Thinking about privacy and the First Amendment
This post is about Eugene Volokh’s article on free speech and privacy in relation to Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis’s 1890 law review article, “The Right to Privacy.” This highly influential piece advocated for “the fundamental right to be let alone.” But is it impossible to reconcile such a right with an equally compelling right to free speech?
Free speech and broadcasting: Cohen v. California and FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
Balancing strong First Amendment (“free speech”) speech protections with the desire to protect the delicate sensibilities of America’s youth is always a complex task. Two seminal Supreme Court cases – Cohen v. California and FCC v. Pacifica Foundation – illustrate the struggle the Court has had to find the right path.
Civil law and courts of equity: the common law is hybrid law
The Roman civil law tradition (which prevails in Europe) has had a larger impact on American jurisprudence than is generally acknowledged. Indeed, although the United States considers itself a common-law country, we in fact use a system that combines common (judge-made, customary, adversarial, precedent-focused) with civil (usually statute-based and inquisitorial) law, but which in England focused on “equity” or fairness and justice.
Liberty or inflexibility: reading Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia, current Supreme Court justice and originalist extraordinaire, wrote “Common-Law Courts in a Civil Law System” as a part of A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law. In it explains his approach to legal reasoning and especially to Constitutional interpretation, and especially rejects both legislative history and the so-called “living Constitution” of liberal justices like Stephen Breyer.
Civil law's influence on American common law: the appeal
In “Salamanders and Sons of God,” an article in The Many Legalities of Early America, Mary Sarah Bilder writes about the “Culture of Appeal in Early New England,” and situates the embrace of the right to appeal by New Englanders within the larger English and Roman legal tradition.
On the legal basis for English possession of North America
James Muldoon’s article in The Many Legalities of Early America, “Discovery, Grant, Charter, Conquest or Purchase,” discusses the surprising influence the Pope’s validation of Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World played in English justifications for their own American territory. But this justification was merged with an English focus on improvements to the land.
Colonial Law in Early America
In The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607 – 1660, William Edward Nelson writes about three main colonial legal traditions: Virginia, New England, and Maryland. These three centers drew to various degrees from English common law, but deviated from it in a number of important respects and for reasons related to their establishments and purposes.
Will legal software replace lawyers?
Software won’t replace lawyers, but it will reduce the demand for certain routine legal services and raise the complexity of litigation. Those without the software will be at a disadvantage. It will also cut into the work of paralegals. But not lawyers.
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