Articles Tagged with Legal

Hofstra University law professor Joanna Grossman discusses the apparent conflict between the social norm that women’s breasts should be covered in public and the legal right of women (in most states) to be top-free in public.

Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf discusses Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship as part of immigration reform. Dorf argues that birthright citizenship implements widely shared and characteristically American values and that curtailing it would be a huge step backwards.

Cornell University law professor Joseph Margulies reflects on his recent time spent shadowing the Cincinnati Police Department, describing its efforts to reform the relationship between the police and the community.

Cardozo Law professor Marci Hamilton discusses the need for effective fences on the Internet that protect privacy but also permit authorities to enforce the law. Hamilton illustrates this need using examples such as the case of Jared Fogle, the former Subway spokesperson who is pleading guilty to charges of child solicitation and pornography, as well as the Internet's use as a tool for empowerment for victims of child sex abuse.

Cornell University law professor Sherry Colb analyzes a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit holding that when a person with a cellphone inadvertently calls a third party, thereby exposing personal communications, the caller retains no reasonable expectation of privacy in the matters disclosed for purposes of the federal Wiretap Act.

Chapman University law professor Ronald Rotunda discusses instances of federal judges acting in manners inconsistent with their responsibilities.

Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf discusses the implications of a recent decision by a federal district court invalidating an Idaho law that criminalizes entering a “agricultural production facility” under false pretenses and also criminalizes creating an audio or video recording of what takes place there without authorization from the owners—known as an Ag-Gag law.

George Washington law professor and economist Neil H. Buchanan debunks some of the Social Security myths spread by many conservative politicians. Specifically, Buchanan makes the following arguments: (1) Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme, (2) Demographics will not overwhelm social security, (3) the Social Security trust fund is more than simply “worthless paper” and we are not better off investing it on our own, and (4) Social Security will not go broke in the coming decades.

Cornell University law professor Joseph Margulies continues his discussion of the conditions under which Tariq Ba Odah are being held at Guantanamo despite unanimous agreement by national security agencies that he is not a threat.

Cardozo law professor Marci Hamilton explains how politicians have intentionally conflated constitutional religious liberty—which comes from the First Amendment of the Constitution—and statutory religious liberty—which originated in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993—for political gain. Hamilton describes the many differences between these two types of religious liberty and calls upon politicians and journalists to disambiguate the term.

Cornell University law professor Sherry Colb draws upon the outrage many people felt in response to a video allegedly showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal body parts and tissue from abortions (video that was subsequently revealed to be edited so as to be intentionally misleading) in order to discuss a different area in which tissue and parts are bought and sold without evoking such broad outrage.

Hofstra University law professor Joanna Grossman discusses a recent decision by a New York court that a couple’s failure to obtain a marriage license (and lack of evidence of any intent to marry) meant that they were not legally married.

Chapman University law professor Ronald Rotunda critiques the trend in institutions of higher education to instruct professors and students to avoid “microaggressions” and to give “trigger warnings.”

In this second of a two-part series of columns, George Washington law professor and economist Neil Buchanan explains how the German-led policy regime is likely to hurt not just Greece’s people but also people elsewhere in the world. Buchanan also describes how the arguments from German policymakers amounts to blaming the victims of the very policies they imposed upon the Greeks.

Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf considers to what extent defamation law provides a remedy for people who appear in deliberately misleading audiovisual recordings, as in the recently released videos ostensibly showing senior officials of Planned Parenthood stating prices for selling fetal body parts.

Cardozo law professor Marci Hamilton discusses the federal First Amendment Defense Act—a bill that she argues is actually itself unconstitutional.

Hofstra University law professor Joanna Grossman comments on a recent ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that sexual orientation discrimination constitutes sex discrimination for the purposes of Title VII.

Chapman University law professor Ronald Rotunda discusses a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit with respect to the disqualification of a lawyer from representing a client due to a conflict of interest. Rotunda cautions that the decision, if read broadly, could signal major risks for patent firms, but he argues that the decision need not be read so broadly.

Law professor and dean designate of the University of Illinois College of Law Vikram David Amar offers a few thoughts about how much conservatives lost in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014–15 term.

Cornell University law professor Sherry Colb discusses a proposal by Adam Benforado, author of Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Justice, that one way to improve the criminal justice system would be to conduct and record trials outside of the jury’s presence, then to show edited versions of the recordings to juries after all of the evidence has been presented. Colb explains how this proposal could potentially improve the system and addresses some potential obstacles to its implementation.