Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

The Facts Have a Liberal Bias

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

While I’m away, enjoy this video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Remember this the next time we debate inheritance taxes and progressive taxation.

Posted in Econ & Money | 1 Comment

Off to New York

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

I’m off to New York early tomorrow to attend a conference on Differential Privacy being held at Cardozo on Thursday. I hope to learn enough more about Differential Privacy to overcome my skepticism about whether it is actually workable in real life.

Meanwhile, I hear it’s even colder in New York than it is in South Florida. It got down to 45º (7ºC) last night, and the high was only 69º (18º C), although it felt warmer in the sun at lunch. Surely it can’t be much colder than that … although I’m taking a parka just in case.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Off to New York

Military Entanglement With Religion

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

The Center for Inquiry has produced a report called For God and Country: Religious Fundamentalism in the U.S. Military. It collects recent stories of breakdowns in the armed forces regarding the church/state wall of separation and makes some seemingly sensible recommendations:

Over the past decade there have been multiple news reports highlighting an intensified tension regarding what constitutes proper religious expression in the United States Armed Forces. However, there has been a scarce amount of thorough research examining the connection between these reports and, going further, proposing possible solutions. As a result, there has been a lack of information with which to stoke social and political will for change.

In this position paper, James Parco provides compelling evidence there has been a disturbing expansion and entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. military, a cultural force which remains at times both tacitly and overtly endorsed by senior military leaders. Parco supports his claim by presenting a number of case studies demonstrating a clear pattern of unconstitutional religiously sectarian behavior. He then analyzes the merits of the competing philosophical perspectives on the proper role of religious expression by men and women in uniform.

Parco concludes the report with recommendations that those in power should implement immediately in order to fully protect the U.S. military’s necessarily secular foundation and the religious freedom of all who volunteer to serve.

I would be shocked — pleased and shocked — if many of these recommendations were actually implemented any time soon. This is a problem that isn’t going away quickly.

(The report’s author, by the way, is a retired Lt. Colonel.)

Posted in Civil Liberties | Comments Off on Military Entanglement With Religion

The Witness Perspective

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Anyone who is, or is thinking of becoming, a prosecutor ought to read Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation for Quinn Norton’s account of what it feels like to be a witness in a prosecution, including in a grand jury proceeding. I doubt that much of it, especially the run up to the grand jury, was an unusual experience, which will make it all the more instructive to participants in the legal system.

I haven’t written about the Aaron Swartz story because I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said well and often elsewhere. What’s publicly available does suggest that prosecutors took a surprisingly tough line with Aaron Swartz (whom I believe I only met once, briefly, but who left a comment here once). This tough approach is consistent with an attitude I think is common to a lot of law enforcement and, sadly, judges, in that they see “hackers” as evil creatures akin to Tim May‘s ‘four horsemen of the Infocalypse‘.

I’m not, by the way, a fan of the ordinary grand jury, which I think has strayed far beyond what it was and should have been, and has become a too-pliant tool of the prosecution. Interestingly, Florida does it better: as well as using local grand juries to hand down first degree murder indictments, statewide grand juries here investigate social problems and come up with frequently sensible reports and recommendations often aimed at spurring legislation or administrative reform.

And it’s more than clear that we need to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, along the lines of the “Aaron’s Law” proposal making the rounds.

All that said, and assuming the most noble of motives on Aaron Swartz’s behalf, it also seems to be the case that breaking into a server closet at MIT and inserting a machine there that availed itself of the data stream isn’t nice and wasn’t legal. There was at least petty crime, and perhaps more depending how one valued the data acquired. What is at issue to me regarding the feds (as opposed to, say, MIT) is not so much the fact of a prosecution but rather the means used to go about it. Then again, I suspect these means were standard operating procedure, which is the real issue.

(Spotted via Cory Doctorow, Inside the prosecution of Aaron Swartz.)

Posted in Law: Criminal Law | 1 Comment

The Mail Is In the Bill

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Scrivener’s Error has a great idea:

One of the major consequences of the forthcoming end of Saturday mail delivery will be a spike in late fees, interest charged, overdraft fees, and so on as consumers’ bills arrive on Monday (or Tuesday, all too often, after a three-day weekend) instead of Saturday… and the same for their payments, which is even worse, because they won’t get into the outgoing mail until Tuesday (or Wednesday), frequently reaching their endpoints on Saturday (or the following week, especially for all of those credit-card payments going to South Dakota). This is going to be a particular problem with mortgage payments by senior citizens, many of whom do not and/or cannot use electronic transfers. This represents a windfall for the finance industry. It’s a preventable windfall. I therefore modestly propose the following:

No late fee, overdraft fee, interest, finance charge, or any other fee based on timeliness of payment may be asserted or charged on any consumer obligation on or for any day on which there is no United States Postal Service delivery of first-class mail, excepting only twelve (12) designated federal holidays each year.

I suspect that the finance industry would fall all over itself to rescue Saturday (and even Sunday) delivery of the mail under such circumstances. It would cost somewhere around one cent per month per customer account across the industry to fully fund the USPS — and the finance industry would get all of that back, and more, in interest (etc.).

I’m for it!

Posted in Econ & Money | Comments Off on The Mail Is In the Bill

Jotwell Needs a Summer Student Edtior

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Michael Froomkin

Copright 'brizzle born and bred' Some rights reserved.Jotwell, the online journal of reviews of recent faculty scholarship relating to the law, needs a Student Summer Editor. The student editor supports faculty editors both at UM and elsewhere, and has a role that is a blend of a substantive editor and a managing editor.

The ideal candidate will be a current University of Miami School of Law 1L or 2L who is organized, a careful editor, and enjoys reading legal scholarship. Grades matter for this job, but a demonstrated ability to write and edit may substitute for grades up to a point. The job would start as soon as you are available after your Spring ’13 final exams and run to mid-August; there would be no problem if you wanted to take one or more vacation periods during that time, as long as none of them was for a long continuous period.

The workload typically runs 30 hours per week, and is paid at the law school’s research assistant scale, which in most cases is $13/hr. Jotwell uses WordPress to publish, but it is easy to learn, so no experience needed.

If you are interested, please email your c.v. (aka “your résumé”) and a copy (unofficial is fine) of your transcript to michael.froomkin@gmail.com. If you have a non-legal writing sample please include that also.

Some preference may be given to applicants who indicate that they also would be willing to continue as a part of the team of Student Editors during the 2013-2014 school year, a job that typically takes 7-10 hours per week.

Posted in Jotwell | Comments Off on Jotwell Needs a Summer Student Edtior