Professor Felice Batlan comments on protests taking place at O’Hare International Airport on Monday, January 30, 2017, over President Trump’s executive order closing U.S. borders to refugees, immigrants and others from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Yesterday, Professor Carolyn Shapiro spoke on a panel about the upcoming Supreme Court term at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The panel was sponsored by the American Constitution Society. Information about the panelists and a video are available on the ACS website.
Professor Shapiro is co-director of Chicago-Kent’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States (ISCOTUS), and she recently returned to Chicago-Kent full time after two-and-a-half years serving as Illinois Solicitor General.
From February 23-25, the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) held its annual Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., bringing together attorneys general, federal officials, and other professionals to discuss current legal issues. Professor Henry H. Perritt, Jr., spoke at the meeting in a panel on unmanned aircraft systems (“drones”) and the challenges that arise in regulating them. See a video of Prof. Perritt’s presentation above.
In his presentation, Prof. Perritt urged lawmakers to resist the reflex to rush in and regulate drones with excessive restrictions—especially smaller “microdrones,” which pose little threat to safety or privacy but which are integral to the development of the technology. He commended the FAA’s recent notice of proposed rulemaking, which addresses some of the risks drones pose while leaving sufficient room for markets to drive technological innovation. In this proposal, regulations are tailored to reality, encouraging a culture of compliance and law-abiding autonomy appropriate to the technology. Contrary to a common opinion, Perritt argued that the law serves best when it follows technology in this manner, waiting to see how that technology plays out in the real world.
Go behind the scenes and learn about life at Chicago-Kent College of Law with this new video for prospective students. Visit http://www.kentlaw.iit.edu/prospectiv… for more information about legal education at Chicago-Kent.
As many of you may know, Chicago-Kent’s CLE department has presented my two-day Conference on Section 1983 for over thirty years. The next one is scheduled for April 16-17, 2015.
As part of the most recent Conference in April 2014, I spoke in depth about the Second Amendment (Heller, McDonald and circuit case law) and its relation to section 1983.
I am pleased to present the 45 minute podcast of that presentation and hope you find it of interest. It’s a very good way to understand the basics.
On October 15, 2014, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Teva Pharmaceuticals v. Sandoz, a pharmaceutical patent case that could clarify critical issues of claim construction in patent litigation as well as the relative power of trial courts and appellate courts in such matters. Professor David Schwartz discusses the background of the case and the central issue: What is the proper standard of review that the appellate court should use to review claim constructions of a patent done by trial courts?
The event was sponsored by Chicago-Kent chapters of the American Constitution Society, Federalist Society, Christian Legal Society, Muslim Law Students Association and Jewish Law Students Association (Decalogue). Visit Professor Nahmod’s blog for more insights into constitutional law issues.
Earlier today, professor and leading First Amendment scholar Steven Heyman delivered Chicago-Kent’s Constitution Day lecture on “Conservative Libertarianism and the Transformation of First Amendment Jurisprudence.” Professor Christopher Schmidt, director of Chicago-Kent’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States, offered a brief response. The event was presented by the Chicago-Kent student chapter of the American Constitution Society.
View the video of the lecture below:
A more in-depth version of Prof. Heyman’s lecture will be published in a forthcoming West Virginia Law Review article titled “The Conservative-Libertarian Turn in First Amendment Jurisprudence.” See an abstract of the article below, and download from SSRN here.
Conservative constitutional jurisprudence in the United States has an important libertarian dimension. In recent years, a conservative majority of the Supreme Court has strengthened the constitutional protections for property rights, recognized an individual right to own firearms, imposed limits on the welfare state and the powers of the federal government, cut back on affirmative action, and held that closely held corporations have a right to religious liberty that permits them to deny contraceptive coverage to their female employees. This libertarian streak can also be seen in decisions on freedom of speech and association. In several leading cases, conservative judges have used the First Amendment in a libertarian manner to invalidate regulations that reflected liberal or progressive values. For example, these judges have rejected efforts to limit the role of money in election campaigns, struck down restrictions on hate speech and pornography, expanded protection for religious speech within public schools and universities, and held that the right to free association takes precedence over state civil rights laws that bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.
This article, which was presented as the third annual C. Edwin Baker Lecture for Liberty, Equality, and Democracy at the West Virginia University College of Law, explores this trend in First Amendment jurisprudence. After providing an overview of the conservative-libertarian approach to the Constitution, the article describes how this approach has been applied in cases on free speech and association. The article then criticizes this First Amendment approach on several grounds. First, it draws too close a connection between free speech and property rights. In this way, it represents a partial revival of Lochner¬-era jurisprudence – a development that Baker strongly criticized throughout his career. Second, the conservative-libertarian view affords too much protection to speech that injures, abuses, or degrades other people. Third, the judges who hold this view tend to be social conservatives as well as libertarians, and deep problems arise in situations where these two aspects of conservative thought conflict with one another. Fourth, the conservative-libertarian approach fails to satisfy its own demand for ideological neutrality. And finally, by granting the government broad authority to restrict speech within public institutions, that approach tends to deny protection to those individuals who are most vulnerable to state control, including prisoners, public employees, and those who serve in the military.
The root problem is that the conservative-libertarian approach is based on an excessively narrow and one-sided conception of the self – a view that stresses the ways in which we are separate and independent individuals, but that fails to fully recognize that we are also social beings who find an important part of our identity and value in social relationships and participation in community. We need to develop an approach to the First Amendment that is based on a broader and richer conception of the self, the society, and the nature of constitutional liberty. The article concludes by outlining such an approach, which it calls a liberal humanist theory of the First Amendment. On this view, the law should be allowed to impose reasonable restrictions on hate speech and pornography, as well as on the ability of wealthy individuals and corporations to influence elections. Freedom of association should not necessarily permit groups to exclude individuals on invidious grounds such as sexual orientation. The Justices have been right, however, to hold that public educational institutions generally must accord equal treatment to religious speakers.
Today IIT Chicago-Kent hosts the Supreme Court IP Review (SCIPR), a conference designed to provide intellectual property practitioners, jurists, legal academics and law students with a review of IP cases from the U.S. Supreme Court’s previous Term, a preview of cases on the docket for the upcoming Term, and a discussion of cert. petitions to watch. Click here to watch a video of Professors Ed Lee and David Schwartz recapping the oral arguments in 10 IP cases from the October 2013 Term, which will be highlighted at the conference.
Compliance is so much more than numbers. Learn how to keep the markets clean, track insider trading, and much more with the Institute for Compliance in Financial Markets at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Students, alumni, and professors discuss what our Institute for Compliance offers and the opportunities offered by a career in compliance.
The Institute for Compliance in Financial Markets promotes careers in financial compliance, trains and prepares students for such careers, increases knowledge of the importance of compliance, and provides various events for the Chicago-based compliance and legal community. It is the first institute of its kind located in a law school.