Law and Society Commons^™

The Cost Of Free Speech: Combating Fake News Or Upholding The First Amendment?, Brittany Finnegan

University of Miami Law Review

This Note examines the pervasive and evolving “fake news” problem. Specifically, it explores whether the United States government could pass legislation, modeled after a recently passed German law, regulating propagandistic social media posts. The answer to this question, in short, is no. By comparing the German Basic Law and the U.S. Constitution, this Note highlights the stringency of U.S. First Amendment protections and underscores the U.S. government’s inability to combat fake news through legislation. While this Note primarily focuses on the prevalence of fake news in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, related developments and areas of research …

Power To The People: The Supreme Court’S Confirmation Of State Power In The Wake Of Faithless Electors, Gabrielle Engel

University of Miami Law Review

One of the most cherished American liberties is the right to vote. Yet, the Constitution does little to protect the integrity of individual voters. Instead, the Founding Fathers created an Electoral College to represent states’ will. Over time, states enacted laws requiring that electoral votes be cast to reflect the state popular vote. In 2016, several electors voted for candidates who did not win their state’s popular vote, grounding their actions in a believed constitutional right to vote freely and unencumbered by state outcomes. The Supreme Court addressed this issue in Chiafalo v. Washington, holding that states may bind electoral …

The Middle Ground: A Meaningful Balance Between The Benefits And Limitations Of Artificial Intelligence To Assist With The Justice Gap, Katherine L. W. Norton

University of Miami Law Review

Access to justice continues to be an ongoing battle for those who cannot afford an attorney in civil legal matters. These civil legal matters touch issues that significantly impact daily life, from issues relating to health, such as advance directives, to family, such as custody of children. Lawyers, courts, and scholars have attempted to tackle this ongoing problem in our justice system. Some suggest that providing free counsel for all civil legal matters is the solution, while others suggest that self-help materials provide more immediate access to services and information. Regardless of the position one takes, the need is clear …

Twenty-First Century Formalism, Thomas B. Nachbar

University of Miami Law Review

Formalism is one of the most widely applied but misunderstood features of law. Embroiled in a series of conflicts over the course of the twentieth century, formalism’s meaning has become confused as formalism has been enlisted by both proponents and opponents of specific legal methodologies. For some, formalism has simply become an epithet used to describe virtually anything they dislike in legal thinking. Used often and inconsistently as a stand-in (and frequently a strawman), formalism’s distinct identity has been lost, its meaning merged with whatever methodology it is being used to support or attack.

This Article seeks to separate formalism …

Family Secrets And Relational Privacy: Protecting Not-So-Personal, Sensitive Information From Public Disclosure, J. Lyn Entrikin

University of Miami Law Review

This Article seeks to map contemporary relational privacy issues in the context of the evolving “right of privacy” in the United States. Generally, the Article explains why the so-called “personal” right of informational privacy, whatever its legal foundations, cannot be realistically confined to an individual right given the dramatic scientific and technological developments in the twenty-first century. In particular, the Article proposes that both state and federal law must grapple with the inherently relational nature of privacy interests with respect to DNA profiles, which inherently implicate the privacy interests of one’s biological relatives, whether known or unknown.

Part I summarizes …

Fugitive Slaves And Undocumented Immigrants: Testing The Boundaries Of Our Federalism, Sandra L. Rierson

University of Miami Law Review

Federalism—the dual system of sovereignty that invests both the nation as a whole and each individual state with the authority to govern the people of the United States of America—is a foundational pillar of American democracy. Throughout the nation’s history, political crises have tested the resilience of this dual system of government established by the United States Constitution. The fundamental contradiction of slavery in a nation founded on the principle that “all men are created equal” triggered the nation’s most prominent existential crisis, resulting in the Civil War. In the years leading up to that war, the federal government’s protection …

Cowboys And Indians: Settler Colonialism And The Dog Whistle In U.S. Immigration Policy, Hannah Gordon

University of Miami Law Review

The nineteenth-century Indian problem has become the twenty-first century border crisis. While the United States fancies itself a nation of immigrants, this rhetoric is impossible to square with the reality of the systematic exclusion of migrants of color. In particular, the Trump administration has taken the exclusion of migrants descended from the Indigenous inhabitants of Mexico and Central America to a reductio ad absurdum. This Note joins a body of scholarship that centers the history of genocide in the United States to examine what our settler colonial history means for today’s immigration law and policy. It concludes that the contemporary …

Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master’S Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Edwin Burge

University of Miami Law Review

The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s programs …

A Modest Proposal: The Federal Government Should Use Firing Squads To Execute Federal Death Row Inmates, Stephanie Moran

University of Miami Law Review

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment in the criminal justice system. As the federal government looks to reinstate the death penalty, this Note argues that it should include firing squad as an option for carrying out executions. While firing squads may shock the senses, this Note argues that they are in fact the only way to comport with the requirements of the Eighth Amendment.

