Law Commons^™

The Third Amendment In 2020, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Compared with other Amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Third Amendment does not get much attention. Its prohibition on the quartering of soldiers in houses during peacetime, along with its prohibition on similar quartering during times of war absent legal prescription, is rarely the subject of litigation or scholarship. Indeed, most people—and likely most attorneys—probably cannot tell you what the Third Amendment covers if put on the spot. This Article aims to fix this by giving the Third Amendment the respect that one of the Constitution's original amendments deserves. This Article surveys and analyzes caselaw, scholarship, and popular media …

Search Engine Liability For Autocomplete Defamation: Combating The Power Of Suggestion, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

In September 2012, Bettina Wulff, a former first lady of Germany, sued Google for defamation. Mrs. Wulff's complaint arose from Google's autocomplete function: when Mrs. Wulff's name was entered into the search engine, the search engine automatically suggested terms such as "prostitute" and "red light district." Rumors that Mrs. Wulff was a former prostitute dated back to 2006 when she first met Christian Wulff, her eventual husband and president of Germany from 2010 until his resignation in February 2012. Mrs. Wulff denied the truth of these rumors.

Mrs. Wulff contended that these autocomplete results were defamatory and that they caused …