Recent Articles and Comments in Volume 77 (2024)
By Gregory S. Parks and Ryan W. McKee – Sexually predatory behavior has long been an issue within many institutions and organizations. The Catholic Church has been scrutinized for the involvement of Popes, priests, nuns, and others as perpetrators and enablers of child sexual abuse. Reports of child sexual abuse dating back as far as the 1940s have plagued the Catholic Church in both the US and Europe, with estimates in the US across all dioceses suggesting over four thousand priest/deacon perpetrators and over ten thousand victims affected between the 1950s and 2002. Similarly, sexual abuse has been an issue in the Boy Scouts of America, dating back to the 1920s. After filing for bankruptcy in 2020, the BSA reached a $2.46 billion settlement agreement with sexual abuse survivors, “the largest sexual abuse compensation fund in the history of the United States.” Another recent example is the Pennsylvania State University scandal. It dominated national headlines across major news networks after the university’s assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of sexually abusing young boys over a fifteen-year period from 1994 to 2009. []
By Bernard S. Sharfman – How does a regulatory agency or a reviewing court deal with the multiple “enacted purposes” that may exist in a regulatory statute? In this Article it is argued that the problem of multiple purposes can be optimally dealt with by looking at these purposes as forming an optimization problem—minimization or maximization. This novel approach requires identifying, if possible, one purpose as the primary objective and then treating the other clearly stated purposes as constraints. Depending on the issue at hand, not all constraints will be relevant. However, the primary objective will always need to be considered. Once the primary objective and applicable constraints are identified, then the result can be used to define ambiguous statutory terms such as “in the public interest.” []
By Michael Mellon – Facial recognition technology enables the identification of subjects in digital recordings through the use of biometrics. This technology is increasingly used by both state and private actors for crime prevention, criminal investigations, crowd monitoring, and more. Its use continues despite the fact that the technology itself has been shown to have a propensity for bias and misidentification. The flaws inherent in the technology are not the only cause for concern either. There is reason to believe that nefarious actors could intentionally use facial recognition technology to achieve illegitimate ends. Meanwhile, facial recognition technology remains unregulated at the federal level in the United States. This essay calls on Congress to take measures to change that. The legislature must pass a law that puts guardrails in place for facial recognition technology. In doing so, Congress can ensure that facial recognition technology is used in an ethically sound manner. []
By Raymond H. Brescia – In the wake of the 2020 presidential election in the United States, lawyers sought to overturn the results of that election filing baseless and far-fetched claims. Courts sanctioned many of those lawyers and at least some of them have been disbarred or are in the last throes of disbarment proceedings. Yet such punishment has come nearly four years after the events that precipitated the need for such professional discipline. Are there things courts can do now, on the immediate eve of the next presidential contest, to “insurrection-proof” their courtrooms to make sure that the legal system is not used, once again, in an anti-democratic fashion that seeks to undermine the rule of law? In this Essay, I explain how courts can deploy a range of tools to try to prevent a repeat of what happened in the wake of the 2020 election. []