Privacy Law Commons^™

Privacy's Problem And The Law Of Criminal Procedure, William J. Stuntz

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this article addresses the connection between privacy-based limits on police authority and substantive limits on government power as a general matter. Part II briefly addresses the effects of that connection on Fourth and Fifth Amendment law, both past and present. Part ID suggests that privacy protection has a deeper problem: it tends to obscure more serious harms that attend police misconduct, harms that flow not from information disclosure but from the police use of force. The upshot is that criminal procedure would be better off with less attention to privacy, at least as privacy is defined in …

Response: The Problems With Privacy's Problem, Louis Michael Seidman

Michigan Law Review

A Response to William J. Stuntz's "Privacy's Problem and the Law of Criminal Procedure"

Reply, William J. Stuntz

Michigan Law Review

A Reply to Louis Michael Seidman's Response

Life's Sacred Value—Common Ground Or Battleground, Alexander Morgan Capron

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom by Ronald Dworkin

The Constitutionality Of Employer-Accessible Child Abuse Registries: Due Process Implications Of Governmental Occupational Blacklisting, Michael R. Phillips

Michigan Law Review

This Note discusses the due process implications of permitting employer access to state child abuse registries when disclosure affects registry members' employment.

Whose Genes Are These Anyway?: Familial Conflicts Over Access To Genetic Information, Sonia M. Suter

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues first that courts and legislatures should follow a presumption against mandating disclosure of a person's genetic information to third parties. Second, genetic testing for the benefit of a third party should not, and constitutionally cannot, be compelled. Part I presents an overview of genetics and discusses the special legal and ethical issues genetic testing poses. Part II examines the issue of nonconsensual disclosure to family members, who could potentially use the information from tests that have already been performed. This Part concludes that there should be a presumption against disclosure. Part III examines a related, but different, …

Collective Bargaining In The Federal Public Sector: Disclosing Employee Names And Addresses Under Exemption 6 Of The Freedom Of Information Act, Trina Jones

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines the application of FOIA and the Privacy Act to union requests for employee names and addresses under the Fed. LM Statute. Part I briefly explores the importance of employee names and addresses to collective bargaining. This Part also examines the increasingly significant role of public sector unions due to the growth in federal public sector employment and the decline of private sector unionization. Part II analyzes the various circuit court decisions supporting disclosure in the federal public sector. Part III examines Reporters Committee and Department of the Treasury and discusses the potential policy implications resulting from the …

Privacy In A Public Society: Human Rights In Conflict, David Clark Esseks

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Privacy in a Public Society: Human Rights in Conflict by Richard F. Hixson

Threshold Requirements For The Fbi Under Exemption 7 Of The Freedom Of Information Act, Richard A. Kaba

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines Exemption 7 of the FOIA as it relates to FBP0 information and seeks to determine the appropriate rule for the first prong of the Abramson test. Part I of this Note examines Exemption 7 in the 1966, 1974, and 1986 FOIAs, the judicial opinions interpreting this exemption, and the legislative histories of the 1966, 1974, and 1986 FOIAs as they relate to Exemption 7. Part II compares the per se and threshold tests in view of their practical effects and concludes that neither test is clearly superior. Part III proposes adoption of a per se rule with …

The Public Right Of Access To Juvenile Delinquency Hearings, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Despite the differences between the criminal and juvenile court systems, the Supreme Court has extended many criminal procedural safeguards to juvenile delinquency hearings. The Court does not, however, "automatically and preemptorily" apply every procedural safeguard to juvenile hearings; rather, it carefully examines the criminal trial standard in the context of delinquency hearings. Adopting a similar approach, this Note considers the implications of a constitutional right of access to juvenile delinquency hearings. Part I examines the right of access announced in Globe Newspaper and Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia. Part II looks at the juvenile justice system and argues that extension …

The Constitutional Status Of Marriage, Kinship, And Sexual Privacy -- Balancing The Individual And Social Interests, Bruce C. Hafen

Michigan Law Review

Today's lopsided competition between the individual and social interests has made the law a party to the contemporary haze that clouds our vision of what a family is or should be. In that sense, recent legal developments have contributed to the crisis Stanley Hauerwas has identified regarding American family life today - our inability to define "what kind of family should exist" and our inability to articulate ''why we should think of [the family] as our most basic moral institution."

