Law Commons^™

Write Before You Watch: Policies For Police Body-Worn Cameras That Advance Accountability And Accuracy, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

In the wake of high-profile killings and abuse by police officers over the past few years, the public has come to expect that officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras (BWCs). These cameras capture and preserve encounters between police and civilians, and the footage they record often becomes critical evidence in criminal, civil, or administrative proceedings. Reformers believe BWCs can improve police accountability, build public trust in police, and potentially reform police behavior.

Considering the reliance on BWCs, a key question has emerged: should officers be allowed to review BWC footage before preparing a report or giving a statement, or …

Requiring What’S Not Required: Circuit Courts Are Disregarding Supreme Court Precedent And Revisiting Officer Inadvertence In Cyberlaw Cases, Michelle Zakarin

Scholarly Works

As the age of technology has taken this country by surprise and left us with an inability to formally prepare our legal system to incorporate these advances, many courts are forced to adapt by applying pre-technology rules to new technological scenarios. One illustration is the plain view exception to the Fourth Amendment. Recently, the issue of officer inadvertence at the time of the search, a rule that the United States Supreme Court has specifically stated is not required in plain view inquiries, has been revisited in cyber law cases. It could be said that the courts interested in the existence …

Revenge Porn, Thomas Lonardo, Tricia P. Martland, Rhode Island Bar Journal

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

To Understand Us V. Microsoft, Consider 'Acme V. Shamrock', Peter B. Rutledge, Amanda W. Newton

Popular Media

The February 27, 2018, Supreme Court argument in United States v. Microsoft Corp. raises profound questions about issues of executive power, corporate governance, technology, judicial power and international affairs. At stake for the government is the scope of its investigative authority to obtain information located in a foreign country, irrespective of that country’s laws. At stake for Microsoft is its ability to organize its international corporate affairs and the predictability of the laws that will govern those affairs. This article analyzes the potential effects of this critical Supreme Court case.

User-Generated Evidence, Rebecca Hamilton

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Around the world, people are using their smartphones to document atrocities. This Article is the first to address the implications of this important development for international criminal law. While acknowledging the potential benefits such user-generated evidence could have for international criminal investigations, the Article identifies three categories of concern related to its use: (i) user security; (ii) evidentiary bias; and (iii) fair trial rights. In the absence of safeguards, user-generated evidence may address current problems in international criminal justice at the cost of creating new ones and shifting existing problems from traditional actors, who have institutional backing, to individual users …

Riley V. California And The Beginning Of The End For The Third-Party Search Doctrine, David A. Harris

Articles

In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court decided that when police officers seize a smart phone, they may not search through its contents -- the data found by looking into the call records, calendars, pictures and so forth in the phone -- without a warrant. In the course of the decision, the Court said that the rule applied not just to data that was physically stored on the device, but also to data stored "in the cloud" -- in remote sites -- but accessed through the device. This piece of the decision may, at last, allow a re-examination of …

Making "Friends" With The #Ethics Rules: Avoiding Pitfalls In Professional Social Media Use, Cynthia Laury Dahl

All Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers’ professional use of social media is widespread and a critical component to running a successful practice. Yet some common uses of social media easily – and often innocently -- violate the professional rules of ethics. The American Bar Association recently passed amendments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to include topics related to social media use, but the amendments still do not address all issues. Likewise, advisory opinions of state and local bar associations and court opinions give scant and sometimes contradictory advice about when a use does or does not violate a Rule. This essay discusses four …

Visual Jurisprudence, Richard Sherwin

Articles & Chapters

Lawyers, judges, and jurors face a vast array of visual evidence and visual argument inside the contemporary courtroom. From videos documenting crimes and accidents to computer displays of their digital simulation, increasingly, the search for fact-based justice is becoming an offshoot of visual meaning making. But when law migrates to the screen it lives there as other images do, motivating belief and judgment on the basis of visual delight and unconscious fantasies and desires as well as actualities. Law as image also shares broader cultural anxieties concerning not only the truth of the image, but also the mimetic capacity itself, …

Inquiry And Advocacy, Fallibilism And Finality: Culture And Inference In Science And The Law, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

Technology Comes To The Courtroom, And . . ., Fredric I. Lederer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Systems For Allocating Groundwater And Controlling Its Extraction, Charles F. Wilkinson

Groundwater: Allocation, Development and Pollution (Summer Conference, June 6-9)

22 pages (includes illustration).

Contains research sources list (pages 1-2).

The Future Of Evidence Law: Or, Some Prophecies About Proof, John W. Reed

Other Publications

I am honored to participate in this seminar that is part of the celebration surrounding the dedication of Colorado's new State Judicial Building. But that feeling of honor is tempered by an awareness of the responsibility and perils of the role I have been asked to play. With the assignment, "The Future of Evidence Law," I have been asked to play the prophet, to be a seer of sorts, and to suggest what rules and principles will govern proof at trials at some date in the future. Exactly what date was not specified in the invitation-a decade, perhaps? A generation? …

Technical And Scientific Evidence In Administrative Adjudication, Scott C. Whitney

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.