Law Commons^™

A Human Rights Perspective On U.S. Courts And The Constitutional Regulation Of The Internet, Molly K. Land

Molly K. Land

This chapter examines the approaches used by the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower U.S. federal courts to contend with the challenges presented by new Internet technologies for the protection of constitutional rights. The chapter first discusses judicial regulation of the Internet as a story of inter-branch power sharing. Regulation has been most effective, and most coherent, when Congress and the courts are engaged in dialogue with one another in ways that play to the strengths of each. Second, the chapter argues that although U.S. federal courts have been relatively effective in updating the individual constitutional protections to meet the …

The Future Of Polyamorous Marriage: Lessons From The Marriage Equality Struggle, Hadar Aviram, Gwendolyn Manriquez Leachman

Hadar Aviram

Amidst the recent legal victories and growing public support for same-sex marriage, numerous polyamorous individuals have expressed interest in pursuing legal recognition for marriages between more than two consenting adults. This Article explores the possibilities that exist for such a polyamorous marriage equality campaign, in light of the theoretical literature on law and social movements, as well as our own original and secondary research on polyamorous and LGBT communities. Among other issues, we examine the prospect of prioritizing the marriage struggle over other forms of nonmarital relationship recognition; pragmatic regulative challenges, like taxation, healthcare, and immigration; and how law and …

The Constitutional Infirmity Of Warrantless Nsa Surveillance: The Abuse Of Presidential Power And The Injury To The Fourth Amendment, Robert M. Bloom, William J. Dunn

Robert Bloom

In recent months, there have been many revelations about the tactics used by the Bush Administration to prosecute their war on terrorism. These stories involve the exploitation of technologies that allow the government, with the cooperation of phone companies and financial institutions, to access phone and financial records. This paper focuses on the revelation and widespread criticism of the Bush Administration’s operation of a warrantless electronic surveillance program to monitor international phone calls and emails that originate or terminate with a United States party. The powerful and secret National Security Agency heads the program and leverages its significant intelligence collection …

Blasphemy In A Secular State: Some Reflections, Belachew M. Fikre

Belachew M Fikre

Anti-blasphemy laws have endured criticism in light of the modern, secular and democratic state system of our time. For example, Ethiopia’s criminal law provisions on blasphemous utterances, as well as on outrage to religious peace and feeling, have been maintained unaltered since they were enacted in 1957. However, the shift observed within the international human rights discourse tends to consider anti-blasphemy laws as going against freedom of expression. The recent Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 34 calls for a restrictive application of these laws for the full realisation of many of the rights within the International Covenant on Civil …

Religions As Sovereigns: Why Religion Is "Special", Elizabeth A. Clark

Elizabeth A. Clark

The Right To Quantitative Privacy, David Gray, Danielle Citron

David C. Gray

We are at the cusp of a historic shift in our conceptions of the Fourth Amendment driven by dramatic advances in surveillance technology. Governments and their private sector agents continue to invest billions of dollars in massive data-mining projects, advanced analytics, fusion centers, and aerial drones, all without serious consideration of the constitutional issues that these technologies raise. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled an end to its silent acquiescence in this expanding surveillance state. In that case, five justices signed concurring opinions defending a revolutionary proposition: that citizens have Fourth Amendment interests in substantial quantities of …

The Right To Quantitative Privacy, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron

Danielle Keats Citron

We are at the cusp of a historic shift in our conceptions of the Fourth Amendment driven by dramatic advances in surveillance technology. Governments and their private sector agents continue to invest billions of dollars in massive data-mining projects, advanced analytics, fusion centers, and aerial drones, all without serious consideration of the constitutional issues that these technologies raise. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled an end to its silent acquiescence in this expanding surveillance state. In that case, five justices signed concurring opinions defending a revolutionary proposition: that citizens have Fourth Amendment interests in substantial quantities of …

Those Who Can't, Teach: What The Legal Career Of John Yoo Tells Us About Who Should Be Teaching Law, Lawrence Rosenthal

Lawrence Rosenthal

Perhaps no member of the legal academy in America is more controversial than John Yoo. For his role in producing legal opinions authorizing what is thought by many to be abusive treatment of detainees as part of the Bush Administration’s “Global War on Terror,” some have called for him to be subjected to professional discipline, others have called for his criminal prosecution. This paper raises a different question: whether John Yoo – and his like – ought to be teaching law.

John Yoo provides something of a case study in the problems in legal education today. As a scholar, Professor …

Constitutional Faith And Dynamic Stability: Thoughts On Religion, Constitutions, And Transitions To Democracy, David C. Gray

David C. Gray

This essay, written for the 2009 Constitutional Schmooze, explores the complex role of religion as a source of both stability and instability. Drawing on a broader body of work in transitional justice, this essay argues that religion has an important role to play in the complex web of overlapping associations and oppositions constitutive of a dynamically stable society and further contends that constitutional protections which encourage a diversity of religions provide the best hope of harnessing that potential while limiting the dangers of religion evidenced in numerous cases of mass atrocity.

From Proclaiming To Realizing Human Rights -- An Indian Perspective, Rishabh Jogani

Rishabh Jogani

This article deals with human rights organisations and their organisational set up along with the indian perspective of the same.

A Prisoner's Charter? Reflections On Prisoner Litigation Under The Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, Debra L. Parkes

Debra L. Parkes

This paper examines over twenty years of prisoner litigation under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, beginning with a brief consideration of the social and political context for prisoners into which the Charter was entrenched in 1982, before moving on to consider a variety of successful and unsuccessful prisoners' Charter claims. The author notes some ways in which the impact of the Charter has been diminished at the prison walls, including through a lack of full and meaningful access by prisoners to courts or other means of independent review of prison decisions and conditions, as well as by the …

Time For Accountability: Effective Oversight Of Women's Prisons, Debra L. Parkes

Debra L. Parkes

Numerous reports and commissions of inquiry have documented the need for oversight and accountability mechanisms to redress illegalities and rights violations in Canada’s women’s prisons. This paper examines the recent troubled history of women’s imprisonment in which the calls for meaningful accountability and oversight have arisen, outlines some necessary criteria for any effective oversight body within this context, and measures some of the key recommendations against those criteria. The authors conclude that the judicial oversight model and remedial sanction proposed by Justice Louise Arbour in 1996 in her Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison …

Human Trafficking In The Heartland: Greed, Visa Fraud, And The Saga Of 53 Indian Nationals "Enslaved" By A Tulsa Company, Michael Scaperlanda

Michael A. Scaperlanda

No abstract provided.