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Articles 1 - 30 of 82
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
Whistleblowers and leakers wield significant influence in technology law and policy. On topics ranging from cybersecurity to free speech, tech whistleblowers spur congressional hearings, motivate the introduction of legislation, and animate critical press coverage of tech firms. But while scholars and policymakers have long called for transparency and accountability in the tech sector, they have overlooked the significance of individual disclosures by industry insiders—workers, employees, and volunteers—who leak information that firms would prefer to keep private.
This Article offers an account of the rise and influence of tech whistleblowing. Radical information asymmetries pervade tech law and policy. Firms exercise near-complete …
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
The Ideology Of Press Freedom, Hannah Bloch-Wehba
Faculty Scholarship
This Article offers a critical account of the law of press freedom. American law and political culture laud the press as an institution that plays a vital role in democracy: guarding against corruption, facilitating self-governance, and advocating for free expression. These democratic functions provide justification for the law of press freedom, which defends the media’s autonomy and shields the press from outside interference.
But the dominant accounts of the press’s democratic role are only partly accurate. The law of press freedom is grounded in large part in journalism’s professional commitments to objectivity, public service, and autonomy. These idealized characterizations, flawed …
The “End” Of Neutrality: Tumultuous Times Require A Deeper Value, Carol Pauli
The “End” Of Neutrality: Tumultuous Times Require A Deeper Value, Carol Pauli
Faculty Scholarship
This essay has observed that, when times are tumultuous, third parties who intend to be neutral may need some mooring beyond the norms that are shifting. It argues that neutrality is an unsatisfying value in such times and suggests that neutrals look to the deeper values of their field. It proposes human dignity as a good place to begin, and it invites others to explore whether an initial commitment to the inherent worth of every person would make a helpful difference in practice.
Ships Passing In The Night: The Communications Act And The Convergence On Broadband, Stuart Minor Benjamin
Ships Passing In The Night: The Communications Act And The Convergence On Broadband, Stuart Minor Benjamin
Faculty Scholarship
The Communications Act of 1934 and its amendments (the “Act”), and the regulations implementing them, have been enormously important to traditional telephony, broadcasting, and multichannel video. Meanwhile, the internet is barely mentioned in the Act. It thus might seem reasonable to conclude that the Act stands as a colossus and that the argument for overhauling it has grown much stronger as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the “1996 Act”) becomes ever more outdated. In this Article I suggest otherwise. Specifically, I make three claims—one descriptive, one a bit speculative, and one normative. The descriptive claim is that significant portions of …
The Precarious Position Of The Fourth Estate In Trumptopia: The Role Of Popular Culture And The Law In Protecting Media Freedom, Taylor Simpson-Wood
The Precarious Position Of The Fourth Estate In Trumptopia: The Role Of Popular Culture And The Law In Protecting Media Freedom, Taylor Simpson-Wood
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Do We Need A New Conception Of Authorship?, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Do We Need A New Conception Of Authorship?, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
Thank you to the organizers for having me. I’m delighted to be here. I’m going to take a step away from conceptual art, and go a little bit into history and a little bit into doctrine – and do the usual law professor thing. We law professors like to say that one of the great things about the job is that we get to overrule the Supreme Court ten thousand times a day, but the bad thing about the job is no one cares. And so, I’m going to try and make this such that you care.
