Katz in the Cradle: The Second Justice Harlan and Reasonable Expectations of Privacy in Electronic Transactional Information

Katz in the Cradle – The Second Justice Harlan and Reasonable Expectations of Privacy in Electronic Transactional Information “Since it is the task of the law to form and project, as well as mirror and reflect, we should not, as judges, merely recite the expectations and risks without examining the desirability of saddling them upon society.”[1] Introduction On June 22, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States held that the Fourth Amendment[2] requires the government to obtain… Read More

From Decarceration to E-carceration

From Decarceration to E-carceration Each year, millions of Americans experience criminal justice surveillance through electronic ankle monitors. These devices have fundamentally altered our understanding of incarceration, punishment, and the extent of the carceral state, as they are increasingly offered as moderate penal sanctions and viable solutions to the problem of mass incarceration. They purportedly enable decarceration, albeit with enhanced surveillance in the community as the compromise. Proponents of the devices tout the public safety and cost benefits while stressing the… Read More

Modern Waste Law, Bankruptcy, and Residential Mortgage

Modern Waste Law, Bankruptcy, and Residential Mortgage Around the time of the subprime mortgage collapse, lenders began in earnest to sue borrowers by adapting the traditional law of waste. Today, these claims continue to rise in frequency and to expand to more jurisdictions. Lender waste claims provide a “work around” for state mortgage laws that prohibit personal deficiency judgments after foreclosure and are potentially non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. While a recent wave of scholarship has addressed the problems of how the… Read More

The Natural Right for Adjudicating Current Litigation When the Creation of an Allergy Related Agency Rule is Simultaneously Underway

Where can you find granola bars, salad dressing, dry pasta, peanut butter, breakfast cereal, almond milk, and ice cream? Besides the grocery store, or possibly your kitchen, all of these food products can be found on court dockets. This is because they have all been the subjects of class action lawsuits challenging their manufacturers’ use of the “natural” label. If you have been in a supermarket recently, chances are you have encountered a variety of these “natural” products. Indeed, you might have specifically looked for and purchased certain food products simply because they were labeled “natural,” as fifty-nine percent of consumers reportedly do. Perhaps you were even willing to pay a higher price for these “natural” products, in comparison to the lower price of their non-“natural”-labeled equivalents, because you believed “natural” was indicative of healthfulness. If so, you were not alone: studies have shown that eighty percent of Americans are willing to pay price premiums for “natural” food products in their pursuit of a healthier lifestyle.

The Right to Appointed Counsel: The Case for Unaccompanied Immigrant Children

C.J.L.G. (C.J.) was thirteen years old when he escaped from Honduras, a country known for having one of the highest homicide rates in the world. He fled with his mother, Maria, after the Mara Salvatrucha gang, more commonly known as MS-13, made repeated death threats to him and his family, demanding that C.J. join the gang. Had he stayed, C.J. would have been forced to face death or join a gang that heavily recruited children to engage in drug trafficking and murder. He would likely have met the same fate as many others, like a fifteen-year-old boy who was gunned down on his way to buy cell phone minutes. Instead, C.J. and his mother decided to make the journey to the United States, hoping for freedom.

A Judge’s Attempt at Sentencing Consistency After Booker: Judge Jack B. Weinstein’s Guidelines for Sentencing

All judges are concerned about fairness and consistency in sentencing. After United States v. Booker[1] rendered the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory, I began publishing statements of reasons for each sentence I imposed—to ensure transparency and consistency in my own sentencing. I have reviewed the Article written by my former Law Clerks, Carolin Guentert (2016 to 2017) and Ryan Gerber (2017 to 2018). It is, in general, an accurate portrayal of my sentencing practices, as revealed by the public record, not… Read More

Second Looks and Second Chances

In early January of 2019, the improbable case of Matthew Charles ended with an NBC Nightly News team recording his release from federal custody, after Matthew had served two stints in federal prison totaling more than twenty-one years.[1] Matthew was in prison because, at the age of thirty, he was sentenced to thirty-five years in federal court for distributing 216 grams of crack cocaine and illegally possessing a firearm.[2] Matthew’s sentence resulted, not from the quantity of crack cocaine he… Read More

Federal Criminal Risk Assessment

Risk assessments are a common feature of federal decisionmaking across a wide variety of areas of regulation. Perhaps the most widely used definition describes risk assessment as “the process of using risk factors to estimate the likelihood (i.e., probability) of an outcome occurring in a population.”[1] Measures for such outcomes are common throughout federal administrative law, particularly where regulations have impacts on large populations. For example, the federal Regulatory Improvement Act specified the use of risk assessment for any “major… Read More