Law Commons^™

Commentary On Reynolds V. Mcnichols, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

The 1973 case Reynolds v McNichols concerns a woman who was repeatedly arrested on suspicion of and for “prostitution.” During these arrests, Roxanne Reynolds, the defendant, was subject to forced examination and treatment. The arrests and examinations were authorized by Section 735 of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver, which directed the Department of Health and Hospitals “to use every available means to ascertain the existence of and investigate all suspected cases of communicable venereal disease, and to determine the sources of such infections.” Reynolds argued that the ordinance was unconstitutional because it was irrational, …

Sunshine Laws Behind The Clouds: Limited Transparency In A Time Of National Emergency, Ira P. Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way citizens lived their lives, businesses operated, and governments functioned. With most people forced to stay home, the pandemic also disrupted how people received their news and other essential information. Public records and public meetings had to adapt to face the growing challenges in a locked-down world. While some governmental bodies were able to keep up with the threat that COVID-19 posed against transparency, others either failed to acclimate to the new normal or actively took advantage of the circumstances to limit how much the public knew not only about the crisis, but about …

Ethical Ai In American Policing, Elizabeth E. Joh

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

We know there are problems in the use of artificial intelligence in policing, but we don’t quite know what to do about them. One can also find many reports and white papers today offering principles for the responsible use of AI systems by the government, civil society organizations, and the private sector. Yet, largely missing from the current debate in the United States is a shared framework for thinking about the ethical and responsible use of AI that is specific to policing. There are many AI policy guidance documents now, but their value to the police is limited. Simply repeating …

Transcript: Presentation On Artificial Intelligence And Discrimination In Healthcare, Sharona Hoffman

Journal of Law and Health

The following is a transcription from The Digital Health and Technology Symposium presented at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law by The Journal of Law & Health on Friday, April 8, 2022. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Privacy Please — Direct Observation Drug Testing & Invasion Of Privacy, Elizabeth Black

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Big Data, Big Gap: Working Towards A Hipaa Framework That Covers Big Data, Ryan Mueller

Indiana Law Journal

One lasting impact of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the privacy protections it provides for our sensitive health information. In the era of Big Data, however, much of our health information exists outside the traditional doctor-patient dynamic. From wearable technology, to mobile applications, to social media and internet browsing, Big Data organizations collect swaths of data that shed light on sensitive health information. Big Data organizations largely fall outside of HIPAA’s current framework because of the stringent requirements for when the HIPAA protections apply, namely that the data must be held by a covered entity, and …

Constitutional Law—Fourth Amendment—Warrantless Key-Test Searches In Residential Door Locks, Jacob Hill

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Content Moderation As Surveillance, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Technology platforms are the new governments, and content moderation is the new law, or so goes a common refrain. As platforms increasingly turn toward new, automated mechanisms of enforcing their rules, the apparent power of the private sector seems only to grow. Yet beneath the surface lies a web of complex relationships between public and private authorities that call into question whether platforms truly possess such unilateral power. Law enforcement and police are exerting influence over platform content rules, giving governments a louder voice in supposedly “private” decisions. At the same time, law enforcement avails itself of the affordances of …

Good Intentions Gone Awry: Privacy As Proportionality Under Rule 26(B)(1), Hon. James C. Francis Iv (Ret.)

San Diego Law Review

Over the past several years, two legal trends have gained momentum. The first is the effort to make discovery in litigation more proportional, culminating in the 2015 amendment to Rule 26(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which includes proportionality in the definition of what information is discoverable. The second is the movement, both in the United States and abroad, toward the greater recognition of individual privacy interests. Some courts and commentators now seek to merge these two trends by advocating that privacy should be considered a factor in analyzing proportionality under Rule 26(b)(1).

This paper takes the position …

The Central Monitoring System And Privacy: Analysing What We Know So Far, Jaideep Reddy

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

State-run surveillance is as old as the ages, but the wired state of our lives has put it in the spotlight more now than perhaps ever before. Our communication and data can often be veritable repositories of all that we are, and many governments today have the technological means to give them relatively easy access to most of our private data. Civil society around the world has therefore naturally expressed concern over the increasing scope of State surveillance. The Central Monitoring System (hereafter, “CMS”) is a new technology for State surveillance in India, and is in the nascent stages of …

Ip Addresses And Expeditious Disclosure Of Identity In India, Prashant Iyengar

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

Concomitant with the proliferation of cybercrime in India has been the use of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses by law enforcement agencies to track down criminals. While useful in many situations, the potential for misuse of this information raises important concerns for the privacy of individuals online. This note reviews the statutory mechanisms regulating the retention and disclosure of IP addresses by internet companies in India. It identifies and analyses the four broad sources to which the regime of IP Address disclosure by Internet Service Providers (ISP) may be traced: under the (i) operating licenses issued under the Telegrah Act, 1885, …

