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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dumping Daubert, Popping Popper And Falsifying Falsifiability: A Re-Assessment Of First Principles, Barbara P. Billauer Esq
Dumping Daubert, Popping Popper And Falsifying Falsifiability: A Re-Assessment Of First Principles, Barbara P. Billauer Esq
barbara p billauer esq
Abstract: The Daubert mantra demands that judges, acting as gatekeepers, prevent para, pseudo or bad science from infiltrating the courtroom. To do so, the Judges must first determine what is ‘science’ and what is ‘good science.’ It is submitted that Daubert is deeply polluted with the notions of Karl Popper who sets ‘falsifiability’ and ‘falsification’ as the demarcation line for that determination. This philosophy has intractably infected case law, leading to bad decisions immortalized as stare decisis, and an unworkable system of decision-making, which negatively impacts litigant expectations. Among other problems is the intolerance of Popper’s system for multiple causation, …
Definitions, Religion, And Free Exercise Guarantees, Mark Strasser
Definitions, Religion, And Free Exercise Guarantees, Mark Strasser
Mark Strasser
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. Non-religious practices do not receive those same protections, which makes the ability to distinguish between religious and non-religious practices important. Regrettably, members of the Court have been unable to agree about how to distinguish the religious from the non-religious—sometimes, the implicit criteria focus on the sincerity of the beliefs, sometimes the strength of the beliefs or the role that they play in an individual’s life, and sometimes the kind of beliefs. In short, the Court has virtually guaranteed an incoherent jurisprudence by sending contradictory signals with …
Can A One Star Review Get You Sued? The Right To Anonymous Speech On The Internet And The Future Of Internet “Unmasking” Statutes, Jesse D. Lively
Can A One Star Review Get You Sued? The Right To Anonymous Speech On The Internet And The Future Of Internet “Unmasking” Statutes, Jesse D. Lively
Jesse D Lively
This Comment argues that the Supreme Court of Virginia should first reverse the Virginia Court of Appeal’s decision when it hears the Yelp case later this year. Secondly, the court hold that the Virginia statute for identifying persons communicating anonymously over the Internet violates the First Amendment's required showing of merit on both law and facts before a subpoena duces tecum to identify an anonymous speaker can be enforced. Lastly, it should adopt a new “unveiling standard” similar to the standards used in either Dendrite or Cahill. Part II examines the jurisprudential history of identifying anonymous Internet speakers in defamation …
Foreseeability Decoded, Meiring De Villiers
Foreseeability Decoded, Meiring De Villiers
Meiring de Villiers
The Article reviews the conceptual and doctrinal roles of the foreseeability doctrine in negligence law, and analyzes its application in cases where a new technology or unexplored scientific principle contributed to a plaintiff’s harm. It adopts the common law definition of foreseeability as a systematic relationship between a defendant’s wrongdoing and the plaintiff’s harm, and demonstrates translation of the concept into the language of science so that the common law meaning of the foreseeability doctrine is preserved. An analysis of the foreseeability of HIV/AIDS as a blood-borne risk illustrates application of the concept to contemporary issues in medical science.
The Surveillance Society And The Third-Party Privacy Problem, Shaun Spencer
The Surveillance Society And The Third-Party Privacy Problem, Shaun Spencer
Shaun Spencer
This article examines a question that has become increasingly important in the emerging surveillance society: should the law treat information as private even though others know about it? This is the third-party privacy problem. Part I explores two competing conceptions of privacy: the binary and contextual conceptions. Part II describes two features of the emerging surveillance society that should change the way we address the third-party privacy problem. One feature, “surveillance on demand,” results from exponential increases in data collection and aggregation. The other feature, “uploaded lives,” reflects a revolution in the type and amount of information that we share …