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Articles
The Kurdish Regional Constitution within the Framework of the Iraqi Federal Constitution: A Struggle for Sovereignty, Oil, Ethnic Identity, and the Prospects for a Reverse Supremacy Clause
By Michael J. Kelly. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 707
The Kurds have long struggled to control their own destiny. Through centuries of cyclical oppression and autonomy, the Kurds of northern Iraq finally united and seized an opportunity to secure a firm legal status for their de facto state within a federal Iraqi state in the aftermath of the Iraq War. In March 2009, I traveled to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and consulted with the Kurdish regional parliament‘s constitutional drafting committee as they finalized their new constitution.1 As a professor of comparative constitutional and international law, this was a rewarding experience to say the least. [keep reading]
People Can Be So Fake: A New Dimension to Privacy and Technology Scholarship
By M. Ryan Calo. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 809
This article updates the traditional discussion of privacy and technology, focused since the days of Warren and Brandeis on the capacity of technology to manipulate information. It proposes a novel dimension to the impact of anthropomorphic or social design on privacy.
Technologies designed to imitate people—through voice, animation, and natural language—are increasingly commonplace, showing up in our cars, computers, phones, and homes. A rich literature in communications and psychology suggests that we are hardwired to react to such technology as though a person were actually present. Social interfaces accordingly capture our attention, improve interactivity, and can free up our hands for other tasks.
At the same time, technologies that imitate people have the potential to implicate long-standing privacy values. One of the well-documented effects on users of interfaces and devices that emulate people is the sensation of being observed and evaluated. Their presence can alter our attitude, behavior, and physiological state. Widespread adoption of such technology may accordingly lessen opportunities for solitude and chill curiosity and self-development. These effects are all the more dangerous in that they cannot be addressed through traditional privacy protections such as encryption or anonymization. At the same time, the unique properties of social technology also present an opportunity to improve privacy, particularly online. [keep reading]
Gross Disunity
By Martin J. Katz. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 857
The Supreme Court has done a turn-about on the value of uniformity in employment discrimination law. For many years, the Court embraced the idea that different employment discrimination statutes that use identical language should be understood to impose identical requirements. So, for example, a plaintiff claiming age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) would face the same requirements as a plaintiff claiming race or sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII). More recently, the Court has moved away from this ideal of uniformity. And last summer, in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, the Court completely rejected that ideal. [keep reading]
The Arms Trade Treaty: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Prospects for Arms Embargoes on Human Rights Violators
By David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne D. Eisen. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 891
Abstract: Advocates of the proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) promise that it will prevent the flow of arms to human rights violators. This Article first examines the ATT and observes that the ATT, if implemented as promised, would require dozens of additional arms embargoes, including embargoes on much of Africa. The Article then provides case studies of the current supply of arms to the dictatorship in Zimbabwe and to the warlords in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Article argues that the ATT would do nothing to remediate the conditions that have allowed so many arms to be acquired by human rights violators. The ATT would have no more effective force than the embargoes that are already imposed by the U.N. Security Council; therefore U.N. member states, including China, which violate current Security Council embargoes, could just as well violate ATT embargoes. Accordingly, the ATT is a distraction, and human rights activists should instead examine alternative methods of addressing the problem of arms in the hands of human rights violators.
At the end of this Article, there is an abstract in Spanish, and a detailed summary of the Article in French. [keep reading]
Choice in Birth: Preserving Access to VBAC
By Elizabeth Kukura. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 955
The reproductive rights movement has fought many uphill battles for the rights of women to decide how to use their bodies in matters of sex and reproduction. Since the earliest battles over access to contraception, control over women‘s bodies and sexuality has been contested terrain where reproductive rights advocates have used autonomy and liberty arguments in attempts to stake out space for women to determine their reproductive lives. During periods of victory in the courts of justice and public opinion, women have experienced fewer barriers to accessing abortion and have benefited from a richer, more nuanced understanding of the conditions required for truly unconstrained decision-making about reproductive and sexual health. During periods of backlash and retrenchment, women have suffered burdensome restrictions on access to critical services, as the concept of reproductive autonomy has been whittled away by legislators, judges, and prosecutors. Throughout these ups and downs, the debate has unfolded with abortion at the center of the struggle for reproductive freedom. [keep reading]
Comments
Pennsylvania‟s Taxpayer Relief Act: Big Gamble Pays Off for Some, But Most Lose Their Shirt
By Jaime S. Bumbarger. 114 Penn. St. L. Rev. 1003
There is perhaps no greater debate in America than the one surrounding taxes, whether it is at the national, state, or local level. While taxes serve the important purpose of funding government programs, they also bear quite a burden on taxpayers. For example, property taxes account for the majority of revenue for local governments across the country. Pennsylvania is no different. In 2000, property taxes accounted for nearly $10 billion of revenue in Pennsylvania, which was 30 percent of total local government revenues and 70 percent of all local government tax revenues. [keep reading]
A Test of Democracy: Ethiopia’s Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation
By Tracy J. Ross. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 1047
David Ben-Gurion once said, “The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.” Freedom of criticism has long been recognized as an essential, inalienable human right; a right that is thought to transcend political and geographical borders and applies regardless of culture, language, and national origin. In Ethiopia, as democracy begins to grow despite a history of corruption and totalitarianism, freedom of expression has proven to be an unsteady notion. In fact, while Ethiopia gains respect in other aspects of the international political scene, the government struggles to justify its draconian control over the media. [keep reading]
Moving Beyond Monkeys: The Expansion and Relocation of the Religious Curriculum Debate
By Anna M. Sewell. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 1067
The sinful nature of humankind is not a danger often discussed in American government textbooks. In fact, such reflections are typically reserved for the pulpit. Nonetheless, at Calvary Chapel Christian School (“CCCS”), high school students are exposed to this language in their government book, they encounter Bible verses in their physics book, and they use an American history textbook which claims “progressives had a faulty view of the nature of man.” As a routine administrative matter, the high school submitted the courses that use these texts to the University of California (“UC”) for acceptance as college preparatory courses under the University‟s pre-college curricula policy for undergraduate admissions, called the “a-g” subject requirements because each letter represents one of the seven required high school subjects. [keep reading]
Individuals and Inheritance Taxes: A Praxeological Examination of Pennsylvania’s Inheritance Tax
By Timothy J. Witt. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 1105
Much has been written regarding the economic effects of the federal estate tax, but relatively little has been published about state inheritance taxes and their economic consequences. Additionally, what has beenwritten has not been addressed primarily to a legal audience. The legal literature discussing the Pennsylvania inheritance tax, one of the eleven effective state inheritance or estate taxes found across the country, is no exception to this observation; beyond practice guides, few legal resources have discussed the tax, and virtually none have substantively and systematically examined its economic effects. [keep reading]