Category: Civil Procedure

1 Aug, 2007

· by William McGeveran

Harry Potter and the Due Process Clause

Harry potter cover.jpg Don’t worry, no spoilers here.

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night finishing the final Harry Potter book. I found it very satisfying. But this is a law blog, and I am a geeky law professor, so the phenomenon I will note is how extensively these books develop the theme of procedural fairness — a marvelous lesson for the children who are its target audience.

Time and again throughout the series, the Ministry of Magic that rules wizards in England falls far short of what we would consider the minimum of due process. There are repeated sham hearings that have the trappings of even-handed court proceedings, but they are rigged and hollow. In an earlier book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, also the movie currently playing in theaters), Harry himself is accused of an infraction against wizarding rules; the Minister abruptly changes the time for his hearing before the Wizengamot — a sort of legislature with judicial functions, it seems — hoping that Harry’s principal advocate, the wise Albus Dumbledore, will miss it. The same phenomenon happens constantly at Hogwarts, the wizarding school. Various teachers and headmasters make arbitrary and capricious decisions and issue unjust punishments.

Sometimes this sort of unfairness is perpetrated by the clear bad guys, the evil followers of the story’s villain, Voldemort. More often, however, leaders of the Ministry of Magic or of Hogwarts are simply acting bureaucratically. They may not support Voldemort at all, but they treasure form over substance and obedience to the letter of the rules rather than any adherence to its spirit. Most of all they seek to preserve their own power against perceived threats — often petty threats far less serious than the real dangers posed by Voldemort’s followers. The fact that there is an official hearing, an examination of witnesses, and a vote provides no guarantee of substantial fairness.

Early in the first semester of my civil procedure course I plan to have the students read the classic procedural due process cases (Goldberg and Mathews) and think about the attributes that do — and should — constitute fair procedure. I think I will use the Harry Potter books as an example.

Articles and Books / Civil Procedure / Constitutional Law / Culture

17 Jul, 2007

· by William McGeveran

Sex, Laws, and Videotape (Genarlow WIlson Edition)

Genarlow Wilson, you may recall, is the young man sentenced to a 10-year mandatory sentence in Georgia for occurrences at a wild hotel room New Year’s Eve party with other high schoolers when he was 17 years old. He was acquitted of raping a 17-year-old girl who said that she was intoxicated and that her intercourse with Wilson was not consensual. He was convicted, however, of engaging in oral sex with a 15-year-old girl, even though all agree that encounter was consensual, because she was below the 16-year-old age of consent. (Moreover, the fact that they had oral sex in particular triggered a much more severe penalty than would have applied to intercourse, a quirk in Georgia law that the Legislature has since changed). The trial judge recently ordered Wilson released, calling his sentence “a grave miscarriage of justice,” but that order has since been appealed. Meanwhile the case has become a cause celebre, drawing comment from Jimmy Carter to Barrack Obama and, inevitably, spawning a web site and legal defense fund.

Clearly, there are dozens of possible legal blog posts embedded in this story: gender, race, sentencing, statutory rape and strict-liability crimes, the judge’s proper role in such circumstances. But I am going to focus on an information law angle — specifically, does the law require the release of a videotape at the center of the legal case, as the Georgia D.A. says, or forbid it, as the U.S. Attorney says?

Civil Procedure / Criminal Law / Current Events / Feminism and Gender / First Amendment / Privacy / Race

2 Jul, 2007

· by William McGeveran

Piercing the Veil of Anonymous Bloggers

Lives of Others Picture.jpg I’m delighted to be guest-blogging at Concurring Opinions, and thanks to the crew here for the invitation! I regularly blog to a much smaller audience at Info/Law (and will cross-post most of these guest appearances over there), but it will be fun to discuss a somewhat wider variety of topics here. That said, it turns out my first entry is at the heart of information regulation.

Brian Leiter notes this news story about a South Korean law which has just taken effect, requiring large web sites to obtain real names and the equivalent of Social Security numbers from everyone who posts content. He compares this approach to that taken in the US where, he says, “there exist only private remedies against Internet sociopaths and misogynistic freaks who hide behind anonymity. I suppose time will tell which is the better approach.”

Personally, I don’t need to wait for the passage of time to criticize the South Korean initiative (which has been under discussion there for some four years). Obviously, this law arises in a cultural context very different from our own, which I believe explains a good deal of the difference in approach. And it may not even be as different as it first appears. But there are principled reasons, distinct from cultural ones, to oppose a “show me your papers” internet.

First and foremost, it should be no surprise that China reportedly is looking at a similar model — as a technique to curb dissent, not just cyberbullying. (If you have seen the film The Lives of Others, pictured above — and you really should see it — you will remember how it portrayed East Germany registering typewriters.) The ability to remain anonymous protects unpopular speakers who might otherwise be unable to spread their ideas. In some countries, anonymous bloggers risk life and limb. Despite massive internet filtering by governments, blogging still provides dissidents a powerful tool. Even in more democratic countries, whistleblowers, political outsiders, and unhappy employees use anonymous blogging to avoid retribution. An outright ban on anonymity will curtail such often-useful speech.

Anonymity / Blogging / Civil Procedure / Current Events / First Amendment / International & Comparative Law / Media Law / Privacy / Privacy (Electronic Surveillance) / Technology

12 Jun, 2007

· by Melissa Waters

Another AALS Call for Papers

This one is for my fellow civil procedure enthusiasts.

The AALS Section on Civil Procedure has issued a Call for Papers to be presented at the AALS Annual Meeting in New York on January 4, 2008. The topic for this year’s program is “The Revolution of 1938 Revisited: The Role and Future of the Federal Rules.” Here’s the summary:

70 years ago, the Federal Rules changed the landscape of civil litigation. Procedure in the federal courts became uniform and adopted a flexible, notice-based model that contemplated liberal access to discovery. Over time, most states followed suit. Some have called this the Golden Age of Rulemaking.

What will the next 30 years of rulemaking look like? What should they look like? From pleading standards to discovery to summary judgment practice, there is no shortage of critics of the federal model. And, increasingly, questions are raised about the extent to which state practice should continue to follow the lead of the Federal Rules. States might adopt different practices out of a belief that the state and federal courts hear different types of cases and are designed to do different things. States might adopt different practices in a spirit of local experimentation, supplementing or even displacing the federal rulemaking process as the leader in innovation and reform. Or, states might simply depart from the Federal Rules model out of a belief that the federal model proceeds from flawed first principles. Different models of judicial federalism could support very dif ferent conclusions about the proper interaction between state rulemaking and federal rulemaking.

Sounds like a great topic! (And for all you civ pro skeptics out there, who think this all sounds mind-bogglingly dull, you truly don’t know what you’re missing.) More information below the fold.

Civil Procedure