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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Leaky Leviathan: Why The Government Condemns And Condones Unlawful Disclosures Of Information, David E. Pozen
The Leaky Leviathan: Why The Government Condemns And Condones Unlawful Disclosures Of Information, David E. Pozen
Faculty Scholarship
The United States government leaks like a sieve. Presidents denounce the constant flow of classified information to the media from unauthorized, anonymous sources. National security professionals decry the consequences. And yet the laws against leaking are almost never enforced. Throughout U.S. history, roughly a dozen criminal cases have been brought against suspected leakers. There is a dramatic disconnect between the way our laws and our leaders condemn leaking in the abstract and the way they condone it in practice.
This Article challenges the standard account of that disconnect, which emphasizes the difficulties of apprehending and prosecuting offenders, and advances an …
Shallow Signals, Bert I. Huang
Shallow Signals, Bert I. Huang
Faculty Scholarship
Whether in dodging taxes, violating copyrights, misstating corporate earnings, or just jaywalking, we often follow the lead of others in our choices to obey or to flout the law. Seeing others act illegally, we gather that a rule is weakly enforced or that its penalty is not serious. But we may be imitating by mistake: what others are doing might not be illegal – for them.
Whenever the law quietly permits some actors to act in a way that is usually forbidden, copycat misconduct may be erroneously inspired by the false appearance that "others are doing it too." The use …