Here’s the core …
Fixing America's Founding, Maeve Glass
Fixing America's Founding, Maeve Glass
Faculty Scholarship
The forty-fifth presidency of the United States has sent lawyers reaching once more for the Founders’ dictionaries and legal treatises. In courtrooms, law schools, and media outlets across the country, the original meanings of the words etched into the U.S. Constitution in 1787 have become the staging ground for debates ranging from the power of a president to trademark his name in China to the rights of a legal permanent resident facing deportation. And yet, in this age when big data promises to solve potential challenges of interpretation and judges have for the most part agreed that original meaning should …
A Skeptical View Of Information Fiduciaries, Lina M. Khan, David E. Pozen
A Skeptical View Of Information Fiduciaries, Lina M. Khan, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
The concept of “information fiduciaries” has surged to the forefront of debates on online-platform regulation. Developed by Professor Jack Balkin, the concept is meant to rebalance the relationship between ordinary individuals and the digital companies that accumulate, analyze, and sell their personal data for profit. Just as the law imposes special duties of care, confidentiality, and loyalty on doctors, lawyers, and accountants vis-à-vis their patients and clients, Balkin argues, so too should it impose special duties on corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter vis-à-vis their end users. Over the past several years, this argument has garnered remarkably broad support …
Will Artificial Intelligence Eat The Law? The Rise Of Hybrid Social-Ordering Systems, Tim Wu
Will Artificial Intelligence Eat The Law? The Rise Of Hybrid Social-Ordering Systems, Tim Wu
Faculty Scholarship
Software has partially or fully displaced many former human activities, such as catching speeders or flying airplanes, and proven itself able to surpass humans in certain contests, like Chess and Jeopardy. What are the prospects for the displacement of human courts as the centerpiece of legal decision-making? Based on the case study of hate speech control on major tech platforms, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, this Essay suggests displacement of human courts remains a distant prospect, but suggests that hybrid machine – human systems are the predictable future of legal adjudication, and that there lies some hope in that combination, …
Blind Spot: The Attention Economy And The Law, Tim Wu
Blind Spot: The Attention Economy And The Law, Tim Wu
Faculty Scholarship
Human attention, valuable and limited in supply, is a resource. It has become commonplace, especially in the media and technology industries, to speak of an "attention economy" and of competition in "attention markets.” There is even an attentional currency, the "basic attention token," which purports to serve as a medium of exchange for user attention. Firms like Facebook and Google, which have emerged as two of the most important firms in the global economy, depend nearly exclusively on attention markets as a business model.
Yet despite the well-recognized commercial importance of attention markets, antitrust and consumer protection authorities have struggled …
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
The Separation Of Platforms And Commerce, Lina M. Khan
Faculty Scholarship
A handful of digital platforms mediate a growing share of online commerce and communications. By structuring access to markets, these firms function as gatekeepers for billions of dollars in economic activity. One feature dominant digital platforms share is that they have integrated across business lines such that they both operate a platform and market their own goods and services on it. This structure places dominant platforms in direct competition with some of the businesses that depend on them, creating a conflict of interest that platforms can exploit to further entrench their dominance, thwart competition, and stifle innovation.
This Article argues …
"Fake News," No News, And The Needs Of Local Communities, Carol Pauli
"Fake News," No News, And The Needs Of Local Communities, Carol Pauli
Faculty Scholarship
The Quaker authors had in mind an ancient truth - that "love endures and overcomes" - and they were convinced that this truth is accessible to all. This article addresses truth at a more immediate and mundane level. It is concerned with the accurate information that local communities need in order to thrive.
