Aug 1, 2009 | Notes, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
President Lyndon Johnson secured the public’s right to know the inner workings of government by signing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law in 1966. Congress did not believe that the right to this information was absolute and carved out exemptions in the...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film The articles collected in this Symposium Issue on “Legal Outsiders in American Film” are examples of a turn in legal scholarship toward the analysis of culture. The cultural turn in law takes as a premise that law and culture...
Aug 1, 2009 | Notes, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
The Massachusetts Legislature specifically enacted the anti-wiretapping statute to protect private citizens from secret recordings. Massachusetts’s ban on undisclosed electronic surveillance is significantly more rigid than its federal counterpart. Like the federal...
Aug 1, 2009 | Case Comments, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
The prosecution usually must prove a criminal defendant had the necessary mens rea, or culpable mental state, generally defined by the legislature in criminal statutes, to convict him or her of a crime. Title 18, section 1028A(a)(1) of the United States Code, the...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film When we think of “outsiders” in the context of law, those who often come to mind are members of disenfranchised minorities, such as the mentally challenged. But in many of Hollywood’s lawyer films, the paradigmatic and...
Aug 1, 2009 | Lead Articles, Number 4, Print Edition, Volume 42
Symposium—Legal Outsiders in American Film The concept of justice is a dominant theme in traditional Western liberal culture. Indeed, the ideal of justice has taken on an almost mythic quality in our political and social culture. Interestingly, however, the...