Digital Commons Network^™

Chasing Bits Across Borders, Patricia L. Bellia

Journal Articles

As computer crime becomes more widespread, countries increasingly confront difficulties in securing evidence stored in electronic form outside of their borders. These difficulties have prompted two related responses. Some states have asserted a broad power to conduct remote cross-border searches - that is, to use computers within their territory to access and examine data physically stored outside of their territory. Other states have pressed for recognition of a remote cross-border search power in international fora, arguing that such a power is an essential weapon in efforts to combat computer crime. This Article explores these state responses and develops a framework …

Dna Typing: Emerging Or Neglected Issues, David H. Kaye, Edward J. Imwinkelried

Journal Articles

DNA typing has had a major impact on the criminal justice system. There are hundreds of opinions and thousands of cases dealing with DNA evidence. Yet, at virtually every stage of the process, there are important issues that are just emerging or that have been neglected.

At the investigative stage, courts have barely begun to focus on the legal limitations on the power of the police to obtain samples directly from suspects and to use the data from DNA samples in various ways. Issues such as the propriety of "DNA dragnets" (in which large numbers of individuals in a geographic …

Two Fallacies About Dna Data Banks For Law Enforcement, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

This commentary on the article Legal and Policy Issues in Expanding the Scope of Law Enforcement DNA Data Banks, 67 Brook. L. Rev. 127 (2001), by Mark Rothstein and Sandra Carnahan, argues that the case for confining law enforcement DNA databases to noncoding loci and to samples from individuals convicted of violent crimes is quite weak.

It describes alternative approaches, including the possibility of a population-wide database; the privacy implications of the loci now used in forensic identification; the law governing DNA dragnets; and the limits on DNA databases imposed by recent cases on searches and seizures. It notes the …

The Constitutionality Of Dna Sampling On Arrest, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Every state now collects DNA from people convicted of certain offenses. Law enforcement authorities promote offender DNA databanking on the theory that it will identify offenders who commit additional crimes while or probation or parole, or after they have finished serving their sentences. Even relatively small databases have yielded such dividends. As these database searches uncover the perpetrators of rapes, murders, and other offenses, the pressure builds to expand the coverage of the databases.

Recent proposals call for extending not merely the scope of crimes for which DNA databanking would be used, but also the point at which the samples …

Keeping The Government's Hands Off Our Bodies: Mapping A Feminist Legal Theory Approach To Privacy In Cross-Gender Prison Searches, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

The power of privacy is diminishing in the prison setting, and yet privacy is the legal theory prisoners rely upon most to resist searches by correctional officers. Incarcerated women in particular rely upon privacy to shield them from the kind of physical contact that male guards have been known to abuse. The kind of privacy that protects prisoners from searches by guards of the opposite sex derives from several sources, depending on the factual circumstances. Although some form of bodily privacy is embodied in the First, Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, prisoners challenging the constitutionality of cross-gender searches most commonly …

Voluntary Campaign Finance Reform, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

Any effort to achieve voluntary campaign finance reform raises two questions: Is it really voluntary, and does it really work? In Part I of this Essay, I examine the voluntariness of "voluntary" campaign finance reform. Agreements like that reached by Clinton and Lazio last year—what I term "purely voluntary agreements"—satisfy most legal tests for voluntariness. By contrast, the voluntariness of spending limits and other campaign restrictions that are imposed as a condition for receiving government funding of a political campaign—what I term "governmentally induced agreements"—is more doubtful. The extant jurisprudence recognizes that Buckley prohibits governmental actions that are more coercive …

A Framework Of Norms: International Human-Rights Law And Sovereignty, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

The international legal boundary between states; rights and human rights is not fixed. Long ago, the Permanent Court of International Justice - the judicial arm of the League of Nations and the precursor to the present International Court of Justice - recognized that "the question whether a certain matter is or is not solely within the jurisdiction of a State is an essentially relative question; it depends on the development of international relations." In recent decades international relations concerning both sovereignty and rights have developed quickly. An examination of those rights and the evolving realities of sovereignty are examined.

Troxel And The Limits Of Community, Margaret F. Brinig

Journal Articles

The Troxel grandparent-visitation case that frames this symposium, the Washington statute included in Troxel, the mercifully completed odyssey of Cuban-born Elian Gonzalez, and the "right to die" case of Hugh Finn all illustrate both the fervor with which the broader community justifies its involvement with families and the extremes to which this involvement can spread. Using constitutional language, advocates point out the rights of extended family members to continue or strengthen ties to children, whether adult or minor. On the other side, parents and spouses claim their own rights not to have outsiders second-guess or interfere with their decisions.

Though …

The Stealth Assault On Antitrust Enforcement: Raising The Barriers For Antitrust Injury And Standing, Joseph P. Bauer

Journal Articles

The first Annual Conference sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute featured a number of prominent speakers and explored a number of important issues. The Conference had two principal focuses: substantive questions of antitrust liability and the future direction of public enforcement of the antitrust laws by the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and by the Federal Trade Commission. However, an issue of at least equal importance was barely discussed, although it has seriously affected the scope and direction of the antitrust laws. That issue: Private enforcement of the antitrust laws, and the significant undermining of those efforts by a number …