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Full-Text Articles in Law
Can The States Keep Secrets From The Federal Government?, Robert A. Mikos
Can The States Keep Secrets From The Federal Government?, Robert A. Mikos
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
States amass troves of information detailing the regulated activities of their citizens, including activities that violate federal law. Not surprisingly, the federal government is keenly interested in this information. It has ordered reluctant state officials to turn over their confidential files concerning medical marijuana, juvenile criminal history, immigration status, tax payments, and employment discrimination, among many other matters, to help enforce federal laws against private citizens. Many states have objected to these demands, citing opposition to federal policies and concerns about the costs of breaching confidences, but the lower courts have uniformly upheld the federal government’s power to commandeer information …
Making The Most Of United States V. Jones In A Surveillance Society: A Statutory Implementation Of Mosaic Theory, Christopher Slobogin
Making The Most Of United States V. Jones In A Surveillance Society: A Statutory Implementation Of Mosaic Theory, Christopher Slobogin
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In the Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Jones, a majority of the Justices appeared to recognize that under some circumstances aggregation of information about an individual through governmental surveillance can amount to a Fourth Amendment search. If adopted by the Court, this notion sometimes called "mosaic theory"-could bring about a radical change to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, not just in connection with surveillance of public movements-the issue raised in Jonesbut also with respect to the government's increasingly pervasive record-mining efforts. One reason the Court might avoid the mosaic theory is the perceived difficulty of implementing it. This article …
Why Crime Severity Analysis Is Not Reasonable, Christopher Slobogin, Jeffrey Bellin, Et Al.
Why Crime Severity Analysis Is Not Reasonable, Christopher Slobogin, Jeffrey Bellin, Et Al.
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Jeffrey Bellin’s article, Crime Severity Distinctions and the Fourth Amendment: Reassessing Reasonableness in a Changing World, argues that the severity of the crime under investigation ought to be taken into account in assessing both the reasonableness of searches and whether a government action is a search in the first place. In pursuit of this objective, his article provides the best attempt to date at dealing with the difficult issue of separating serious from not-so serious crimes (he ends up with three categories—grave, serious and minor. He then makes the enticing argument that calibrating the degree of Fourth Amendment protection according …
The Constitutionality Of Federal Jurisdiction-Stripping Legislation And The History Of State Judicial Selection And Tenure, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
The Constitutionality Of Federal Jurisdiction-Stripping Legislation And The History Of State Judicial Selection And Tenure, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Few questions in the field of Federal Courts have captivated scholars like the question of whether Congress can simultaneously divest both lower federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear federal constitutional claims and thereby leave those claims to be litigated in state courts alone. Such a divestiture is known today as “jurisdiction stripping,” and, despite literally decades of scholarship on the subject, scholars have largely been unable to reconcile two widely held views: jurisdiction stripping should be unconstitutional because it deprives constitutional rights of adjudication by independent judges and jurisdiction stripping is nonetheless perfectly consistent with …