Cornell Law Review

Cornell Law Review is proud to announce Vol. 106, Issue 2. Thank you to our amazing authors for their outstanding collaboration and patience with us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Please see below for a complete list of Vol. 106, Issue 2 authors and their scholarship.

ARTICLES

The Evidence Rules That Convict the Innocent

Jeffrey Bellin, Professor, William & Mary Law School

This Article explores the lessons of the Innocence Movement for American evidence law. It argues that the discovery and ongoing chronicle of hundreds of false convictions present a unique opportunity to reevaluate American evidence law. This reevaluation could lead to innocence-protective changes to existing evidence rules and a welcome infusion of energy into evidence policymaking and commentary.

Inescapable Surveillance

Matthew Tokson, Professor of Law, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law

This Article offers the first systematic analysis of inescapability in Fourth Amendment law. It challenges the prevailing wisdom that inescapability is a desirable or workable basis for Fourth Amendment protection. Inescapability does not provide a conceptually coherent standard for courts to apply. It incentivizes consumers to forego beneficial technologies, creating substantial social harms. It fails to adequately protect the most sensitive forms of personal information. It creates doctrinal confusion and ignores established precedents that contradict the inescapability model. Moreover, inescapability analysis elides individual differences—technologies that are avoidable for most people may be unavoidable for others, including the disabled, the poor, and other disadvantaged populations.

Population-Based Sentencing

Jessica M. Eaglin, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University Maurer School of Law

This Article addresses the institutionalization of actuarial risk assessments at sentencing by identifying the tension between how courts are responding to actuarial risk assessments at sentencing, and how advocates of the trend want courts to respond to the tools. It also identifies a yet underexplored interest convergence between courts and RAIs’ opponents illuminated by the jurisprudence and worthy of further
exploration going forward.

NOTES

Second-Class Citizens Under the Second Amendment: The Case for Applying Strict Scrutiny to Lifetime Firearm Bans for Individuals Previously Committed to Mental Institutions

Lauren Devendorf, B.A., Duke University, 2015; J.D., Cornell Law School, 2020; Publishing Editor, Cornell Law Review, Vol. 105.

This Note seeks to critique the conflicting approaches that the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits have taken when analyzing what Second Amendment rights, if any, individuals are entitled to after a mental institution involuntarily commits them. Additionally, this Note offers a novel solution. To do so, it explores “not the what, where, when, or why of the Second Amendment’s limitations—but the who.” Tyler v. Hillsdale Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t (Tyler I), 775 F.3d 308, 322 (6th Cir. 2014), vacated, 837 F.3d 678 (2016).

Compelling Code: A First Amendment Argument Against Requiring Political Neutrality in Online Content Moderation

Lily A. Coad, B.A., Duke University, 2018; J.D., Cornell Law School, 2021; Publishing Editor, Cornell Law Review, Vol. 106.

In 2019, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a bill that exemplifies conservatives’ criticisms of big tech and Section 230. The Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act seeks to eradicate the alleged “anti‑conservative bias” on social media platforms by requiring large tech companies to maintain politically neutral content moderation algorithms and practices. This Note argues that requiring tech companies to maintain politically neutral content moderation algorithms is a form of compelled speech and is therefore presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Further, it argues that Senator Hawley’s bill cannot survive the applicable standard of strict scrutiny because eliminating alleged political bias by social media companies is not a compelling government interest, and, even if it were, the bill is not narrowly tailored to serving that interest.