Law Commons^™

Five Truths Learned After A Dozen Years Of Asynchronous Online Teaching, Kenneth R. Swift

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In this article the author reflects on his more than twelve years of teaching asynchronous online law school courses and shares some of his beliefs about the value and limits of asynchronous teaching. The article addresses some surprising strengths of asynchronous online courses, including how black letter case law may be more effectively taught in the online format. Additionally, the article discusses how the asynchronous online format provides opportunities to excel for students with different abilities and personalities.

The article also addresses some potential limitations in the asynchronous online format, including the challenges inherent in student group work and collaboration. …

Missouri’S Path Towards “A Meaningful Opportunity For Release.” Should Remedying Unconstitutional Sentences Permit Judicial Review Of Parole Board Decisions?, Kristen S. Spina

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Fourth Amendment Limits Of Internet Content Preservation, Orin S. Kerr

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Internet accounts are copied and set aside by Internet providers on behalf of federal and state law enforcement. This process, known as preservation, ordinarily occurs without particularized suspicion. Any government agent can request preservation of any account at any time. Federal law requires the provider to set aside a copy of the account just in case the government later develops probable cause and returns with a warrant needed to compel the account’s disclosure. The preservation process is largely secret. With rare exceptions, the account owner will never know the preservation occurred.

This Article argues …

The Real Problem With Katz Circularity, Raff Donelson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The Fourth Amendment protects people against “unreasonable searches” by police. To operationalize this protection, courts must have a workable definition of a search. Since 1967, the Supreme Court has used the two-step Katz test as a primary measure of when a search has occurred. Under Katz, a court will find that something has been subject to search when (1) the individual in question has a subjective expectation of privacy in that thing and (2) such an expectation of privacy would be reasonable. From early on, commentators have decried the Katz test as circular and have urged courts to adopt …

Dye In The Cracks: The Limits Of Legal Frameworks Governing Police Use Of Big Data, Sarah Brayne

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Computational procedures increasingly inform how we work, communicate, and make decisions, raising sociolegal questions about how data are used by police and what the consequences are for laws governing police activity. Legal scholars have begun analyzing the implications of big data policing, yet their work to date is largely theoretical. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”) to ground legal debates about police use of big data in empirical detail. The article opens with a brief description of the fieldwork and findings on how the police use big data for dragnet …

Balancing Public Health And Privacy: Lessons From Digital Contact Tracing For Covid-19 Vaccination Tracking Efforts, Carmel Shachar

Saint Louis University Law Journal

The COVID-19 pandemic has brough the tension between individual privacy and public health initiative to the fore, in part because many of the solutions to the challenges of the pandemic proposed are digital. The first year of the pandemic has revealed that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is both too restrictive of traditional public health activities but also underprotective of important categories of health data. The failure of digital contact tracing applications to make a difference in combatting the pandemic during its early stages also illustrates the tension between individual privacy and public health surveillance. In order to …

At A Covid Crossroads: Public Health, Patient Privacy, And Health Information Confidentiality, Stacey A. Tovino

Saint Louis University Law Journal

This essay summarizes and assesses the various bulletins, guidance documents, and notices of enforcement discretion released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services regarding the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the COVID-19 pandemic. Among other topics and actions, these authorities address the application of the HIPAA Privacy Rule to the use and disclosure of protected health information for public health activities, waive the application of certain HIPAA Privacy Rule requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic, and announce enforcement discretion regarding certain covered entities’ non-compliance with particular provisions within the HIPAA Privacy Rule. These authorities overwhelmingly, and appropriately, …

Data Privacy: One Universal Regulation Eliminating The Many States Of Legal Uncertainty, Tiffany Light

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Although privacy has been around for quite some time, it has picked up speed within the last fifty years or so. Triggered by the advancements in technology that make the collection, storage, and use of data commonplace in today’s data-driven world, new privacy regulations and data protection standards have begun to spread like wildfire across the globe. Consumers continue to advocate for their right to privacy as they face the privacy paradox—the desire to protect one’s own privacy, while at the same time being forced to give it up as the cost of doing business in our data driven world. …

Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act Litigation In Federal Courts: Evaluating The Standing Doctrine In Privacy Contexts, Michael Mcmahon

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Biometric technology, used to identify individuals based on their unchangeable and unique attributes such as fingerprints or facial geometry, has become commonplace in modern life. In Illinois, the use of biometric information by private organizations is regulated by the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (“BIPA”), which came into effect in 2008 as the nation’s first state biometric information privacy statute. BIPA is unique in that it includes a private right of action and provides for recovery of liquidated damages where the statute is violated, which has resulted in plaintiffs bringing steadily increasing numbers of class-action suits under the law. This note …

The International Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Racial Discrimination: An Analysis Of Article 4’S Implementation On Hate Speech In The United States, Japan, And Germany, Chioma Chukwu-Smith

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In 2017, white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue from a public park. The “protesters” chose to voice their concerns by carrying tiki torches and spewing racist chants. The encounter began with hateful speech and ended in bloodshed and death. This is one example of how the United States, along with several other democracies, has been confronted with the question of how far they should go in limiting extreme forms of hateful, discriminatory expression.

In various countries around the world, hate speech, at its worst, has resulted in political extremism …

Table Of Contents

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Duty To Correct Another’S Material Misrepresentations: A Contextual Approach For Analyzing Fraudulent Behavior Under Rule 10b-5, Jenna Koleson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act is the broadest anti-fraud provision within securities laws and is enforced through Rule 10b-5, which makes it unlawful for any person, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security, to defraud, misrepresent material facts, omit material facts, or engage in any practice which operates as fraud or deceit upon any person. In promulgating Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5, Congress, and the SEC by way of Congressional authority, designed these laws to encompass the infinite variety of devices by which undue advantage could be taken of investors and corporations. Another …

Fake News & International Criminal Law, Sara L. Ochs

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In a decade defined by fake news, nations have weaponized disinformation to attack political, legal, and social systems throughout the world. Specifically, in recent years, government leaders have spread fake news about the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) in efforts to turn public opinion against the ICC and deter its attempts to investigate and prosecute controversial cases. Given the ICC’s reliance on state party cooperation, not only does this use of fake news hamper the Court’s likelihood of successfully prosecuting crimes that are of most concern to the international community, but it also promotes a version of history that denies victims …

Stop Electronic Amplification Of Lies, David L. Sloss

Saint Louis University Law Journal

American democracy is in trouble. According to Freedom House, “the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points,” from 94 to 83, between 2010 and 2020. The Economist downgraded the United States from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016. Leading scholars who have studied democratic decay in other countries warn that “the guardrails of American democracy are weakening.”

Several factors have contributed to the erosion of democratic norms and institutions in the United States. The electronic amplification of lies and misinformation is a major contributing factor. The term “electronic amplification,” as used …

A Foia For Facebook: Meaningful Transparency For Online Platforms, Michael Karanicolas

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Transparency has become the watchword solution for a range of social challenges, including related to content moderation and platform power. Obtaining accurate information about how platforms operate is a gatekeeping problem, which is essential to meaningful accountability and engagement with these new power structures. However, different stakeholders have vastly different ideas of what robust transparency should look like, depending on their area of focus. The platforms, for their part, have their own understanding of transparency, which is influenced by a natural drive to manage public perceptions.

This paper argues for a model of platform transparency based on better practice standards …