Amicus – Page 51 – Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

Amicus, Courts & Judicial Interpretation, Criminal Justice

Supreme Court Narrows Miranda

By iholt / February 27, 2012

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court held that police officers do not need to read prison inmates their Miranda rights when questioning them about events unrelated to their current incarceration. The prisoner in this case was questioned without being read his Miranda rights, and during questioning confessed to actions that formed the basis of a criminal sexual conduct conviction. Justice Alito’s opinion concludes that the prison inmate in this case was not “in custody for Miranda purposes” at the time of his questioning, and therefore that Fields was not constitutionally entitled to receive the warnings set out under Miranda.

Amicus, Criminal Justice

Are Domestic Drones Acceptable?

By jrogers / February 27, 2012

Congress has required the Federal Aviation Administration to integrate military drones into U.S. airspace. Past efforts to militarize police forces should make us wary about the influence drones could have in domestic policing.

Amicus, Education & Youth, Labor and Employment

Unpaid Internships Continued

By Fran Swanson / February 27, 2012

The obvious fact that unpaid internships create opportunities for exploitation raises the equally obvious question of how exploitation should be defined.

Amicus, Freedom of Expression

Tradeoffs in the Right to be Forgotten

By jweinell / February 26, 2012

The right to be forgotten creates a clear tension between two values that many of us concerned with civil liberties share: the protection of free speech and the protection of privacy rights on the Internet.

Amicus, Reproductive Rights

The Fifth Circuit's Troubling Abortion Ruling

By Jack Edwards / February 20, 2012

The United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on January 10 upheld a Texas law requiring doctors to show sonograms to patients seeking abortions. The decision functions as an unfortunate emblem of the court’s tendency to treat abortions as quasi-criminal acts rather than a legal medical procedures and improperly infringes upon the privacy and autonomy of patients’ and doctors’. Two key ideas underlie the court’s reasoning in this case: 1) the unborn are citizens of the state, and 2) legislation of this kind is reasonably calculated and reasonably necessary to ensure mature and informed decisions by would-be mothers.

Amicus, Reproductive Rights

The Susan G. Komen Foundation's Planned Parenthood Debacle

By Katelyn / February 19, 2012

The rule, which the foundation enacted “to fulfill [its] fiduciary duty” to donors, stipulates that it will not give funds to an organization under investigation. However, this particular decision to stop funding seems so closely connected to the political situation and to the perception of Planned Parenthood as a provider of abortion services, that it was almost divorced from public health considerations.

Amicus, Uncategorized

Data Aggregation, Credit Scoring, and Privacy

By jweinell / February 13, 2012

There are two distinct problems with data aggregation as a window into character. The first is that the accuracy of profiles built on data aggregation is questionable. The deeper problem is that even with greater accuracy, data is necessarily incomplete.

Amicus, Labor and Employment, Poverty and Economic Justice

Unpaid Internships: Are They Legal?

By iholt / February 9, 2012

Last week, a former unpaid intern sued her former employer for violating federal and state minimum wage laws. Over one million Americans work as interns each year, and over half are not paid. Many of these unpaid positions should be paid under the Fair Labor Standards Act, but a lack of enforcement has allowed such non-payment to persist.

Amicus, Criminal Justice, Poverty and Economic Justice

Missed Opportunity to Examine Sex Offender Registry Laws

By jrogers / February 8, 2012

Last month, a federal court in Michigan had the opportunity to confront the constitutional problems that sex offender registries present. The court ducked them by resolving the case on a narrow question of statutory interpretation, missing the chance to examine whether the registrations are constitutionally acceptable.

Amicus, Education & Youth

Measuring Creativity in the Public Schools

By Fran Swanson / February 7, 2012

Though there may be much to be said for the axiom that creativity can’t be quantified, at least three states have been working to develop something akin to an objective measure of imagination.

Amicus, Uncategorized

Cause for Optimism on Google's Privacy Policy?

By jweinell / February 5, 2012

There are clear tradeoffs involved in Google’s new privacy policy, but what does it suggest for the growing problem of data privacy more generally? Despite the seeming novelty of privacy problems in the age of the Internet, we can learn a few lessons by turning to privacy problems at the beginning of the information age.