Digital Commons Network^™

I Spy With My Many Eyes: The Government’S Unbridled Use Of Your Surveillance Cameras, Brian A. Weikel

UC Law Journal

Surveillance cameras are increasingly used by the public and law enforcement to prevent and prosecute criminal activity. Individuals and companies can grant law enforcement access to private cameras for both live monitoring feeds and recorded footage, thereby creating a quasi- public network of private cameras. According to the third-party doctrine, the government can access all information from these surveillance cameras without a subpoena or warrant and without infringing upon Fourth Amendment privacy protections. However, as technology advances and the prevalence of surveillance cameras rises, this per se rule fails to account for one’s reasonable expectation of privacy in the public …

Autonomy And Free Thought In Brain- Computer Interactions: Review Of Legal Precedent For Precautionary Regulation Of Consumer Products, Sadia Khan, Daniel Cole, Hamid Ekbia

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The expanding use of neurotechnologies in consumer products increases the risks to human rights such as autonomy and free thought. While potentially beneficial in clinical applications, technologies such as brain implants and EEG-enabled wearable devices pose serious concerns about mental and psychological manipulation of human beings. In the US in particular, law and policy are lagging behind technical developments, thereby increasing the risks of abuse and misuse from commercial neurotechnologies. This article focuses on commercial neurotechnologies, which are distinct from medical neurotechnologies for clinical diagnoses, and seeks to guard against human rights risks to users by overcoming that regulatory gap. …

Criminalizing Race: How Direct And Indirect Criminalization Of Racial “Status” Constitutes Cruel And Unusual Punishment, Delphine Brisson-Burns

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence proscribes criminalization based on “status.” Based on United States Supreme Court case law, for the purposes of this paper, “status” is understood to mean an “ongoing state of being.” This paper argues that race is “status” and thus criminalizing people of color based on race violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Further, in the United States, racial “status” is criminalized both directly and indirectly. Racial “status” is criminalized directly by police officers’ frequent use of racial profiling to build criminal cases against people of color. On the other hand, racial status is …

Ciudadanos Sin Derechos: The Plight Of Puerto Rican Prisoners, Maylee Carbajal

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Injustice Anywhere: A Comparative Law Analysis Of Saudi Arabia’S Criminal Justice System, Cooper C. Millhouse

UC Law SF International Law Review

A narrow understanding of other nations’ judicial systems begets unsupported assumptions about the way a justice system should operate. While many western commenters have publicized the failures of Middle Eastern societies to protect individual rights, much of the existing literature fails to analyze the legal structures which perpetuate injustice and the motivations that keep the institutions in place. This article illuminates the goals Saudi Arabia’s justice system, inspects how those goals parallel the goals of other common law and civil law systems, and evaluates whether Saudi Arabia’s system is able to effectively accomplish its aims.

This article argues that Saudi …

Towards Responsible Quantum Technology: Safeguarding, Engaging And Advancing Quantum R&D, Mauritz Kop, Mateo Aboy, Eline De Jong, Urs Gasser, Timo Minssen, I. Glenn Cohen, Mark Brongersma, Teresa Quintel, Luciano Floridi, Raymond Laflamme

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The expected societal impact of quantum technologies (QT) urges us to proceed and innovate responsibly. This article proposes a conceptual framework for Responsible QT that seeks to integrate considerations about ethical, legal, social, and policy implications (ELSPI) into quantum R&D, while responding to the Responsible Research and Innovation dimensions of anticipation, inclusion, reflection and responsiveness. After examining what makes QT unique, we argue that quantum innovation should be guided by a methodological framework for Responsible QT, aimed at jointly safeguarding against risks by proactively addressing them, engaging stakeholders in the innovation process, and continue advancing QT (‘SEA’). We further suggest …

One Nation, Under Dobbs: How Dobbs V. Jackson Women’S Health Impacts Data Privacy For All, Mikayla Domingo

UC Law Science and Technology Journal

The Supreme Court has gone against the fundamental principle of Stare Decisis in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, holding that the constitution confers no right to an abortion. The aftermath of Dobbs shines a spotlight on how reproductive and feminine health data are exploited to target women. From geolocation monitoring to abortion clinics, to women’s search history and private messages being used in her prosecution, the dystopian prospect of surveillance capitalism is now reality for women in the United States. The immediate impact of Dobbs illuminates the need for greater and clearer data privacy protections have never been more …

