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Volume 109 - Issue 6

Citizen Journalism and the Reporter's Privilege

By Mary-Rose Papandrea. Full text here. The reporter’s privilege is under attack, and “pajama-clad bloggers” are largely to blame. Courts and commentators have argued that because the rise of bloggers and other “citizen journalists” renders it difficult to define who should be considered a reporter entitled to invoke the privilege, the continued existence of the…

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The Child Protection Pretense: States' Continued Consignment of Newborn Babies to Unfit Parents

By James G. Dwyer. Full text here. Major federal legislation since the mid-90s has embodied a philosophical shift away from trying to salvage grossly unfit parents and toward ensuring children good families before they incur permanently damaging abuse, neglect, or foster care drift. That legislation has created a widespread perception that the state is now more…

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Can Our Culture Be Saved? The Future of Digital Archiving

By Diane Leenheer Zimmerman. Full text here. The enormous controversy generated by the Google Library project demonstrates three important points. First, the potential for digitization to protect works against loss or deterioration is tremendous. Second, digitization creates an opportunity to offer access to preserved works without regard to a user’s physical location—something that both promises…

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Note: Born (Not So) Free: Legal Limits on the Practice of Unassisted Childbirth or Freebirthing in the United States

By Anna Hickman. Full text here. Unassisted childbirth, also known as “freebirthing”—in which a woman intentionally gives birth without the aid of a physician or midwife—is gaining increased media attention in the United States and abroad. Proponents of the practice boast of its beauty, safety, and legality. Yet, the legal framework of unassisted childbirth is unclear.…

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Note: BONGHiTS4JESUS.COM? Scrutinizing Public School Authority over Student Cyberspeech Through the Lens of Personal Jurisdiction

By Kyle W. Brenton. Full text here. As more and more public school students express themselves via e-mail, instant messages, and online communities such as MySpace and Facebook, more and more school administrators reach beyond the schoolhouse gates to censor and punish that online expression. While First Amendment jurisprudence provides a framework for determining when a…

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The Bill of Rights in the Early State Courts

By Jason Mazzone. Full text here. The Bill of Rights originated as a constraint only on the federal government. As every law student learns, therefore, in the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court dismissed a Fifth Amendment takings claim against a state. This Article shows, however, that early state courts regularly invoked and…

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Beyond Liability: Rewarding Effective Gatekeepers

By Lawrence A. Cunningham. Full text here. This Article adds to the emerging literature on rewards to promote effective capital market gatekeeping. Capital market gatekeeping theory traditionally relies heavily on threats of legal liability for failure to perform legally mandated functions (along with a presumed constraint imposed by reputation effects). The ineffectiveness of many gatekeepers in…

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Beyond Incoherence: The Roberts Court's Deregulatory Turn in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life

By Richard L. Hasen. Full text here. With the recent personnel changes on the Supreme Court, the pendulum has swung sharply away from deference in campaign finance regulation toward perhaps the greatest period of deregulation since before Congress passed the important 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. In the 2006 Randall v. Sorrell decision,…

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