I've come across a couple of interesting academic papers in the last few days that are worth having a look at.
First, this interesting look at some of the constitutional issues relating to networked public places:
Zick, Timothy, "Clouds, Cameras, and Computers: The First Amendment and Networked Public Places" (August 2006). St. John's Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-0048 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=924614
Abstract: Public places are becoming highly networked environments. Municipalities are draping wireless clouds and meshes over vast public spaces, facilitating always-on internet connectivity. Surveillance cameras are now a pervasive presence in many public places. The people who gather in public and use public spaces are wearing and carrying ever more sophisticated computing devices. An integrated grid of networked connectivity is being built into traditional bricks-and-mortar public places. This Article examines the First Amendment implications of the progression toward networked public places. Wireless clouds will raise substantial property, public forum, and privacy issues. The networking of public places will also challenge traditional notions of public versus private expression. As Web access becomes ubiquitous and expression increasingly mobile, public citizens will be more captive to expression than ever before. New forms of virtual harassment, stalking, and other potentially harmful expression will appear. Public protests will also be affected by the networking of public places. Spontaneous gatherings will be made easier; but so too will official and unofficial surveillance of public protests and displays. Speaker and group identity - and perhaps eventually even speakers' thoughts - may be discovered, undermining protection for expressive anonymity. Finally, citizen-journalists will roam public places, reporting on events from the field and posting content on the Web in real time. A new class of journalists may seek to claim the mantle of the press. As serious as these issues are, the author argues that the stakes are actually much higher. Drawing upon scholarship in urban geography and sociology, the Article shows how public spatial networking will affect the critical identity, participation, and transparency functions of public places. It will influence who speaks, where they may communicate, and what they will say. It will render speakers more knowable to authorities, but in many cases less knowable to one another. People will increasingly interact with devices in public, rather than with one another. Speech regulation will be less transparent. The Article concludes with some modest proposals for resisting, or at least neutralizing, the negative First Amendment effects associated with spatial networking.
Second, for those US legal history buffs:
Barrett, John Q., Davidson, Gordon B., Meador, Daniel J., POLLOCK, EARL and Prettyman, Jr., E. Barrett, "Supreme Court Law Clerks' Recollections of Brown v. Board of Education II" . St. John's Law Review, Vol. 79, pp. 823-885, Fall 2005 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=928873
Abstract: When the Supreme Court unanimously decided Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe on May 17, 1954, it did not decree a remedy for the segregated public school systems that it was declaring to be unconstitutional. Instead, the Court restored the school cases to its docket for the coming Term and ordered further briefing and oral argument on questions relating to the appropriate remedy.
One year later, on May 31, 1955, the Supreme Court announced the decision that has come to be known as Brown II. The Court, again unanimously, decreed that it was remanding the cases to the trial courts that had heard them originally, and it ordered those courts to fashion decrees that would admit Negro students to schools on a non-discriminatory basis "with all deliberate speed."
On May 18, 2005, two weeks before the 50th anniversary of Brown II, the Robert H. Jackson Center in Jamestown, New York, and the Supreme Court Historical Society assembled four attorneys who served as Supreme Court law clerks during 1954-1955 for a discussion of Brown II. In this roundtable, the attorneys share recollections of experiences at the Supreme Court during that year, and of working in the judicial process that culminated in Brown II.
The introduction to this discussion traces the history of Brown v. Board of Education and its companion cases in the Supreme Court. It includes new discoveries, including circumstantial evidence that the Justices did not, contrary to Chief Justice Warren's memoir, actually vote on Brown I until March 1954; some detail on Gerald Gunther's central involvement in Brown II as Warren's law clerk; and information on the six law clerks who worked on special, undisclosed-to-the-parties factual research for the Justices as they considered the Brown II remedy question.
Third, a relevant one for Australian copyright lawyers interested in anticircumvention issues:
Yu, Peter K., "Anticircumvention and Anti-Anticircumvention" . MSU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 04-05 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=931899
Abstract: In today's debate on digital rights management (DRM) systems, there has been a considerable divide between rights holders, their investors and representatives on the one hand and academics (usually liberal academics), consumer advocates, and civil libertarians on the other. These two groups often talk past each other, each bringing with them their own doomsday scenarios. Unfortunately, neither side has sufficient empirical evidence to support its position. Nor is it able to disprove its rivals' position once and for all. As the economy grows, the debate intensifies, and the divide between the two sides becomes wider. Today, there has emerged an urgent need to find common ground between both sides.
Published as part of the Inaugural Summit on Intellectual Property and Digital Media, Part I of this article examines the positions taken by both the proponents and critics of DRM systems and related laws. Part II then focuses on anticircumvention laws, highlighting their harms at both the domestic and international levels. This Part contends that an unbalanced international anticircumvention regime is more harmful than its domestic counterpart and encourages less developed countries to be more cautious about whether they should ratify the WIPO Internet Treaties and how they should implement those treaties. Part III concludes with four observations, which I hope will provide some insight into the development of the next generation of DRM systems and the accompanying legal regime that supports these systems.
Fourth, an interesting argument for including a public speaking course in law school:
Pillsbury, Samuel H., "Valuing the Spoken Word: Public Speaking for Lawyers" . Capital University Law Review, Vol. 34, 2006 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=928983
Abstract: Public speaking - speaking to groups outside the litigation context - is an important part of many lawyers' practice, yet involves skills largely neglected in legal education. This neglect is consistent with the larger trends in public expression, particularly the triumph of formal over conversational language in public discourse and written texts over speech in intellectual discourse. This essay laments the current state of public speaking in legal culture and suggests a remedy by including a course in public speaking as a standard part of the law school curriculum.