The Origins And Future Of International Data Privacy Law, Julian Schneider

UC Law SF International Law Review

Data privacy law varies widely across jurisdictions worldwide. Amidst sophistries and jurisdictional conflicts between lawmakers in Europe and the United States, a largely unregulated cross-border data industry emerged, prepared to exploit an unaware or overwhelmed general public. Without governmental support, privacy itself is in grave danger. The people, as true bearers of the fundamental right to privacy, must be put back in control of their data by governments that are aware of their ever-conflicting roles as protectors and aggressors. Scholars like Ari Ezra Waldman, in its book “Industry Unbound,” have criticized the common notice and consent approach to privacy as …

After The Demise Of Affirmative Action, Ensuring Equitable Access To Educational Opportunities, Anna Gorman-Huang, Peter Henry Huang

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

On June 29, 2023, the United States Supreme Court held in two related cases that race-based affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional, because it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. What is next in (higher) education after the Supreme Court’s rulings in two related cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions? The decisions may dramatically transform college admissions and even how universities think about allocating their resources and about their role in a democratic society. Even now, the Court’s holdings are rippling past highly selective college campuses to corporate boardrooms, non-profits, and state legislatures.

Despite the …

A Critical Race Theory Analysis: The Role Of Racialization, The White Racial Frame, And Institutional Power In California Eugenics Sterilizations, Nicole Sequeira Tashovski

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Singing The Force Of The Imagination: How To Wonder About The Emotional-Reportage In Immigration Advocacy, Joshua J. Schroeder

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

In the years leading up to July 4, 1776, Phillis Wheatley bid the imaginations of the American Revolutionaries to spring open by shouting: “Imagination! Who can sing thy force?” Wheatley defined the imagination as the leader of the mental train, and, according to Ciceronian principles, she demonstrated that the imagination is the singular facilitator of human action. Despite numerous calls to venerate American originalism over the past several decades, the founding concept of the imagination remains an underdeveloped topic in the legal field, even while it reigns over the decision-making processes of all U.S. legislators, administrators, and judges.

However, on …

Table Of Contents

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property: Patents As Property For The Takings, Robin Feldman

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Privacy Law: Police Secrecy Exceptionalism, Christina Koningisor

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Getting Off Off-Duty: The Impact Of Dobbs On Police Officers’ Private Sexual Lives, Joshua Arrayales

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Upon its leak and subsequent official release, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization shocked and worried the nation. Overnight, the Court overturned forty-nine years of precedent. Those forty-nine years of overturned precedent not only implicate the ability to obtain abortion, but also the ability to engage in relationships, marry, make decisions about our own body, and keep our personal lives private. As a result, many advocates worry about the status of fundamental rights since many of those rights relied on the now overturned cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as …

Administrative Law: In Search Of The Public Interest, Jodi L. Short

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law: Faithful Execution In The Fifty States, Zachary S. Price

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Environmental Law: The Negotiable Implementation Of Environmental Law, Dave Owen

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Civil Procedure: Rule 4 And Personal Jurisdiction, Scott Dodson

The Judges' Book

No abstract provided.

Racial Reckoning And The Police-Free Schools Movement, Thalia González, Rebecca Epstein

Center for Racial and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Mass Surveillance As Racialized Control, Prithika Balakrishnan

Center for Racial and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

“Legally Magic” Words: An Empirical Study Of The Accessibility Of Fifth Amendment Rights, Kate Weisburd, Roseanna Sommers

Faculty Scholarship

Fifth Amendment case law (including Miranda v. Arizona) requires that individuals assert their right to counsel or silence using “explicit,” “clear,” and “unambiguous” statements—or, as some dissenting judges have lamented, using “legally magic” words. Through a survey of 1,718 members of the U.S. public, we investigate what ordinary people believe it takes to assert the right to counsel and the right to silence. We then compare their perceptions against prevailing legal standards governing invocation.

