras monitored through closed circuit television (CCTV). According to estimates, there are about 4 million surveillance cameras in Britain and a citizen is caught on surveillance camera about 300 times per day.
The AP reports [link no longer available] that NYC is starting to install hundreds of surveillance cameras in an effort to mimic Britain’s CCTV. According to the AP [link no longer available]:
William Stuntz (law, Harvard) has long been advancing thoughtful provocative ideas about criminal procedure. I’ve always found Stuntz to be insightful even when I disagree (and I have disagreed with him a lot). Stuntz’s recent essay in The New Republic entitled Against Privacy and Transparency has me not just disagreeing, but doing so rather sharply.
Free newsletter with cartoons, writings, events, webinars, training, humor and whiteboards.
