Data scraping—the automated collection of data on the internet—is used in a variety of contexts. On the commercial side, scraping might be used as a means of competition—such as scraping by one company to retrieve information on prices for services provided by a competitor. On the noncommercial side, scraping could be used as a research tool—such as scraping by a news outlet to investigate Amazon’s...
Note
The Supreme Court’s 2018 Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC decision caused uncertainty for future and ongoing Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation in federal courts. In holding that foreign corporations are not subject to liability under the ATS, the Court foreclosed one avenue human rights plaintiffs have sought to use for the past few decades to garner attention, and in some cases receive significant monetary settlements, for the abuses. Further,...
This Note attempts to resolve a significant impediment to the religious free exercise of prisoners. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) forbids the government from placing a “substantial burden” on a prisoner’s religious exercise. Congress did not define substantial burden in the statute, instead indicating that courts should rely on the Supreme Court’s free exercise jurisprudence for a definition.
Despite...
In 2018, the Supreme Court held in National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra (NIFLA) that requiring a crisis pregnancy center to place a sign in its waiting room alerting people to available abortion services elsewhere violated the First Amendment. Abortion providers are often faced with similar requirements—but the Court’s cursory treatment of the First Amendment in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey...
Varying enforcement of school hair policies and other grooming regulations against students has contributed, at least in part, to disparate exclusion of Black students from classroom and extracurricular activities. The consequences arising out of exclusion from school activities can be severe, ranging from lower academic performance to early involvement with the criminal justice system. Generally, disputes around such policies have been settled...
In June 2018, the Supreme Court decided Animal Science Products, Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co. and resolved a circuit split regarding the amount of deference courts must give to amicus briefs filed by foreign sovereign governments. The Court articulated a new standard of deference, “respectful consideration,” but did not take the opportunity to give weight or meaning to it. This Note argues that more must be done to develop the respectful...
As the use of predictive technology expands, an increasing number of states have passed legislation encouraging or requiring judges to incorporate recidivism risk assessment algorithms into their bail, parole, and sentencing determinations. And while these tools promise to reduce prison overcrowding, decrease recidivism, and combat racial bias, critics have identified a number of potential constitutional issues that stem from the use of these algorithms....
Beginning in 2010, the Supreme Court severely limited states’ ability to impose juvenile life without parole sentences. In a seminal case, Miller v. Alabama, the Court banned mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles and declared that only the “rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption” should be made to spend the rest of their lives in prison. While Miller has been the subject of much...
As the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe and perceptible, corporations that continue to disregard the risks created by the Earth’s shifting climate stand to suffer significant financial harm. Particular sectors, such as the oil and gas industry, are especially susceptible to the effects of climate change and are already experiencing losses in value due to extreme weather events, disrupted operations, and environmental regulations....
Faced with potentially staggering human and economic costs, governments around the world are beginning to plan and implement adaptive measures designed to stem the effects of climate change. Some of these adaptations will likely benefit certain property owners and communities at the expense of others. For example, seawalls intended to save valuable parcels of land from sea-level rise could wind up forcing seawater onto neighboring parcels that...