Bitcoin Is Speech: Notes Toward Developing The Conceptual Contours Of Its Protection Under The First Amendment, Justin S. Wales, Richard J. Ovelmen

University of Miami Law Review

Bitcoin permits users to engage in direct expressive activity with one another without the need for centralized intermediaries. It does so by utilizing an open and community-managed global database called a blockchain. While much of the literature about Bitcoin has focused on its use as a form of digital payment, this Article suggests an expanded understanding by demonstrating its use as a protocol network, not unlike the internet, that can be used to extend the possible range of human expression. After developing an appreciation of the technology, this Article recommends a framework for applying the First Amendment to Bitcoin and …

Justice Scalia Got It Right, But For The Wrong Reasons: Scalia’S Recognition Of The Supreme Court’S “Southern Exception” In U.S. Constitutional Jurisprudence And The Connection Of “Southern Exceptionalism” To “American Exceptionalism", James D. Wilets

University of Miami Law Review

The late Justice Scalia has repeatedly and sardonically noted that the Supreme Court has discounted the views of Southern states in determining whether there is a consensus among the states with regards to a Constitutional norm. This Article has termed that Supreme Court position as “Southern Exception” and can be viewed as an effort by some Justices to address the unique social, economic, religious and cultural traditions in the South engendered by its unique" and “exceptional” history. This Article will also explore how this "Southern Exception" affected American jurisprudence to the point of rendering it "exceptional" from much of the …

The Law As Uncopyrightable: Merging Idea And Expression Within The Eleventh Circuit’S Analysis Of “Law-Like” Writing, Christina M. Frohock

University of Miami Law Review

The Eleventh Circuit recently issued an opinion in Code Revision Commission v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc. that meditates on the law as much as resolves a dispute. For that reason alone, attention should be paid. A commission acting on behalf of the Georgia General Assembly and the State of Georgia filed a copyright infringement action against a nonprofit organization that had disseminated annotated state statutes. The Eleventh Circuit took these modest facts and delivered a philosophical analysis of the nature of law, finding that statutory annotations are outside copyright protection because the true author of such “law-like” writing is “the People.” …

Acting Differently: How Science On The Social Brain Can Inform Antidiscrimination Law, Susan D. Carle

University of Miami Law Review

Legal scholars are becoming increasingly interested in how the literature on implicit bias helps explain illegal discrimination. However, these scholars have not yet mined all of the insights that science on the social brain can offer antidiscrimination law. That science, which researchers refer to as social neuroscience, involves a broadly interdisciplinary approach anchored in experimental natural science methodologies. Social neuroscience shows that the brain tends to evaluate others by distinguishing between “us” versus “them” on the basis of often insignificant characteristics, such as how people dress, sing, joke, or otherwise behave. Subtle behavioral markers signal social identity and group membership, …

A Genealogy Of Programmatic Stop And Frisk: The Discourse-To-Practice-Circuit, Frank Rudy Cooper

University of Miami Law Review

President Trump has called for increased use of the recently predominant policing methodology known as programmatic stop and frisk. This Article contributes to the field by identifying, defining, and discussing five key components of the practice: (1) administratively dictated (2) pervasive Terry v. Ohio stops and frisks (3) aimed at crime prevention by means of (4) data-enhanced profiles of suspects that (5) target young racial minority men.

Whereas some scholars see programmatic stop and frisk as solely the product of individual police officer bias, this Article argues for understanding how we arrived at specific police practices by analyzing three levels …

Killer Cell Phones And Complacent Companies: How Apple Fails To Cure Distracted Driving Fatalities, Summer Galitz

University of Miami Law Review

With an astounding 1.6 million car crashes occurring each year due to cell phone use while driving, it is clear that the United States is suffering from a serious epidemic of pervasive cell phone use while driving. Although a majority of Americans clearly understand the hazards and dangers involved in texting while driving, cell phone addiction continues to keep drivers glued to their phones. Apple has a tool at its disposal to ensure that drivers no longer use their cell phones while they are driving, yet it has failed to implement its technology. Apple's Driver Handheld Computing Device Lock-Out patent, …

Climate Change And Human Trafficking After The Paris Agreement, Michael B. Gerrard

University of Miami Law Review

At least 21 million people globally are victims of human trafficking, typically involving either sexual exploitation or forced labor. This form of modern-day slavery tends to increase after natural disasters or conflicts where large numbers of people are displaced from their homes and become highly vulnerable. In the decades to come, climate change will very likely lead to a large increase in the number of people who are displaced and thus vulnerable to trafficking. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 established objectives to limit global temperature increases, but the voluntary pledges made by nearly every country fall far short of …

Climate Change And The Challenges To Democracy, Marcello Di Paola, Dale Jamieson

University of Miami Law Review

This Article explores the uneasy interaction between climate change and democracy, particularly liberal democracy. Its central claim is that climate change and other problems of the Anthropocene—this new epoch into which no earthly entity, process, or system escapes the reach and influence of human activity—expose and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in democratic theory and practice, particularly in their currently dominant liberal form; and that both democracies’ failures and their most promising attempts at managing these problems expose democracies to significant legitimacy challenges.

