Law Commons^™

Is There A Fundamental Right To Privacy When An Educational Institution Requires A Student To Disclose Proof Of His Or Her Vaccination Status?, Mary D. Fatscher

Touro Law Review

In 2020, the coronavirus disease (“COVID-19”) dominated the world. Although the public has progressively become more informed about the disease and how to safeguard itself, challenges persist as there is still much unknown. Aside from wearing masks, social distancing, and despite its undetermined consequences, the COVID-19 vaccination has emerged as a primary solution to substantially reducing the incidence and severity of the virus in our country. Many COVID-19 vaccine mandates were initiated once three pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson received Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”).

Evolving Privacy Protections For Emerging Machine Learning Data Under Carpenter V. United States, Emily Nicolella

FIU Law Review

The Fourth Amendment’s third-party doctrine eliminates an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy in information they willingly turn over to third parties. Government scrutiny of this information is not considered a search under the Fourth Amendment and is therefore not given constitutional protections. In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court created an exception to the third-party doctrine. In Carpenter, a case involving the warrantless use of cell site location information (CSLI) in a criminal investigation, the Court held that individuals do have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding CSLI. According to Chief Justice Roberts, despite the necessary …

Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing: Maintenance Of Individual Privacy, Jessica L. Missel

Health Law Outlook

No abstract provided.

An Expressive Theory Of Privacy Intrusions, Craig Konnoth

Publications

The harms of privacy intrusions are numerous. They include discrimination, reputational harm, and chilling effects on speech, thought, and behavior. However, scholarship has yet to fully recognize a kind of privacy harm that this article terms "expressive."

Depending on where the search is taking place and who the actors involved are--a teacher in a school, the police on the street, a food inspector in a restaurant--victims and observers might infer different messages from the search. The search marks the importance of certain societal values such as law enforcement or food safety. It can also send messages about certain groups by …

Reconsidering Constitutional Protection For Health Information Privacy, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

What kinds of health information should be reported to government for civil purposes? Several competing trends encourage efforts to reassess the scope of constitutional protection for health information: the social and commercial value of health information; the amount of data held by third parties, from health care providers to internet servers; critiques of the third party doctrine exception to Fourth Amendment protection; and concerns about the loss of privacy. This article describes a variety of civil purposes for which health information is collected today. A close analysis of cases applying the third party doctrine, administrative search principles, and the special …

Dna Storage Banks: The Importance Of Preserving Dna Evidence To Allow For Transparency And The Preservation Of Justice, Cristina Martin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

What is the duty to preserve information in today’s society? In order for humanity to evolve, change and flourish in the future, society needs to preserve its information from the past. In the criminal justice field, preservation of evidence has special significance. DNA evidence in particular has become a helpful aid for innocent defendants who have been improperly imprisoned. Over the past twenty years, the number of exonerations of imprisoned criminal defendants has increased dramatically. With the advancement of technology, old, previously untestable or improperly tested DNA evidence will need to be retested. However, most states do not have proper …

Danger Or Resort To Underwear: The Safford Unified School District No. 1 V. Redding Standard For Strip Searching Public School Students., Joseph O. Oluwole

St. Mary's Law Journal

Safford Unified Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Redding (Redding III) represents a pivotal decision in school search and seizure jurisprudence, specifically regarding strip searches of students. Redding III establishes constraints specific to strip searches on the search and seizure authority of school officials. Redding III is intended to provide a uniform test for the judiciary and school officials when evaluating the reasonableness of strip searches of students. The Court explicitly interposed a “reliable knowledge” element requiring: (1) the degree to which known facts imply prohibited conduct; (2) the specificity of the information received; and (3) the reliability of its source. …

Indefinite Material Witness Detention Without Probable Cause: Thinking Outside The Fourth Amendment, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

A constitutional issue recently addressed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in United States v. Awadallah, 349 F.3d 42 (2003), has not received the widespread attention of high-profile litigation concerning the Justice Department's other controversial counter-terrorism policies. It is equally important. The issue arises out of Attorney General Ashcroft's announcement shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that the aggressive detention of material witnesses [was] vital to preventing, disrupting or delaying new attacks. Since that time, the Department of Justice has used the federal material witness statute (18 U.S.C. Section 3144) to arrest …

Classification And Fair Treatment: An Essay On The Moral And Legal Permissibility Of Profiling, Deborah Hellman

Deborah Hellman

Prior to the events of September 11, 2001, there appeared to be a consensus that profiling was both legally prohibited and morally wrong. Since 9/11, that consensus has eroded. In order to determine whether the fear and uncertainty occasioned by current events have simply clouded our judgment or whether, instead, the earlier rejection of profiling was too facile, we need to better understand precisely what we mean by "profiling." More importantly, we must develop a theory that explains when profiling, so defined, violates constitutional norms. This paper takes up that task. The paper uses the term "profiling" to mean any …

Double Helix, Double Standards: Private Matters And Public People, Teneille R. Brown

Journal of Health Care Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Stranded In The Wastelands Of Unregulated Roadway Police Powers: Can Reasonable Officers Ever Rescue Us., Keith S. Hampton

