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Today the Supreme Court granted cert on United States v. Sykes. This case considers the Armed Career Criminal Act, and whether a “violent felony” justifies a longer sentence if a suspect uses a vehicle to flee from police after being ordered to stop.

This case probably has no bearing on Heller, but it could raise some Second Amendment issues.

Akhil seems to have gotten a little hot under the collar when someone challenges his research. Amar was debating Jeb Rubenfeld on McDonald v. Chicago.

Here is the report from the Yale Daily News:

Although Rubenfeld and Amar, both Constitutional scholars, agreed that the case was decided correctly, they said they feared it might be for the wrong reasons. Both professors said the decision is well-founded in the principles of the Fourteenth Amendment, but noted that the justices seemed to argue for it on more modern political principals.

But then Professor Saul Cornell asked a question. Cornell vigorously disagrees with McDonald, and wrote A Well Regulated Miliita, which provides a conflicting view of the history of the right to keep and bear arms.

How did Amar react?

The conversation, though generally calm, grew heated just once when Saul Cornell, a visiting professor from Fordham University questioned Amar on the historical context he provided about the decision. Amar surprised audience members when he dismissed Cornell’s question, asking him if he is as well-read as Amar himself.

Wow. And what was the reaction?

While some students complained afterward that Amar unnecessarily closed off debate with the remarks, Cornell said he was not offended.

“Good lively debate is why you come to these [events],” he said. “I have thick skin.”

I’m looking for video of the debate (it does not seem to be posted to the News & Events page).

H/T Al Brophy

It will be done right to request removal of suggestions and proposals at issue in a fine of 500 € per breach per day, at the expiration of a period of one month from the service of this decision.From the UK Telegraph:

Google has been convicted of defaming a French computer user after the Internet technology giant linked his name to the word “rapist” in automatic web searches.

Court documents said the function, which suggests options and phrases as a user types, linked the man’s identity to words including “rapist”, “satanist”, “rape,” and “prison”.

According to French reports, the man was convicted of the “corruption of a minor” and sentenced to three years in jail earlier this year.

But in what is believed to be a landmark decision, the Superior Court of Paris found Google guilty of the “public slandering of a private individual”. Google said it will appeal the decision, which also named Eric Schmidt, its chief executive.

The court ruled the man had been defamed because he is considered innocent under French law until all of his appeals have been exhausted.

Google disagrees, and argues that it is not liable because it has no control over its search engine (lol):

A Google spokeswoman said the company would appeal the French court decision.

She said the “Google Suggest” function reflected the most common terms used in the past with words entered and were not being suggested by the company.

“These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors including (the) popularity of search terms,” she said.

“Google does not suggest these terms. All of the queries shown in Autocomplete have been typed previously by other Google users.”

Oh the irony. Just last month Eric Schmidt suggested that in the future people would have to change their name in order to escape their online reputations. I’m sure Google would recommend that the Plaintiff simply change his name. That would solve all of the problems, right?

I would also quibble with Google’s notion that their “suggest” function is totally autonomous. Skynet is not online–yet. At some level, an actual human being programmed that feature,and (putting aside all legal issues), I am sure Google could program their servers to deliver modified results.

As I wrote in Omniveillance:

One of the greatest threats that a lack of privacy protections in public places poses is the potential to damage a reputation.167 Personal information that is taken out of context can often lead to unfair judgments that can prevent learning more about a person’s character.168  …  Like an elephant, the Internet never forgets

Dan Solove has also written:

The virtue of knowing less shows that “[a]lthough more information about a person might help enrich our understanding of that person, it might also lead us astray, since we often lack the whole story.”177

Similarly, Blackstone wrote:

The security of his reputation or good name from the arts of detraction and slander, are rights to which every man is intitled [sic], by reason and natural justice; since without these it is impossible to have the perfect enjoyment of any other advantage or right.

And Shakespeare had this to say in Othello:

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of my self and what remains is bestial.