The Climate For Human Rights, Rebecca M. Bratspies

University of Miami Law Review

Climate change is the defining challenge of the 21st century. The United States government is currently ignoring the problem, but wishful thinking alone will not keep global mean temperature rise below 2ºC. This Article proposes a way forward. It advises environmental decision-makers to use human rights norms to guide them as they make decisions under United States law. By reframing their discretion through a human rights lens, decision-makers can use their existing authority to respond to the super-wicked problem of climate change

Limiting The National Right To Exclude, Katrina M. Wyman

University of Miami Law Review

This essay argues that the robust right to exclude that nation states currently enjoy will be harder to justify in an era of climate change. Similar to landowners, nation states have virtual monopolies over portions of the earth. However, the right of landowners to control who enters their land is considerably more constrained than the right of nation states to control who enters their territory. Climate change will alter the areas of the earth suitable for human habitation and the broad right of nation states to exclude will be more difficult to justify in this new environment.

Energy, Governance, And Market Mechanisms, Alice Kaswan

University of Miami Law Review

As climate modelers’ projections materialize through intense storms, catastrophic flooding, unprecedented heat waves, and more, the need for substantial decarbonization within the next few decades has become increasingly clear. Transitioning to clean energy will bring benefits and drawbacks and will create winners and losers. Who will decide how we transition? Our choice of policy tools will have significant implications for who controls the transition and how it unfolds.

Many economists promote the role of market-based mechanisms like carbon taxes or cap-and-trade, mechanisms that rely largely on private actors to make crucial decisions. Under this view, government measures would fill in …

No Quick Fix: The Failure Of Criminal Law And The Promise Of Civil Law Remedies For Domestic Child Sex Trafficking, Charisa Smith

University of Miami Law Review

Pimps and johns who sexually exploit children garner instant public and scholarly outrage for their lust for a destructive “quick fix.” In actuality, many justifiably concerned scholars, policymakers, and members of the public continue to react over-simplistically and reflexively to the issue of child sex trafficking in the United States—also known as commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC)—in a manner intellectually akin to immediate gratification. Further, research reveals that the average john is an employed, married male of any given race or ethnicity, suggesting that over-simplification and knee-jerk thinking on CSEC are conspicuous. This Article raises provocative questions that too …

Legal Paternalism And The Eclipse Of Principle, R. George Wright

University of Miami Law Review

Legal paternalism involves, very roughly, requiring persons to do something for their own good. We often think of debates between legal paternalists and non-paternalists as taking place largely at the level of broad, basic principle. This Article argues, however, that in our culture, disputes over the proper scope of legal paternalism will increasingly focus not on issues of basic principle, but on much more detailed, concrete, particular, contextualized matters. The four major reasons for this eclipse of basic principles bearing upon legal paternalism are herein identified, explored, and illustrated.

Real Men Advance, Real Women Retreat: Stand Your Ground, Battered Women's Syndrome, And Violence As Male Privilege, Mary Anne Franks

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

"He's A Black Male … Something Is Wrong With Him!" The Role Of Race In The Stand Your Ground Debate, D. Marvin Jones

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Interdependence And Production More Seriously: Toward Mutual Rationality And A More Useful Law And Economics, Kenneth M. Casebeer, Charles J. Whalen

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shooting Blanks: The Supreme Court's Flawed Analysis In Mcdonald V. City Of Chicago, Emily Horowitz

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Power To Regulate "Commerce With Foreign Nations" In A Global Economy And The Future Of American Democracy: An Essay, Kenneth M. Casebeer

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Problem-Setting And Serving The Organizational Client: Legal Diagnosis And Professional Independence, Robert Eli Rosen

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Gate(Way)S Of Hell And Pathways To Purgatory: Eradicating Common Law Protections In The Newly Sculpted Character Evidence Rules Of The United Kingdom's 2003 Criminal Justice Act, Chris Chambers Goodman

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Race, Reputation, And The Supreme Court: Valuing Blackness And Whiteness, Fran Lisa Buntman Phd.

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.