As army artificial intelligence burst onto the public radar with both written words and images, the initial reaction was largely curiosity and amusement. Some have tried to trick chatbots to see what it will get wrong. Others have created “art” that never existed, assuming you don’t consider DALL E an artist. But what about law? Sure, there was the stunt by DONOTPAY to offer $1,000,000 to let its AI bot argue a Supreme Court case, or for no money, a traffic court case, whichever came first. But that was just goofy and unserious.

At the same time, others are creating more serious applications for AI that raise new, yet old, concerns about the damage it can cause. Continue reading →

Contrary to what some have asserted on social media, it’s not quite a done deal, as the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Sharpe v. Winterville Police Dep’t neither affirmatively held that the livestreaming by a passenger in a traffic stop was definitely protected by the First Amendment, nor foreclosed the possibility that on a different record, the claim of officer safety wouldn’t be sufficiently established to overcome strict scrutiny. But at least, for the moment, the court held that in in the absence of such a showing, there was a First Amendment right to do so.

This case asks whether a town’s alleged policy that bans video livestreaming certain
interactions with law enforcement violates the First Amendment. It also asks whether a
police officer who, during a traffic stop, attempted to stop a passenger from livestreaming
the encounter may be successfully sued under § 1983 for violating the passenger’s First
Amendment rights. Continue reading →

In reaction to the “mostly peaceful” protests of 2020, the City of Atlanta decided to build a police training facility on an 85 acre tract of land, which included a mock city. Protesters of what they dubbed “Cop City,” who called themselves “forest defenders,” have taken to the woods to fight against the initiative.

Protesters, many of whom are college students and or from out of state, have set up camps throughout the 300-acre Weelaunee Forest, as the land was called by its original inhabitants from the Muscogee Nation before serving as a plantation site during the Civil War and later as a prison farm until 1990. They’ve even constructed treehouses and set up barricades in an effort to halt the construction process. Continue reading →

It’s a curious path from the National Review to the New York Times, given the ouster of James Bennett, the long time editorial page editor, following the Times’ publication of Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed. Then there was Bari Weiss’ quitting in the face of unwelcoming colleagues who characterized her as a liar and bigot. Yet, here we are, with former NRO writer David French making his debut as a New York Times columnist.

Before I go further, let me put my own partisan cards on the table. I’m a conservative independent. I left the Republican Party in 2016, not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.

Continue reading →

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis argued that the reason Florida rejected the Advance Placement course in African American History is that it lacked “educational value.” It’s not that units one through three lacked educational value, but that unit four introduced such things as black queer theory and critical race theory, which, per DeSantis, violated Florida’s unconstitutional Stop WOKE law.

If changes were not made to the AP course, the course would not be allowed in Florida’s schools. The College Board subsequently changed the curriculum of a course that never before existed. A glittering party was held at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to celebrate the introduction of the course. Mara Gay was there to enjoy the jazz and collard greens. Continue reading →

Prefatory Note: For those of you who might be new around here, I’ve got a hacker contact that sends me regular batches of emails Sheriff Roy composes on his office computer.

The Sheriff’s got lousy cybersecurity. Anyway, enjoy a look at what’s been on his mind this year!—CLS

January 1, 2023
FROM: Templeton, Roy ([email protected])
TO: ALL DEPARTMENTS
SUBJECT: New Year’s Vision Board Issue Continue reading →

Does it fall under the “woke” heading? Who knows, but the correlation seems clear. The nonsensical reimagination of language to eliminate “hurtful” words and phrases and replace them with more sensitive words remains very much alive. In the desperation to find ever more signifiers of empathy, no matter how ridiculous it may be to believe that it makes any  substantive difference other than to signal one’s virtue to the world that one is attuned to the language of the woke, lists continue to be pushed upon others as to what they should no longer say. Continue reading →

Sure, mommy and daddy are thrilled to tell the neighbors that their baby goes to Yale Law School, but will they still be so thrilled with their lil darling when they see that angelic face in a shot of outlaws @ Yale? After learning that Yale Federalist Society held an event with Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom (“ADF”) which, this time, went forward without incident, David Lat wondered whether this meant YLS had emerged more open and tolerant of diverse views or something else.

One of [Lat’s] sources, a current Yale Law School student who was involved in last year’s protest, shed light on this topic, in a detailed and thoughtful email (reprinted with their permission, with links added by me for clarity):

Continue reading →

A perpetual problem for federal defendants that rarely makes the radar otherwise is that they’re unable to get any financially responsible person to sign off on their personal recognizance bond for release from custody. In most cases, the concern of potential sureties is that by signing a PRB for a defendant charged with a serious crime, which is most federal defendants, the surety will put a target on his back for federal agents, who will then conduct a financial, if not personal, colonoscopy to see what they can find with which to charge the surety. Continue reading →

One of the perpetual conundrums of law is when rights conflict, one has to give. Oftentimes, the relative rules are crafted by looking at a standalone right, extolling its virtues and then protecting it from encroachment. It’s a fine system, until the right being protected runs head first into someone else’s right. At that point, it’s usually left to the Supreme Court to do the dirty work of coming up with a test to determine which right prevails. For the most part, this has followed the rising or falling popularity of a right.

Since the 1960s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in general, and Title VII prohibiting employment discrimination in particular, religion has generally become a second-class right despite its free exercise being protected under the First Amendment. It wasn’t so much antagonism against religion as the rising concerns for other areas of discrimination that were considered far more at risk and in need of remedy. Continue reading →