Policy-Making, Technology And Privacy In India, Subhajit Basu

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

There is a preconceived assumption that privacy laws in India are notoriously weak. This unquestioned assumption is based on a paradigm that does not take into consideration that the conception of privacy in India is influenced by its ‘culture of trust.’ Unfortunately, rather than looking into the specific societal, political and economic factors triggering the controversy, privacy researchers in the West have constantly varied the meaning and extent of the ‘right to privacy’ to bolster their argument. This article offers an explanation for why ‘umbrella’ data privacy legislation similar to the E.U. Data Protection Directive should not be enacted by …

Balancing Online Privacy In India, Apar Gupta

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

There have been disturbing press reports and articles on the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008. These accounts broadly wallow about the increase in the police powers of the state. They contend that the amendment grants legal sanction to online surveillance inexorably whittling down internet privacy. This article seeks to examine this prevalent notion. It discovers that legal provisions for online surveillance, monitoring and identification of data have been inserted in a narrow and defined class of circumstances governed by tenuous procedures. At first glance it may seem that these procedures and safeguards by themselves increase the right to privacy. However, …

Data Protection Efforts In India: Blind Leading The Blind?, Latha R Nair

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper, after establishing the need for effective data protection in India, goes on to describe the rudimentary measures taken in the country till date in the sphere of data protection. While highlighting the inadequacy of such measures and the ambiguity in proposed amendments, the author seeks inspiration from European Union law in proposing a broad framework for data protection law in India.

Patenting Human Genes: Wherein Lies The Balance Between Private Rights And Public Access In India And The United States?, Elizabeth Siew-Kuan Ng

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This article examines the patentability of human genes by evaluating where the balance should lie between the protection of private rights and public access for the promotion of further innovation and public health. The author investigates this issue by providing a comparative study on the approaches adopted in India and the United States – two highly divergent nations that offer unique contrasts in a comparative analysis of their patent regimes. The outcome of the appraisal discerns a potential convergence in the Indian and US approaches on certain aspects of human gene patent-eligibility. This interesting result reveals that contrary to intuition, …

The Internet Of Citizens: A Lawyer’S View On Some Technological Developments In The United Kingdom And India*, Guido Noto La Diega

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This article aspires to constitute a useful tool for both Asian and European readers as regards some of the state-of-the-art technologies revolving around the Internet of Things (‘IoT’) and their intersection with cloud computing (the Clouds of Things, ‘CoT’) in both the continents. The main emerging legal issues will be presented, with a focus on intellectual property, consumer protection, and privacy. The cases chosen are from India and the United Kingdom, two countries that are conspicuously active on this front. I will give an account only of (what I consider to be) the highlights of the IoT in India and …

Flattening The Curve While Protecting Our Right To Privacy: How The United States Can Implement The Digital Contract Tracing Efforts Used In East Asia, Evan Morris

Global Business Law Review

This paper looks at the digital contact tracing efforts implemented by other nations and assesses how similar measures could operate under enacted and proposed United States laws. Part I overviews the history of contact tracing and its effectiveness in prior disease outbreaks. Part II delves into the digital contact tracing efforts implemented by South Korea and Singapore. These summaries include: the digital contact tracing efforts taken, the laws that authorize these efforts, the public’s reception, and the overall effectiveness of the efforts. Part III overviews the digital contact tracing efforts in the United States, including proposed legislation aimed at user …

Throwing Stones In Glass Houses: Protecting Privacy Under The Law Of Nuisance, Cheng Lim Saw, Joon Wei Aaron Yoong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The limits of the law of nuisance were recently tested in the controversial decisions of Fearn v Tate Gallery Board of Trustees, both before the UK High Court and UK Court of Appeal. Against the backdrop of these decisions, this article argues that the tort of private nuisance can indeed, in appropriate cases, protect against invasions of privacy caused by overlooking – all within the present framework and ambit of the action. It is also proposed that a communitarian approach be adopted in fashioning the appropriate remedy for actions founded in nuisance.

The End Of Roe V Wade And New Legal Frontiers On The Constitutional Right To Abortion, I. Glenn Cohen, Melissa Murray, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

On June 24, 2002, the US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Court’s majority decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito was substantially the same as a draft opinion leaked a month earlier. The regulation of abortion will now be decided by the states, with about half currently or will soon ban or severely restrict abortion access. In this Viewpoint, we explain the Dobbs ruling and what it means for physicians, public health, and society.