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article describes the present state of roadway police power and explores the vulnerability of drivers and occupants to police abuse, specifically using pretextual stops. Today, state and federal courts have made many police power accommodations to the constitutional reasonableness requirement. Current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence justifies almost all conceivable police seizures of people in vehicles. If the police officer can point out any traffic law violation, he can arrest. And if he can arrest under those circumstances, then the already blurred line between detentions and arrest becomes inconsequential, constitutionally speaking. This Article proposes that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals …

Privacy Lost: Comparing The Attenuation Of Texas's Article 1, Section 9 And The Fourth Amendment., Kimberly S. Keller

St. Mary's Law Journal

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that all searches and seizures be reasonable. Article I, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution mirrors its federal counterpart, requiring reasonableness in regard to intrusive governmental action. In examining these texts, both the federal and state provisions are comprised of two independent clauses: (1) the Reasonableness Clause, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures; and (2) the warrant clause, which provides that warrants may issue only upon a showing of probable cause. Both the federal and Texas constitutions include explicit language regulating the government’s right to intrude on a person’s privacy. This …

Fourth Amendment Restrictions On Scientific Misconduct Proceedings At Public Universities, Roy G. Spece, Jr., John J. Marchalonis

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

No abstract provided.

The Presumption Of Guilt And Compulsory Hiv Testing Of Accused Sex Offenders: A Case Study Of State Ex Rel. J.G., N.S., And J.T., Justin Amaechi Okezie

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Presumption Of Innocence: Patching The Tattered Cloak After Maryland V. Craig., Ralph H. Kohlmann

St. Mary's Law Journal

Over one hundred years ago, the United States Supreme Court recognized the importance of the presumption of innocence in a criminal justice system which is based on due process. The Court declared the presumption of innocence is “the undoubted law, axiomatic, and elementary, and its enforcements lies at the foundation … of our criminal law.” The Court’s changing view of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause is the most recent contribution to the reduction in the practical value of the presumption of innocence. In Maryland v. Craig, the Court decided that while face-to-face confrontation forms the core of values furthered in …

Accessing Genomic Information Or Safeguarding Genetic Privacy, George P. Smith Ii

Journal of Law and Health

The real-although often exaggerated-threats to genetic privacy, and the resulting forms of geneticdiscrimination, posed as a consequence of research in this field, can be contained by careful development and application of legal norms through legislative schemes at the state and federal levels of government. In partnership, law and science should seek to develop a contemporary agenda for social change that also seeks to fulfill socio-political goals.When viewed as but a tool for enhancing the health of the nation's citizens, and of engineering humanity's genetic weaknesses out of the line of inheritance, biological determinism is an absolute necessity for trans-national survival …

Criminal Trespass And The Exclusionary Rule In Texas., Paul R. Stone, Henry De La Garza

St. Mary's Law Journal

In State v. Hobbs, the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals held a warrantless intrusion by police onto private property to obtain evidence constitutes criminal trespass under Section 30.05 of the Texas Penal Code. The resulting evidence falls within the exclusionary rule and this article considers whether this protection, which goes beyond constitutional guarantees, is necessary or desirable. The first part of this paper reviews existing federal and state constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. Next, the paper analyzes the history and purpose of criminal trespass and the exclusionary rule in Texas. Finally, the paper considers a question the court of appeals …

Heitman V. State: The Question Left Unanswered., Matthew W. Paul, Jeffrey L. Van Horn

St. Mary's Law Journal

In Heitman v. State, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals appeared to break with the court’s prior holdings to announce it would no longer “automatically adopt and apply” to the search and seizure provisions of the Texas Constitution “the Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Fourth Amendment.” The reaction to Heitman was immediate and striking. Heitman is obviously a significant decision that could impact Texas criminal jurisprudence for decades. Yet, the decision left many questions unanswered, including whether the search and seizure provision should be construed as placing greater restrictions on law enforcement than the Fourth Amendment of the United States …

Aids, Rape, And The Fourth Amendment: Schemes For Mandatory Aids Testing Of Sex Offenders, Paul H. Macdonald

Vanderbilt Law Review

Few subjects are as emotionally troubling as AIDS' and rape. The latter, of course, has plagued society throughout human history, but AIDS only recently has imposed itself upon our social and medical consciousness. Ever since AIDS became a familiar sight in the headlines nearly ten years ago, society has reacted to it with a mixture of anxiety, confusion, and despair. One consequence of the new societal awareness is the increased hesitancy with which individuals approach intimate contact. When intimate contact is involuntary as in the case of rape, fear of exposure to the disease is especially pronounced. Society,however, seems ill-prepared …

Testing For Drugs Of Abuse: Methods And Reliability, Edward A. Kaufman

Journal of Law and Health

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the entire testing process, from specimen collection and preparation (vital processes that are often beyond the control of the laboratory) to test methods, quality assurance measures, medico-legal documentation, and result reporting and interpretation. Each of these steps demands careful attention, and the hallmark of a responsible, quality-conscious laboratory is that it can offer a complete testing system that focuses not only on the assays themselves but also on each of the necessary precautions and transactions so crucial to the viability of test results.