H/T Gizmodo

Update: I found the opinion and used (I appreciate the irony) Google Translate to translate it to English. I do not speak French so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the translation.

Here is how Google characterizes the autonomous nature of their servers:

Eric S. Google Inc. and produce a certificate of David K., responsible for these products, indicating:
that they operate in a purely automatic from a database which lists the requests actually entered on Google during the recent period by a minimum number of users with similar preferences linguistic and territorial
the results displayed depend on an algorithm based on queries by other users without any human intervention or reclassification of these results by Google
that the order of requests is entirely determined by the number of users who have used each of the queries, the most frequently appearing on the list.

Here are some of the French court’s observations, comparing the Google search to the Yahoo search, which generated different results:

It will be noted in advance on the technical argument of the defendants:
that the algorithms or software solutions proceed from the human mind before being implemented,
it is interesting to observe, with the applicant, a similar service offered by another search engine (Yahoo) book, for an identical search on his name and surname, the results quite different,
that far from the technological neutrality of the two services called into question by their wording, the research items in question are undoubtedly capable of directing the curiosity or to call attention to the themes they offer or suggest, and in doing , likely to cause a “snowball effect” even more injurious to which it relates that the language most catchy and will end soon top the list of proposed research,

And what is the remedy? Specific performance.

It will be done right to request removal of suggestions and proposals at issue in a fine of 500 € per breach per day, at the expiration of a period of one month from the service of this decision.

Yeah, let’s see Google listen to this Court.

Whenever I find a nexus between Jersey Shore and the Law, I blog it. Here is a perfect article from NY Magazine that does just that:

Were you really considering law school at Harvard or Yale?
I said that if got into Harvard or Yale with my LSAT score, then maybe I’d give up on the reality-TV career, but this was back when the show just started. But I didn’t, obviously. It was good enough to get into a good school, but my score was nowhere near that. But the next day after saying that, all these headlines said “Vinny is going to Yale or Harvard!” When I wanted to go to law school, I didn’t really know what lawyers did, and I still didn’t want to be a lawyer. I just wanted the degree, and that still stands. I think it’s very prestigious to have a law degree. You can go into politics, the FBI, Wall Street. I would never rule that out. But I don’t want to be a lawyer. I have a lawyer now, and I see what he does, and it’s not for me.

Vinny negotiated some intimate contracts with Snooki and Angelina this year (though they may violate public policy). I’d say his skills of persuasion are quite effective.

H/T M.

Yesterday I posted many thoughts about original citizenship. I had some more thoughts on the Article II qualifications for the Presidency.

Article II provides:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

This clause recognizes what is implicit in my unified theory. There were two ways to obtain citizenship of the United States in 1788. The first was to be a natural born citizen–that is a citizen of one of the states. That citizenship was based on the social compact theory based election process following the Declaration of Independence, and the establishment of new civil governments. The second way to become a citizen was to be a make the election following the adoption/ratification of the Constitution. In other words, after the ratification in 1788, a person became a citizen by making an election, and not exercising the right of expatriation.

So why are Article I and Article II different? Why does Article I require that a person be an “inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen” and Article II requires he merely be a “resident within the United States.” Additionally, why does the Presidential qualifications explicitly recognize the two paths of citizenship, while the Congressional qualifications do not? This, I think, has much to do with the nature of the respective offices.

The President was serving as a unified figure for the entire nation. A Representative was simply a representative for one state. The focus in Article I is on state citizenship and inhabitance in the state. There was less fear of the challenges of the qualifications based on fickle state law. The focus on the latter is on broader notions of national citizenship–either through election after the Declaration, or election after the Constitution–and a resident within the United States as a whole. Here, fears of state law allowing the challenging of the qualifications was mitigated, and perhaps eliminated.

Remember, the figure of the President was quite controversial at the time. It stands to reason that the Framers would want to put the qualifications of this office on a much surer footing.

Still developing this idea, but it is getting closer.