Law Commons^™

United States V. Hubbell: Encryption And The Discovery Of Documents, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Five years ago, in a contribution to these pages, I suggested that the Supreme Court's oldest precedents and the original intent of the framers of the Constitution precluded the use of evidence produced under a grant of immunity against the producer, even though the material produced included documents that the producer had not been compelled to write. This implied that information concealed with a cryptographic key could not be used in a criminal prosecution against someone from whom the key had been obtained under a grant of immunity. The issue, however, was doubtful given the tendency of the Court to …

Using Instructional Design To Improve Student Learning, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Categorizations of knowledge and skills have different purposes. Robert Gagne's classification, which we use here, organizes types of learning according to the mental processes involved in performing them. The best practices for teaching knowledge or skills in a particular category are similar, whether the knowledge being taught is torts, contracts, or electrical engineering. For law teachers, the practical advantage of this classification is that it allows us to identify successful learning techniques from other subjects and adapt them to law teaching, rather than starting from scratch and developing and testing our own techniques. A second advantage of classifying types of …

Property Law And Climate Change, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

This article discusses the issue of rules for acquiring property rights in natural resources, land use controls (such as restrictive covenants) and how they can impede the progress of environmentally friendly power sources when such sources are considered aesthetically offensive, and how property law should deal with uses of land that are inefficient and contribute to global warming. [excerpt]

New Modes Of Assessment, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

The traditional and dominant mode of formal assessment in law schools is an essay examination administered at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, the essay exam is prone to inaccuracies, some of which can be balanced by other forms of assessment. In addition, essay exams are extremely burdensome to grade.

The purpose of this Article is to call attention to a variety of alternatives to this traditional format that are more accurate and less burdensome than traditional essay exams. Increasing accuracy makes it possible to determine whether the instruction has been effective, allowing the instructor to address areas of weakness …

'A Body Of Sound Practical Common Sense': Law Reform Through Lay Judges, Public Choice Theory, And The Transformation Of American Law, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

... [T]hree of the earliest and most influential proponents of the argument that public choice theory implies that courts produce better rules than legislators are Judge Frank Easterbrook, Judge Richard Posner, and Justice Antonin Scalia. These proponents of social choice theory conclude from this that judicial decisions are more to be trusted than legislative decisions and therefore favor a variety of devices to expand judicial power. These include interpreting statutes restrictively, which leaves the decision up to the pre-existing judge-made law; interpreting statutes in a common-law fashion, which allows judges their traditional rule-making powers; and ignoring legislative intent, which leaves, …

Assumption Of Risk As A Defense To Negligence, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

This article will revisit the history of assumption of risk in California and elsewhere and suggest that the traditional doctrine should be modified and revived, despite the contrary approach of the Restatement (Third) of Torts. In the first part of the article, I will describe the ambiguities in the statements of assumption of risk that existed before the adoption of comparative negligence. I will show that Knight v. Jewett, which rejected assumption of risk, misinterpreted Li v. Yellow Cab Co., in which the California Supreme Court adopted a comparative negligence rule. Moreover, even if the Knight case was defensible on …

Social Contract Neutrality And The Religion Clauses Of The Federal Constitution, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

'Neutrality' has become the slogan that the Supreme Court uses for judging all claims of freedom of religion whether under the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause. However, the word 'neutrality' conceals the Court's inconsistent use of the concept. Thus, in Rosenberger v. Rectors of the University of Virginia, the recent debate about funding for religious publications, both the majority and the dissent asserted that only their approach was truly neutral. This inconsistency in the meaning of neutrality in the religion clauses is merely part of a general inconsistency in the Court's treatment of the religion clauses. Some of …

Self Incrimination And Cryptographic Keys, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

Modern cryptography can make it virtually impossible to decipher documents without the cryptographic key thus making the availability of the contents of those documents depend on the availability of the key. This article examines the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection against the compulsory production of the key and the scope of the Fifth Amendment immunity against compelled production. After analyzing these questions using prevailing Fourth and Fifth Amendment jurisprudence, I shall describe the advantages of a privacy-based approach in practical and constitutional terms. [excerpt]

Full Faith And Credit, Choice Of Laws, And Extraterritorial Regulation Of Corporate Transactions, Gregory S. Sergienko

Greg Sergienko

In a federal system in which each state may enact laws providing for the chartering and governance of corporations and in which corporations can and do conduct business in more than one state, several states may claim an interest in regulating the conduct of a given corporation. The enactment of state laws that are intended to restrict hostile corporate takeovers and that purport to extend to foreign corporations is one example of this phenomenon. "Typically, any of a number of jurisdictional links might trigger the application of such an anti-takeover statute: the target's being incorporated in the state, its having …