in propria persona

Law + tech + history, from a JD/PhD graduate student in the history of science.

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Common law originalism: the common law was not so common

By krisnelson on Nov 28, 2011 in history / law

One rea­son to exam­ine the recep­tion of English com­mon law in the American colonies is the reliance by mod­ern orig­i­nal­ists (like Antonin Scalia) on the gen­er­al­ized under­stand­ings of what the Constitution meant in light of its common-law con­text. But find­ing that sta­bil­ity may not be as easy as it might seem, at least in part because jurists of the time were, in many ways, as sophis­ti­cated as we are today in argu­ing with, against, and around prece­dent – which itself was hardly either sta­ble or fixed.

Posted in history, law | Tagged Antonin Scalia, Bernadette A. Meyler, common law, constitution, history, originalism, Sir William Blackstone | Leave a response


Privacy as secrecy and privacy as autonomy

By krisnelson on Nov 27, 2011 in constitution / copyright / government / history / law / privacy / search and seizure

The con­cept of “pri­vacy” – as in “the right to pri­vacy” – can be under­stood in a num­ber of ways. This mul­ti­tude of poten­tial mean­ings and uses is partly why the con­cept is con­tro­ver­sial, con­fus­ing, and per­haps even con­tra­dic­tory. Previously I have dis­cussed the dif­fer­ence in per­cep­tions of pri­vacy in the 19th cen­tury, where the legal focus seemed to be more on “con­fi­den­tial­ity” than what we have come to under­stand as “pri­vacy” today. That is, the 19th cen­tury con­cern was with main­tain­ing trust rela­tion­ships between peo­ple rather than with pro­tect­ing either secrecy or auton­omy (although that is not to say that these were not valued).

Posted in constitution, copyright, government, history, law, privacy, search and seizure | Tagged autonomy, confidentiality, constitution, copyright, Eugene Volokh, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, law, Louis Brandeis, privacy, Samuel Warren, search and seizure, trespass | Leave a response


On "The Role of Technology in Human Affairs"

By krisnelson on Nov 20, 2011 in business / culture / law / science studies / technology / theory

In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yochai Benkler dis­cusses his vision of the role of tech­nol­ogy in his­tor­i­cal change. He rejects an overly deter­min­is­tic vision of tech­nol­ogy (which he con­nects with Lewis Mumford and Marshall McLuhan), but also rejects a view of tech­nol­ogy as imma­te­r­ial to a society’s direction.

Posted in business, culture, law, science studies, technology, theory | Tagged culture, innovation, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, religion, technology, Yochai Benkler | Leave a response


Freedom of speech in the "Second Gilded Age"

By krisnelson on Nov 20, 2011 in business / constitution / culture / history / intellectual property / law / technology

In “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society,” Jack Balkin (of the blog Balkinization) writes about what he sees as the appro­pri­a­tion of free speech ideals by media cor­po­ra­tions in an effort to max­i­mize their cap­i­tal investments.

Posted in business, constitution, culture, history, intellectual property, law, technology | Tagged Clinton Rossiter, constitution, copyright, digital speech, freedom of speech, intellectual property, Jack Balkin, law, liberty | Leave a response


WordPress under Nginx and Varnish with W3TC

By krisnelson on Nov 11, 2011 in blog

I decided to switch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) so that I could have more flex­i­bil­ity and con­trol over my server envi­ron­ment. I selected VM Storm based on a review of “low-end” VPS providers (since this is my per­sonal tin­ker­ing plat­form I don’t need to pay extra for a high-end name). I then added Nginx as my Web server, Varnish as a front-end cache, WordPress for blog­ging, and W3TC as a WordPress per­for­mance enhancer.

Posted in blog | Tagged blogging, CloudFlare, LAMP, Linux, MySQL, web, WordPress | Leave a response


Reading William B. Stoebeck's "On the Reception of English Common Law in the American Colonies"

By krisnelson on Nov 11, 2011 in history / law

In 1968, William B. Stoebeck pub­lished “On the Reception of English Common Law in the American Colonies,” a dis­cus­sion of how and when England’s com­mon law came into use in the American colonies.

Posted in history, law | Tagged common law, constitution, England, government, Kermit L. Hall, United States, William B. Stoebeck | Leave a response


Copyright and authorship: reading Thomas Streeter's Selling the Air

By krisnelson on Nov 9, 2011 in copyright / government / intellectual property / law / technology

Copyright law is often approached in terms of debates over com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of the law: should copy­right be used to pro­tect the author’s free­dom, or to encour­age the pub­lic dis­tri­b­u­tion of cul­ture and infor­ma­tion, or to turn intel­lec­tual prod­ucts into mar­ket­place com­modi­ties, or to serve the inter­ests of cor­po­rate pub­lish­ers and distributors?

Posted in copyright, government, intellectual property, law, technology | Tagged constitution, copyright, law, Thomas Streeter, United States | Leave a response


Neil Richards on "Reconciling Data Privacy and the First Amendment"

By krisnelson on Nov 1, 2011 in constitution / government / law

In “Reconciling Data Privacy and the First Amendment,” argues that pri­vacy reg­u­la­tion is not speech reg­u­la­tion at all, and, addi­tion­ally, that in com­mer­cial con­texts at least, “speech restric­tions … have never trig­gered height­ened First Amendment scrutiny.” In other words, either the data being pro­tected isn’t “speech” in the legal sense, or “because they are legit­i­mate speech reg­u­la­tions under exist­ing doctrine.”

Posted in constitution, government, law | Tagged constitution, Eugene Volokh, First Amendment, government, law, Louis Brandeis, Neil Richards, privacy, Samuel D. Warren | Leave a response


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