The Fourth Amendment Stripped Bare: Substantiating Prisoners\u27 Reasonable Right to Bodily Privacy

Prisoners’ rights to bodily privacy under the Fourth Amendment are limited, allowing detention officials to strip-search them for contraband. The extent to which the Fourth Amendment protects prisoners, however, is uncertain. Questions regarding whether strip searches require reasonable suspicion and the manner in which officials may conduct strip searches have troubled courts for decades. In the absence of clear guidance from the Supreme Court, courts have reached inconsistent conclusions, imperiling the human rights and dignity of prisoners. This Note argues that courts should define and apply prisoners’ rights to bodily privacy with reference to international human-rights law, specifically the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. By looking to this standard, courts can define the right to bodily privacy under the Fourth Amendment in a manner that aligns with the informed and carefully debated consensus of nations, moving away from the inconsistent decision-making of the lower courts that has failed to produce any cognizable doctrine. Resolving this uncertainty will not only allow for greater doctrinal clarity in this area of law, but also bolster the human rights and basic dignity of prisoners as guaranteed to them by the Constitution

Private Law, Public "Justice": Another Look at Privacy, Arbitration, and Global E-Commerce

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

The Case for a Liberal Communitarian Jurisprudence

This article seeks to show that courts face difficulties without a principled, constitutional anchoring for the conception of the common good. Courts could divine the common good from the penumbra of the Fourth Amendment in the same way the Supreme Court created a right to privacy. In addition to creating a “common good” constitutional principle, the judicial branch should establish criteria to determine when this principle should take precedence over individual rights expressly preserved in the Constitution

The ICC’s witness protective measures through the lens of policy-oriented jurisprudence

The protection of witnesses from intimidation or harm has become a firmly entrenched part of modern criminal justice systems. The ICC’s decision-making with regard to procedural and non-procedural protective measures has on one hand reinforced the integrity and success of the judicial process, while on the other hand has led to numerous interpretational and applicability challenges of both policy and legal framework. This article aims at designating policy-oriented jurisprudence as a possible theoretical approach and solution to the ICC’s international law making of witness protective measures. Policy-oriented jurisprudence approaches international law as a decision-making process where decisions are made pursuant to shared community interests and expectations. This is likely to aid an adviser, scholar, or those entrusted with decision-making to pay particular attention to all factors necessary for the security of witnesses

Analyzing Avoidance: Judicial Strategy in Comparative Perspective

Courts sometimes avoid deciding contentious issues. One prominent justification for this practice is that, by employing avoidance strategically, a court can postpone reaching decisions that might threaten its institutional viability. Avoidance creates delay, which can allow for productive dialogue with and among the political branches. That dialogue, in turn, may result in the democratic resolution of—or the evolution of popular societal consensus around—a contested question, relieving the court of its duty. Many scholars and judges assume that, by creating and deferring to this dialogue, a court can safeguard its institutional legitimacy and security. Accepting this assumption arguendo, this Article seeks to evaluate avoidance as it relates to dialogue. It identifies two key factors in the avoidance decision that might affect dialogue with the political branches: first, the timing of avoidance (i.e., when in the life cycle of a case does a high court choose to avoid); and, second, a court’s candor about the decision (i.e., to what degree does a court openly acknowledge its choice to avoid). The Article draws on a series of avoidance strategies from apex courts around the world to tease out the relationships among timing, candor, and dialogue. As the first study to analyze avoidance from a comparative perspective, the Article generates a new framework for assessing avoidance by highlighting the impact of timing on the quality of dialogue, the possible unintended consequences of candor, and the critical trade-offs between avoidance and power

A Common Law for the Statutory Era: The Right of Publicity and New York\u27s Right of Privacy Statute

This note compares New York\u27s privacy statute with the common law right of publicity. The article first traces the history of each law, then goes on to compare their effects. The author argues that exploitation of persona warrants judicial recognition of a common law right of publicity in New York, despite the argument that the creation of such a right should be left to the discretion of the legislature

Constitutionality of No-Citation Rules

No-citation rules raise serious constitutional concerns. Assuming that it is constitutional to designate an opinion as nonprecedential, it is not constitutional to prohibit citing an opinion. No-citation rules are unconstitutional for two reasons. The first, citation prohibitions interfere with a litigant’s First Amendment right of speech and petition. Second, citation prohibitions violate the separation of powers