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Full-Text Articles in Privacy Law

The Sacred Fourth Amendment Text, Christopher Slobogin Oct 2020

The Sacred Fourth Amendment Text, Christopher Slobogin

Michigan Law Review Online

The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence governing the Fourth Amendment’s “threshold”—a word meant to refer to the types of police actions that trigger the amendment’s warrant and reasonableness requirements—has confounded scholars and students alike since Katz v. United States. Before that 1967 decision, the Court’s decisions on the topic were fairly straightforward, based primarily on whether the police trespassed on the target’s property or property over which the target had control. After that decision—which has come to stand for the proposition that a Fourth Amendment search occurs if police infringe an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as …


How Definitive Is Fourth Amendment Textualism?, Evan H. Caminker Oct 2020

How Definitive Is Fourth Amendment Textualism?, Evan H. Caminker

Michigan Law Review Online

Professor Jeffrey Bellin’s excellent article advances a comprehensive and straightforward textual approach to determining what policing activities constitute “searches” triggering the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Bellin’s thesis is that a text-based approach to interpreting the Amendment is superior to the Supreme Court’s current approach, which ever since Katz v. United States has defined “search” primarily by reference to a non-textual “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. After soundly criticizing the ungrounded and highly subjective nature of the Katz test, Bellin declares that the Court should instead simply follow where the text leads: the Amendment protects people from a search, meaning …


Supreme Court Jurisprudence Of The Personal In City Of Los Angeles V. Patel, Brian L. Owsley Jan 2015

Supreme Court Jurisprudence Of The Personal In City Of Los Angeles V. Patel, Brian L. Owsley

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Recently, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in City of Los Angeles v. Patel striking down a city ordinance that required hotel and motel owners to make their guest registries available to police officers whenever requested to do so. Although the Court’s opinion in Patel simply affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s finding that the ordinance was unconstitutional, the Court could have used Patel to readdress the third-party doctrine, which establishes that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Patel provided a vehicle for the Court to do so, particularly because …


The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro Dec 2013

The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes United States v. Jones, in which the Supreme Court considered whether government placement of a global positioning system (GPS) device on a vehicle to follow a person’s movements constituted a Fourth Amendment “search.” The Jones Court ruled that two distinct definitions existed for a Fourth Amendment “search.” In addition to Katz v. United States’s reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard, which the Court had used exclusively for over four decades, the Court recognized a second kind of search that it called a “classic trespassory search.” The second kind of search occurs when officials physically trespass or intrude upon a constitutionally protected …


Rethinking Reporter's Privilege, Ronnell Andersen Jones May 2013

Rethinking Reporter's Privilege, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Michigan Law Review

Forty years ago, in Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court made its first and only inquiry into the constitutional protection of the relationship between a reporter and a confidential source. This case - decided at a moment in American history in which the role of an investigative press, and of information provided by confidential sources, was coming to the forefront of public consciousness in a new and significant way - produced a reporter-focused "privilege" that is now widely regarded to be both doctrinally questionable and deeply inconsistent in application. Although the post-Branzburg privilege has been recognized as flawed in a …


Protecting Anonymous Expression: The Internet's Role In Washington State's Disclosure Laws And The Direct Democracy Process, Karen Cullinane Jul 2011

Protecting Anonymous Expression: The Internet's Role In Washington State's Disclosure Laws And The Direct Democracy Process, Karen Cullinane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note proposes that the Washington State Legislature amend its Public Records Act to exempt from public disclosure personal information legally required to be disclosed by signers of referendum petitions. This Note also proposes that the Washington State Legislature designate an electronic system, to be detailed in its election law, by which referendum petitions can be checked for fraud without violating the right to anonymous expression protected by the First Amendment. Part I describes Washington State's referendum process and the path of Doe v. Reed, the case animating the reform presented in this Note. Part II illustrates how the rise …


Sexual Orientation And The Paradox Of Heightened Scrutiny, Nan D. Hunter Jun 2004

Sexual Orientation And The Paradox Of Heightened Scrutiny, Nan D. Hunter

Michigan Law Review

In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court performed a double move, creating a dramatic discursive moment: it both decriminalized consensual homosexual relations between adults, and, simultaneously, authorized a new regime of heightened regulation of homosexuality. How that happened and what we can expect next are the subjects of this essay. The obvious point of departure for an analysis of Lawrence is its decriminalization of much sexual conduct. Justice Scalia began this project with his dire warning that "[s]tate laws against bigamy, samesex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are . . . sustainable only in …


Surviving Lawrence V. Texas, Marc Spindelman Jun 2004

Surviving Lawrence V. Texas, Marc Spindelman

Michigan Law Review

The lesbian and gay communities have reacted to the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas - striking down state sodomy laws on Due Process grounds - with unbridled enthusiasm. Lawrence has variously been praised as an unmitigated victory for lesbian and gay rights, a turning point in our community's history, and the moment when we have gone from second-class political outcasts to constitutional persons with first-class rights. Obviously, something remarkable happened in Lawrence. In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court declared that John Geddes Lawrence and Tyrone Gamer, who had been convicted under Texas's sodomy …


Lawrence V. Texas And Judicial Hubris, Nelson Lund, John O. Mcginnis Jun 2004

Lawrence V. Texas And Judicial Hubris, Nelson Lund, John O. Mcginnis

Michigan Law Review

The republic will no doubt survive the Supreme Court's decision, in Lawrence v. Texas, to invalidate laws against private, consensual sodomy, including those limited to homosexual behavior. Such laws are almost never enforced, and the rare prosecutions for such acts are necessarily capricious. So the principal direct effect of the Court's decision is likely to be extremely limited, and largely salutary: a few individuals will be spared the bad luck of getting a criminal conviction for violating laws that are manifestly out of step with prevailing sexual mores. Nor are we likely to see anything like the intense political …


Criminalization Of True Anonymity In Cyberspace, The, George F. Du Pont Jun 2001

Criminalization Of True Anonymity In Cyberspace, The, George F. Du Pont

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The question of whether a state or the federal government can create a narrowly tailored restriction on cyberspace anonymity without violating the First Amendment remains unresolved[...]The Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue, but it may soon consider the constitutionality of criminalizing certain kinds of cyber-anonymity in light of the unique nature of cyberspace. This comment explores the various forms of anonymity, examines the First Amendment status of anonymity in and outside of cyberspace, analyzes relevant scholarly commentary, and concludes that a narrowly tailored legislative restriction on "true" anonymity in cyberspace would not violate the First Amendment.


Roe V. Wade And The Lesson Of The Pre-Roe Case Law, Richard Gregory Morgan Aug 1979

Roe V. Wade And The Lesson Of The Pre-Roe Case Law, Richard Gregory Morgan

Michigan Law Review

The politically unsettled and judicially confused law of abortion in 1971 and 1972, when the Court twice heard arguments and deliberated Roe, should have warned it not to decide the case. By doing so; the Court thrust itself into a political debate and stunted the development of a thoughtful lower-court case law. If the Court did perceive the warnings but continued toward a decision anyway, perhaps trusting that its own considerable wits would devise an answer the lower courts had not, the result suggests that the judicial system's axioms deserve more respect than they received. This Article, by showing …