The article proceeds in three steps. Part I reviews one way community needs were addressed when the first large-scale electronic communication technology entered individual homes in the form of radio and television. In those days, broadcasters had an affirmative duty to ascertain the problems of the communities …
Learned Hand's Seven Other Ideas About The Freedom Of Speech, Vincent A. Blasi
Learned Hand's Seven Other Ideas About The Freedom Of Speech, Vincent A. Blasi
Faculty Scholarship
I say “other” because, regarding the freedom of speech, Learned Hand has suffered the not uncommon fate of having his best ideas either drowned out or credited exclusively to others due to the excessive attention that has been bestowed on one of his lesser ideas. Sitting as a district judge in the case of Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten, Hand wrote the earliest judicial opinion about the freedom of speech that has attained canonical status. He ruled that under the recently passed Espionage Act of 1917, writings critical of government cannot be grounds for imposing criminal punishment or the …
"Enemy Of The People": Negotiating News At The White House, Carol Pauli
"Enemy Of The People": Negotiating News At The White House, Carol Pauli
Faculty Scholarship
How can the press serve as a check on executive power when the president calls it “fake” and the White House denies facts? As journalists debate the right response, this article offers advice from the perspective of a journalist who is now in the legal academy. Drawing on legal scholarship in the field of conflict resolution — as well as literature in journalism and political science — this article analyzes the White House press briefing as a negotiation over both the content of news and the relationship of the press and president. It aims to help the press fulfill the …
Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey, Zahr Said
Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey, Zahr Said
Faculty Scholarship
Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …
Why Courts Fail To Protect Privacy: Race, Age, Bias, And Technology, Christopher Robertson, Bernard Chao, Ian Farrell, Catherine Durso
Why Courts Fail To Protect Privacy: Race, Age, Bias, And Technology, Christopher Robertson, Bernard Chao, Ian Farrell, Catherine Durso
Faculty Scholarship
The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable “searches and seizures,” but in the digital age of stingray devices and IP tracking, what constitutes a search or seizure? The Supreme Court has held that the threshold question is supposed to depend on and reflect the “reasonable expectations” of ordinary members of the public concerning their own privacy. For example, the police now exploit the “third party” doctrine to access data held by email and cell phone providers, without securing a warrant, on the Supreme Court’s intuition that the public has no expectation of privacy in that information. Is that assumption correct? If …
Are Privacy Laws Deficient?, Woodrow Hartzog
Are Privacy Laws Deficient?, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Privacy law around the world is deficient because it ignores design. Lawmakers have attempted to establish limits on the collection, use, and distribution of personal information. But they have largely overlooked the power of design. They have discounted the role that design plays in facilitating the conduct and harm privacy law is meant to prevent. Design pitches and picks privacy winners and losers, with people as data subjects and surveillance objects often on the losing side.
Introduction: Troubling Transparency, David E. Pozen, Michael Schudson
Introduction: Troubling Transparency, David E. Pozen, Michael Schudson
Faculty Scholarship
Transparency is a value in the ascendance. Across the globe, the past several decades have witnessed a spectacular explosion of legislative reforms and judicial decisions calling for greater disclosure about the workings of public institutions. Freedom of information laws have proliferated, claims of a constitutional or supra-constitutional "right to know" have become commonplace, and an international transparency lobby has emerged as a civil society powerhouse. Open government is seen today in many quarters as a foundation of, if not synonymous with, good government.
At the same time, a growing number of scholars, advocates, and regulators have begun to raise hard …
Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, And Their Regulation Under International Law, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew C. Waxman
Debating Autonomous Weapon Systems, Their Ethics, And Their Regulation Under International Law, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew C. Waxman
Faculty Scholarship
An international public debate over the law and ethics of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) has been underway since 2012, with those urging legal regulation of AWS under existing principles and requirements of the international law of armed conflict, on the one side, in argument with opponents who favor, instead, a preemptive international treaty ban on all such weapons, on the other. This Chapter provides an introduction to this international debate, offering the main arguments on each side. These include disputes over defining an AWS, the morality and law of automated targeting and target selection by machine, and the interaction of …
Nonsense You Say, Nicholas W. Allard
The Notion And Practice Of Reputation And Professional Identity In Social Networking: From K-12 Through Law School, Roberta Bobbie Studwell
The Notion And Practice Of Reputation And Professional Identity In Social Networking: From K-12 Through Law School, Roberta Bobbie Studwell
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Sender Side Transmission Rules For The Internet, Tejas N. Narechania, Tim Wu
Sender Side Transmission Rules For The Internet, Tejas N. Narechania, Tim Wu
Faculty Scholarship
Since 1966, the Federal Communications Commission has, one way or another, protected businesses that deliver services over the nation’s communications infrastructure. But in January 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules contained in its 2010 Open Internet Order. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has since indicated that he will take up the D.C. Circuit’s invitation to implement rules that, consistent with historic practice, “will meet the court’s test for preventing improper blocking of and discrimination among Internet traffic.”