With respect to the right to counsel, the survey results indicate that members of the public have a uniformly lower threshold for invocation than do courts. …

The Inadmissibility Of Victim Impact Evidence, Fernanda Gonzalez

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

Currently, 41% of inmates on death row in the United States are Black, even though Black people make up only 13.6% of the total population in the country. Additionally, the data has repeatedly shown that states that do not have the death penalty have lower murder rates than states that do. Despite these disparities, more than half of states in the United States continue to allow capital punishment in some form as an alternative to a life sentence. These disparities were further exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s decision in Payne v. Tennessee, which allowed prosecutors to introduce victim impact evidence …

Cryptocurrency — Legally Navigating The “Highway To Climate Hell”, Steven Ferrey

UC Law Environmental Journal

The U.S. electric system is regarded as history’s greatest engineering achievement and the second most important invention in history. This Article analyzes the provocative legal ‘dark side’ of crypto currency now compromising the sustainability and resiliency of the U.S. electric system. Crypto currency miners have migrated in mass during the 2020s from Asia to several areas of the U.S., choosing inefficiently to waste large amounts of fossil-fuel and electric power. Scholars suggest that Bitcoin’s indirect carbon emissions at the current rate, alone with no other increases by world nations (which in fact are still increasing rapidly) are enough to push …

Warwilding: A Weapon And A Shield In The Midst Of Conflict, Lynn Ma

UC Law Environmental Journal

War disrupts the lives of people, governments, and the wider environment. The purpose of this article is to examine how rewilding and ecological planning could be applied to military logistics to enhance peace and security amid war and post-war periods. This is explored through a concept that conservationists have coined “WarWilding.” I will develop my conclusions by analyzing WarWilding case studies from active warfare and post-war zones. To evaluate the boundaries in the ethics of WarWilding, this paper will frame the analyses around provisions in the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification …

Saving The Permit Streamlining Act: The California Supreme Court Must Depart From Horn V. County Of Ventura, Milene Minassians

UC Law Environmental Journal

The Permit Streamlining Act (PSA) ensures swift resolution of permit applications by simplifying the processing of permits for development projects. To achieve this end, the California Legislature set forth various time limits within which local permitting bodies must approve or disapprove of a complete application. After the time expires, the PSA provides that a project shall be “deemed approved” so long as affected landowners are given “public notice required by law.” The PSA’s statutory framework butts up against Horn v. County of Ventura—a 1979 California Supreme Court case that is inconsistent with California due process principles. The Horn decision has …

Through A Glass Darkly: Tplf Viewed Through A Procedural Lens, Richard L. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

Legal responses to litigation funding could take many forms—consumer protection, regulation of interest rates and fees, perhaps even prohibition (as under the old doctrines of champerty and maintenance). In the U.S., procedural responses, often emphasizing disclosure of funding, have featured prominently. From the perspective of one directly involved in the U.S. rulemaking effort, this Article explores the challenges of designing such a rule. Among other things, it notes that litigation funding actually could support important law-implementation features of American litigation. But a host of uncertainties mean that for the present, the future of mandated disclosure of funding remains unclear, as …

Advancing Human Rights And The Rule Of Law In Haiti, Kate E. Bloch, Ariel Chéry, Marie Gerda Dorcy, Roxane Edmond Dimanche, Yvon Janvier, Maxo Mezilas, Benjamin Trouille

Faculty Scholarship

The rule of law in Haiti is precarious. The ESCDROJ law school clinic in the town of Jérémie champions indigent individuals whose human rights are under siege during their prolonged and unconstitutional pre-trial connement in prison. To our knowledge, it is the only operating in-house law school clinic in Ha1iti. Despite myriad obstacles, during its initial pre-pandemic period of op- eration in 2018-2019, the inaugural clinic team represented clients in 43 cases brought to trial and succeeded in garnering the release of 25 of those individuals. That is a trial release success rate of over 58%. Subsequently, however, the ad- …

The Road Not Taken: A Critical Juncture In Racial Preferences For Naturalized Citizenship, Ming Hsu Chen

Faculty Scholarship

In the “Free White Person” Clause of the Naturalization Act of 1790 as Super-Statute, Gabriel Jack Chin and Paul Finkelman argue that racist results in naturalization have arisen despite, or maybe because of, the race neutral interpretation. This happened in a manner that could have been predicted by the federal government’s attitudes toward non-White persons in the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the nearly unbroken chain of legal developments. This leads them to think of the law as a “super-statute.” While I agree that this is the path actually taken in history, I view the mid-1960s civil rights era as …

Major Questions About Presidentialism: Untangling The 'Chain Of Dependence' Across Administrative Law, Jodi L. Short, Jed H. Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.