Law Commons^™

Bringing Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity Into The Tax Classroom, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

A recent piece in the Journal of Legal Education analyzing student surveys by the Law School Admission Council reports that, despite improvement in the past decade, LGBT students still experience a law school climate in which they encounter substantial discrimination both inside and outside the classroom. Included among the list of "best practices" to improve the law school climate for LGBT students was a recommendation to incorporate discussions of LGBT issues in non-LGBT courses, such as tax. In a timely coincidence, the Section on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues held a day-long program at the 2009 AALS annual meeting …

Rescuing Baby Doe, Mary Crossley

Articles

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Baby Doe Rules offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on how much has changed during the past two-and-one-half decades and how much has stayed the same, at least in situations when parents and physicians face the birth of an infant who comes into the world with its life in peril.

The most salient changes are the medical advances in the treatment of premature infants and the changes in social attitudes towards and legal protections for people with disabilities. The threshold at which a prematurely delivered infant is considered viable has advanced steadily earlier into pregnancy, …

'We, The Paparazzi': Developing A Privacy Paradigm For Digital Video, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

In January 2009, the Camera Phone Predator Alert bill was introduced into Congress. It raised serious concerns about privacy rights in the face of digital video technology. In so doing, it brought to light a worrying gap in current privacy regulation - the lack of rules relating to digital video privacy. To date, digital privacy regulation has focused on text records that contain personal data. Little attention has been paid to privacy in video files that may portray individuals in inappropriate contexts, or in an unflattering or embarrassing light. As digital video technology, including inexpensive cellphone cameras, is now becoming …

From Domain Names To Video Games: The Rise Of The Internet In Presidential Politics, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Senator Barack Obama's historic victory in the 2008 election marks some important milestones - notably that this country is ready for its first African-American president. His win also underscores the importance of understanding today's Internet as a campaign tool. No longer is the Internet a one-way communications medium between candidate and electorate. It is now a powerful multi-directional networking tool. It can bridge physical and virtual spaces in a way never before possible, bringing previously latent social and political groups together. Senator Obama's campaign strategists understood and capitalized on the capabilities of what has recently become known as Web 2.0 …

On Race Theory And Norms, Christian Sundquist

Articles

This article has been adapted from an address given at the Albany Law Review Symposium in Spring 2009. This article discusses the judicial acceptance of DNA random match estimates, which uses DNA analysis to estimate the likelihood that a criminal defendant is the source of genetic material that is found at a crime scene. Relying on race, these tests demonstrate how such a re-inscription of race as a biological entity threatens the modern conception of race as a social construction, and how those estimates should be rejected as inadmissible on a doctrinal level under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Surveying The Legal Landscape For Pennsylvania Same-Sex Couples, Anthony C. Infanti

Articles

Recent advances in the battle over same-sex marriage in Connecticut, California, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont led some commentators to describe this as a “watershed” moment. These legal and legislative wins - however tentative - created a sense of momentum in favor of lesbian and gay rights advocates in the battle over same-sex marriage. Yet, it would be a mistake to allow jubilation over these wins to obscure the larger perspective on this battle. We should not lose sight of the fact that, with the exception of Iowa, same-sex couples in each of these jurisdictions could already obtain legal …

How Accountability-Based Policing Can Reinforce - Or Replace - The Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule, David A. Harris

Articles

In Hudson v. Michigan, a knock-and-announce case, Justice Scalia's majority opinion came close to jettisoning the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. The immense costs of the rule, Scalia said, outweigh whatever benefits might come from it. Moreover, police officers and police departments now generally follow the dictates of the Fourth Amendment, so the exclusionary rule has outlived the reasons that the Court adopted it in the first place. This viewpoint did not become the law because Justice Kennedy, one member of the five-vote majority, withheld his support from this section of the opinion. But the closeness of the vote on …

Myth Of The Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis Of Racial Harassment Cases, Pat K. Chew, Robert E. Kelley

Articles

This empirical study of over 400 federal cases, representing workplace racial harassment jurisprudence over a twenty-year period, found that judges' race significantly affects outcomes in these cases. African American judges rule differently than White judges, even when we take into account their political affiliation and case characteristics. At the same time, our findings indicate that judges of all races are attentive to relevant facts of the cases but interpret them differently. Thus, while we cannot predict how an individual judge might act, our study results strongly suggest that African American judges as a group and White judges as a group …