In response to those two questions, this Article considers whether, as a constitutional matter, the courts should recognize claims by …

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 …

The Abortion-Funding Cases And Population Control: An Imaginary Lawsuit (And Some Reflections On The Uncertain Limits Of Reproductive Privacy), Susan Frelich Appleton

Michigan Law Review

Two issues are before us today: (I) the meaning of the term "medically necessary" in a public hospital's charter and (II) the constitutionality of state action that provides free medical treatment to indigent pregnant women seeking an abortion but denies them such assistance for prenatal care and childbirth. On the basis of recent Supreme Court authority, we find that such action violates neither the hospital's charter nor the United States Constitution.

Fornication, Cohabitation, And The Constitution, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note begins with the indisputable assumption that laws prohibiting fornication and cohabitation are nowhere explioitly forbidden by the Constitution. If a right to engage in consensual adult heterosexual activity exists, it will most convincingly be inferred from the Court's cases establishing a right of "privacy." The Note first seeks to discover an adequate definition of privacy which might lead to a decision whether "privacy" encompasses the right .to fornicate or cohabit (a right which, for brevity's sake, we will somewhat imprecisely call the right to, sexual privacy), but it finds no such definition. The Note therefore proceeds to investigate …

Reconsideration Of The Katz Expectation Of Privacy Test, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note, by modifying certain aspects of the reasonable expectation of privacy test, offers a theory that attempts to identify the minimum content of the fourth amendment. In the first section, the Note examines the reasonable expectation of privacy test and considers whether it has been or can be applied in a manner that fails to protect the right to have certain minimum expectations of privacy. It analyzes both the "actual" and the "reasonable" expectation requirements, identifies weaknesses inherent in the current application of these requirements, and suggests certain ways in which they might be refined. In the second section, …

The Life And Times Of Boyd V. United States (1886-1976), Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

In Boyd v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the fourth and fifth amendments create a zone of privacy encompassing an individual's person and property. The government, according to Boyd, cannot enter this zone, either by compelling an individual to testify against himself or by subpoenaing or seizing his books and papers for use as evidence against him in a criminal or quasi-criminal proceeding. The Court found an "intimate relation" between the two amendments such that the search and seizure of books and papers may be "unreasonable" even if conducted pursuant to a court order.

Over time, …

Government Information And The Rights Of Citizens, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Project delineates the federal and state responses to these two fundamental societal concerns. The course of the discussion suggests the vitality of these concerns, and the flexibility and continuing development of the governmental responses. Clearly, the interests in maximizing disclosure of government-held information and minimizing the handling and dissemination of unnecessary or inaccurate personal information can conflict. The contours of this conflict, only intimated herein, will doubtless become more bold with the maturation of the opposing statutory schemes.

Conjugal Visitation Rights And The Appropriate Standard Of Judicial Review For Prison Regulations, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Conjugal visitation rights allow prison inmates and spouses to visit privately and have sexual relations. A number of countries, particularly in Latin America, permit conjugal visits. Although in the United States only Mississippi and California currently permit conjugal visitation, the experience of these two states shows that such programs are workable. Conjugal visitation has met with varied reaction in the literature, but persuasive arguments have been made that it would offer potential psychological benefits to the prisoner, reduce prison homosexuality, and allow the inmate to preserve his or her marital ties. Nevertheless, the reaction of penal administrators in this country …

The Constitutionality Of Laws Forbidding Private Homosexual Conduct, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The laws of forty-three states and the District of Columbia impose criminal penalties on consenting adults who engage in private homosexual conduct. Most of these laws are sodomy statutes, which also prohibit oral and anal intercourse between heterosexuals and sexual acts with animals. Two states have statutes explicitly limited to homosexual conduct. These statutes also prohibit nonconsensual homosexual activity and homosexual acts involving a minor, but this Note addresses only prohibitions on private consensual adult homosexual conduct.

Miller: The Assault On Privacy, Michael S. Josephson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Assault on Privacy by Arthur R. Miller