Chairman Wheeler’s statement invites an obvious question: presuming that the FCC wants …
Panel Iii: The Future Of The Press And Privacy, Amy Gajda, Clay Calvert, Tom Bivins, Amy Sanders, Stephen Ward
Panel Iii: The Future Of The Press And Privacy, Amy Gajda, Clay Calvert, Tom Bivins, Amy Sanders, Stephen Ward
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Common Sense And Key Questions, Stuart M. Benjamin
Common Sense And Key Questions, Stuart M. Benjamin
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Why Cant We Be Friends Preserving Public Confidence In The Judiciary Through Limited Use Of Social Networking, Helia Garrido Hull
Why Cant We Be Friends Preserving Public Confidence In The Judiciary Through Limited Use Of Social Networking, Helia Garrido Hull
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
"Simple" Takes On The Supreme Court, Robert L. Tsai
"Simple" Takes On The Supreme Court, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This essay assesses black literature as a medium for working out popular understandings of America’s Constitution and laws. Starting in the 1940s, Langston Hughes’s fictional character, Jesse B. Semple, began appearing in the prominent black newspaper, the Chicago Defender. The figure affectionately known as “Simple” was undereducated, unsophisticated, and plain spoken - certainly to a fault according to prevailing standards of civility, race relations, and professional attainment. Butthese very traits, along with a gritty experience under Jim Crow, made him not only a sympathetic figure but also an armchair legal theorist. In a series of barroom conversations, Simple ably critiqued …
Broadband Localism, Olivier Sylvain
Broadband Localism, Olivier Sylvain
Faculty Scholarship
Today, local governments are supplying broadband service to residents to fill the service gap left by major providers. Municipalities are joining forces with local anchor institutions and private providers to close the digital divide and incubate novel public-minded service models. This is the new broadband localism. Some stakeholders fear that local public participation in the broadband market will negatively impact competition. They have articulated this concern in state legislation across the country: nineteen states forbid or otherwise restrict municipal ownership or administration of broadband and three may enact similar restrictions this year. No matter the substantive policy merits of such …
Super Pacs, Richard Briffault
Super Pacs, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
The most striking campaign finance development since the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010 has not been an upsurge in corporate and union spending, as might have been expected from a decision invalidating the decades-old laws barring such expenditures. Instead, federal election campaigns have been marked by the emergence of an entirely new campaign vehicle, which uses – but is not primarily dependent on – corporate or union funds, and which threatens to upend the federal campaign regulatory regime in place since 1974.
The 2010 election cycle witnessed the birth of the "Super PAC" – …
Baum Lecture 2010, Lee C. Bollinger
Baum Lecture 2010, Lee C. Bollinger
Faculty Scholarship
As part of the Baum Lecture Series at the University of Illinois College of Law, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger delivered a lecture on September 14, 2010, on the essential role of a global free press in providing the information needed to understand the many problematic issues we face as a result of globalization. In this presentation, President Bollinger addressed the challenges of maintaining high-quality institutions of American journalism with an international reporting capacity in the face of rapidly changing market forces. He further discussed America’s interest in seeing the rise of a free and independent press in nations …
Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Olivier Sylvain
Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Olivier Sylvain
Faculty Scholarship
Even as the Internet goes pop, federal policymakers continue to surrender their statutory obligation to regulate communications in the first instance to extralegal nongovernmental organizations comprised of technical experts. The Federal Communications Commission’s conclusion that a major broadband service provider's network management practices were unreasonable is a case in point. There, in the absence of any decisive legislative or even regulatory guidance, the FCC turned principally to the engineering principles on which the Internet Engineering Task Force bases transmission standards: to wit, (1) decentralization, (2) interoperability, and (3) user empowerment. This impulse to defer as a matter of course to …