Law Commons^™

Narrative Topoi In The Digital Age, Jessica Silbey, Zahr Said

Faculty Scholarship

Decades of thoughtful law and humanities scholarship have made the case for using humanistic texts and methods in the legal classroom. We build on that scholarship by identifying and describing three “narrative topoi” of the twenty-first century – podcasts, twitter and fake news. We use the term “topos” (from the Greek meaning “place”) and its plural, “topoi,” to mean “a literary commonplace” and “general setting for discussion” in the context of literary forms. Like an identifiable genre, narrative topoi are familiar story paths for audiences to travel. These narrative topoi live in contemporary popular culture and are products of digital …

Are Privacy Laws Deficient?, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy law around the world is deficient because it ignores design. Lawmakers have attempted to establish limits on the collection, use, and distribution of personal information. But they have largely overlooked the power of design. They have discounted the role that design plays in facilitating the conduct and harm privacy law is meant to prevent. Design pitches and picks privacy winners and losers, with people as data subjects and surveillance objects often on the losing side.

Why Courts Fail To Protect Privacy: Race, Age, Bias, And Technology, Christopher Robertson, Bernard Chao, Ian Farrell, Catherine Durso

Faculty Scholarship

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable “searches and seizures,” but in the digital age of stingray devices and IP tracking, what constitutes a search or seizure? The Supreme Court has held that the threshold question is supposed to depend on and reflect the “reasonable expectations” of ordinary members of the public concerning their own privacy. For example, the police now exploit the “third party” doctrine to access data held by email and cell phone providers, without securing a warrant, on the Supreme Court’s intuition that the public has no expectation of privacy in that information. Is that assumption correct? If …

"Simple" Takes On The Supreme Court, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

This essay assesses black literature as a medium for working out popular understandings of America’s Constitution and laws. Starting in the 1940s, Langston Hughes’s fictional character, Jesse B. Semple, began appearing in the prominent black newspaper, the Chicago Defender. The figure affectionately known as “Simple” was undereducated, unsophisticated, and plain spoken - certainly to a fault according to prevailing standards of civility, race relations, and professional attainment. Butthese very traits, along with a gritty experience under Jim Crow, made him not only a sympathetic figure but also an armchair legal theorist. In a series of barroom conversations, Simple ably critiqued …

Filmmaking In The Precinct House And The Genre Of Documentary Film, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores side-by-side two contemporary and related film trends: the recent popular enthusiasm over the previously arty documentary film and the mandatory filming of custodial interrogations and confessions.

The history and criticism of documentary film, indeed contemporary movie-going, understands the documentary genre as political and social advocacy (recent examples are Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 and Errol Morris's Fog of War). Judges, advocates, and legislatures, however, assume that films of custodial interrogations and confessions reveal a truth and lack a distorting point of view. As this Article explains, the trend at law, although aimed at furthering venerable criminal justice principles, …

Bargaining In The Shadow Of Copyright Law After Tasini, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Copyright law often provides the background rules against which bargaining over rights in works of information takes place. By granting creators of works of authorship certain exclusive rights and providing protection against infringement of those rights, copyright law effectively gives authors bargaining chips to use in negotiations with those who would exploit their works in some way. Generally, however, copyright law does not explicitly address imbalances in bargaining power that affect the division of the surplus between the parties to a copyright license. When the would-be exploiter of the copyrighted work wields some degree of market power or brings significant …

Trusting And Non-Trusting On The Internet Symposium: Trust Relationships, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

The Puzzle: The Internet is a wonderful innovation, allowing people around the world to communicate, trade, and obtain services. Convenient and rich in choices and opportunities, the Internet is tremendously attractive to buyers. Naturally, businesses are flocking to the Internet. The warning has been sounded that those who do not stake a claim in this incredible new communication medium will be left behind to perish. Yet, with all the enthusiasm, many buyers hesitate to take a serious plunge. Businesses are told repeatedly that they must obtain their customers' trust, yet find it more difficult to gain this trust in cyberspace …

Bankruptcy Law V. Privacy Rights: Which Holds The Trump Card?, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

The Internet's emergence as a retail marketplace has both posed new issues and cast old problems in a new light. As technology, particularly software, has advanced over time, traditional bricks and mortar firms have acquired the capability of tracking and analyzing all sorts of information about their customers, including purchasing patterns and demographic information. For years, firms have been licensing and selling such customer data both in and out of bankruptcy without much fear of legal limitations. In particular, the law has generally not adopted privacy rules that would present a barrier to commerce in personal information.

What The Future Holds: Policy Choices In A Global Marketplace, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

This essay's title is a misnomer. No one knows "What the Future Holds" in the global marketplace. We can, however, make some educated guesses about the issues that will assume particular importance in the next year or so. Thus, the essay might be more accurately titled, "What May or May Not Be the Important Issues in Internet Commerce in the Next Year or So'"-less catchy, admittedly, but closer to the truth.

Patterns Of Courtroom Justice, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Any one film can sustain a myriad of compelling interpretations. A collection of films, however, sharing formal and substantive qualities, reveals a common effect more than a diversity of meanings. This essay traces the shared formal and substantive qualities of a group of films, as I name them 'trial films'. It documents this genre of film by identifying the genre's norms of viewing and identification. It also investigates the peculiar hybrid discourse of the trial film genre that combines both filmic and legal discursive practices to show how trial films cultivate support for the American system of law through its …

A Proposal For A New Massachusetts Notoriety For Profit Law: The Grandson Of Sam, Sean J. Kealy

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, two women stood convicted of highly publicized major crimes in Massachusetts. Katherine Ann Power ("Power") was a fugitive who committed felony-murder in 1970. She led a life on the run as a fugitive until 1993 when she revealed her true identity and surrendered to authorities to face the consequences of her crimes. Louise Woodward ("Woodward"), an au pair originally from England, gained notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean when she was convicted of killing the baby entrusted to her care. Both women captured the attention of the national media for months and reportedly had opportunities …

Archibald Cox: Teacher, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

Archie Cox is a teacher. He taught generations of law students at Harvard Law School and, more recently, at Boston University School of Law. He left the classroom on three occasions, reluctantly, when first President Truman, then President Kennedy, then President Nixon's Attorney General called Professor Cox to Washington to play a part on the national stage. In his first weeks as Watergate Special Prosecutor, Cox carried with him a stack of blue books, Labor Law examinations he still had to grade (p. 263). In the public eye, his straight-backed demeanor, his familiar crew cut, half-glasses, bow tie, and tweeds …

Sticks And Stones Can Break My Name: Nondefamatory Negligent Injury To Reputation, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

If a reputation is injured, does it matter whether defamation is the cause? Injury to reputation differs from other items of damage a plaintiff enumerates. Tradition links it to particular tortious conduct-defamation-on the part of a defendant. This Comment examines ordinary negligent conduct as an alternative ground for recovery for injury to reputation.