We focus on new legal frontiers in the constitutional right to abortion, including medication abortion …

Regulating Harm: Tensions Between Data Privacy And Data Transparency, Kaitlyn Filip, Kat Albrecht

CJC Publications

In an era of massive digital data growth, data storage and dissemination has posed complex new problems for privacy regulations across agencies and institutions on a global scale. Laws about data privacy vary substantially by country, by state, and by industry. In formulating these policies, there exists a fundamental tension between a desire for data privacy and one for data transparency. This tension becomes particularly acute as new digital tools and access technologies have made these records more accessible and connectable than ever before. This tension is borne out in the enactment of law. Three states – California, Colorado, and …

24th Annual Open Government Summit 2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Rhode Island Office Of The Attorney General

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Marketing Research And Children’S Consumer Privacy Rights: A Battle In The Digital Age, Hadley Johnson

Child and Family Law Journal

Advancements in technology and social media have led to a decreased level of personal data privacy. Companies are now provided with limitless ways to extract information about their customers, even without their knowledge. This is especially concerning when it is the personal information of a child that is being collected, as in the United States, few regulations exist to protect them on social media. Even fewer regulations exist to protect children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. The purpose of this Note is to discuss the importance between market research practices and children’s consumer privacy rights in the digital …

Floridians' Right To Choose Or Refuse Vaccinations, Patrick E. Tolan Jr.

Child and Family Law Journal

Every state must strike the right balance between an individual's freedom to make medical choices and the state's role in protecting the public health and the welfare of its people. Florida, by and through its Constitution, has afforded heightened protections for individual self-determination over medical treatment decisions and evaluates infringement of these private medical rights with strict scrutiny. This article is about legal rights for adults to obtain or refuse vaccines and for parents to decide the timing or administration of any vaccine or group of vaccines proposed for their school-aged, preschool, newborn, or unborn children.

I argue that States …

The Case For A Liberal Communitarian Jurisprudence, Amitai Etzioni

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This article seeks to show that courts face difficulties without a principled, constitutional anchoring for the conception of the common good. Courts could divine the common good from the penumbra of the Fourth Amendment in the same way the Supreme Court created a right to privacy. In addition to creating a “common good” constitutional principle, the judicial branch should establish criteria to determine when this principle should take precedence over individual rights expressly preserved in the Constitution.

Big Data, Both Friend And Foe: The Intersection Of Privacy And Trade On The Transatlantic Stage, Gabrielle C. Craft

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

This Note analyzes the data privacy protection initiatives implemented by the European Union and the United States and their effects on international trade. As technology develops, the feasibility of data collection increases, allowing for the collecting of inconceivable amounts of data information. Consequently, this data includes personal information, thus implicating privacy concerns and the need for data privacy protection regulations. Data privacy focuses on the use and governance of personal data and how the data is gathered, collected, and stored. In 2018, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which sets out highly stringent standards for how …

I Spy With My Little--Gps Tracking Device: Why Georgia Should Look To The United Kingdom's Domestic Violence Laws To Deter Innovative Abuses Of Technology, Tyerus Skala

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Real Harm In A Virtual World: Establishing Federal Standing In The Seventh Circuit Under Illinois’S Biometric Information Privacy Act, Julia Lobo

Northern Illinois University Law Review

Illinois became the first state to regulate the collection and use of biometric information by private entities when it enacted the Biometric Information Privacy Act in 2008. In the years since, more and more businesses have begun to collect biometric information from their employees and customers. As lawmakers in other states and in Congress look to enact legislation to protect biometric privacy rights, their drafting choices may be informed by three recent Seventh Circuit decisions analyzing when a plaintiff alleging a violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act has, or has not, established Article III standing as required to proceed …

Resisting Face Surveillance With Copyright Law, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Face surveillance is animated by deep-rooted demographic and deployment biases that endanger marginalized communities and threaten the privacy of all. But current approaches have not prevented its adoption by law enforcement. Some companies have offered voluntary moratoria on selling the technology, leaving many others to fill in the gaps. Legislators have enacted regulatory oversight at the state and city levels, but a federal ban remains elusive. Both approaches require vast shifts in practical and political will, each with drawbacks. While we wait, face surveillance persists. This Article suggests a new possibility: face surveillance is fueled by unauthorized copies and reproductions …

The Connecticut Four, Beth Wade

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

This paper provides a glimpse into the serious privacy issues that librarians have to address in their role as a public servant as well as the extent that they have to stand up to government agencies to protect the privacy of patrons.

Private Rights Of Action In Privacy Law, Lauren Henry Scholz

William & Mary Law Review

Many privacy advocates assume that the key to providing individuals with more privacy protection is strengthening the government’s power to directly sanction actors that hurt the privacy interests of citizens. This Article contests the conventional wisdom, arguing that private rights of action are essential for privacy regulation. First, I show how private rights of action make privacy law regimes more effective in general. Private rights of action are the most direct regulatory access point to the private sphere. They leverage private expertise and knowledge, create accountability through discovery, and have expressive value in creating privacy-protective norms. Then to illustrate the …