FedSoc Forums

The case of Van Buren v. United States will have oral arguments before the Supreme Court on November 30, 2020. At issue is whether a person who is authorized to access information on a computer for certain purposes violates Section 1030(a)(2) of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act if he accesses the same information for an improper purpose. Prof. Orin Kerr joins us to discuss the case, the oral argum...

On November 30, 2020 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. New York. The case has garnered widespread media attention and arose over the attempt by the Trump administration to exclude noncitizens from the population numbers for the purposes of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court will decide whether New York and the twenty states that filed suit agains...

The post-modern social science framework of “critical race theory” is well-known in certain academic circles and trending in corporate settings. CRT-inspired concepts and terminology-- such as “white privilege,” “intersectionality,” “implicit bias,” “microaggressions,” and “systemic racism”—are increasingly used in ethni...

In NFIB v. Sibelius, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by branding the penalty for not buying health insurance as a tax. In 2017 however, the Republican-controlled Congress under the newly elected President Trump enacted an amendment to the ACA that set the penalty for not buying health insurance to zero, leaving the rest of t...

The National Labor Relations Board has been busy, with new standards about offensive workplace conduct, labor contract management rights clauses, discipline issues, arbitration, and independent contractors, among other things. And the NLRB has proposed and adopted more regulations – addressing joint employer status, representation election procedures, election disclosures, college student assistan...

We are pleased to present the annual Mike Lewis Memorial teleforum. Professor Lewis was a naval aviator, internationally renowned law professor, and tireless public advocate for a principled and wise application of the Law of Armed Conflict, consistent with both the values and interests of the United States. He was a great friend of the Federalist Society, speaking at dozens of events and serving...

In his new book The Property Species, Chapman University law professor Bart Wilson offers a strikingly original look at the origin and meaning of private property. Unlike scholars who argue that property is a “social construct,” Wilson argues that property is a deeply and uniquely human practice. Incorporating insights from history, linguistics, law, and his own laboratory experiments, Wilson illu...

This teleforum reviews the November 4 oral argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In March 2018, Philadelphia’s Department of Health and Human Services stopped placing foster children with families certified and supported by Catholic Social Services because the agency, as an arm of the Catholic Church, has a sincere religious objection to endorsing same-sex or unmarried heterosexual rel...

As a convicted felon, Charles Borden Jr. was in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) when caught at a traffic stop with a pistol. Under the Armed Career Criminal Act, Borden was sentenced to nine years and seven months imprisonment. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee relied on the 6th Circuit Court's decision in United States v. Verwiebe as precedent; however, Borden...

When it enacted the FTCA, Congress waived sovereign immunity and accepted vicarious liability for certain torts committed by federal employees. The judgment bar provision of the FTCA provides that the judgment in an FTCA action “shall constitute a complete bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise...

When it comes to juvenile convictions and sentencing, some gray areas may be encountered. Brett Jones found himself a product of this uncertainty in his post-conviction relief proceeding. At the age of 15 Jones stabbed his grandfather to death and was sentenced to life in prison; however, at this hearing the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered he be resentenced after a hearing to determine his parol...

Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must approve clean water intakes, used by factories to cool machinery, before any are built. The EPA is required to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service to conduct a study of the new intake on marine life. The Sierra Club made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records made...

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) makes it a crime (and a tort) to access “without authorization” a computer to obtain information from that computer. But is the CFAA limited to cases in which an outsider hacks into a system or database to gain information, or does it also cover cases where a person who has permission to be on the system uses that permission for manifestly improp...

Iran is in significant non-performance of its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Yet, the United Nations Security Council and America’s European allies have failed to “snapback” sanctions on Iran as agreed in the JCPOA. Join us for a conversation between Brian Hook, former Special Representative for Iran, and Dr. Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law at George Mason Univer...

Join us as Beth Williams, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice, discusses the priorities and work of her office during COVID-19 and 2020. Featuring: -- Hon. Beth A. Williams, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, United States Department of Justice

Can Catholic judges, consistently with their faith, participate in death penalty cases? Faithful Catholics who have considered the question in recent decades have reached different conclusions. In 1998, Judge Amy Barrett, then a law clerk on the D.C. Circuit, co-authored an article concluding that it is immoral under Church teaching to directly participate in executions in a modern society with a...

The Department of Defense (DoD) recently issued a Request for Information about the possibility of constructing a new national 5G network on 450 MHz of mid-band spectrum presently assigned to the Department. Access to this spectrum by commercial wireless services could be granted when it is not needed for national security requirements through a dynamic spectrum-sharing arrangement. Many members o...

This week, the United States Department of Justice launched its rumored antitrust law suit against Google. The government's complaint brief alleges that Google has a monopoly in search and search advertising, and has unlawfully maintained that monopoly. Among the many complaints, the government points specifically to the billion dollar payments google pays to Apple, in exchange for Apple carrying...

Join Dean Mazzone and Matt Cavedon for a discussion of major criminal cases at the U.S. Supreme Court from both last year and the current term. Discussion will cover areas of law ranging from the death penalty and searches and seizures to sentencing guidelines and computer crimes. Featuring: Dean A. Mazzone, Senior Trial Counsel, Massachusetts Attorney General Matthew Cavedon, Assistant Public Def...

Join us as John Malcolm and John Yoo discuss recent Supreme Court news, the 25th amendment, what happens if the Electoral College deadlocks (or fails), as well as the latest on the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Featuring: John G. Malcolm, Vice President, Institute for Constitutional Government, Director of the Meese Center for Legal & Judicial Studies and Senior Legal Fell...

Article II and the 12th Amendment require those seeking the office of President and Vice-President be a natural-born citizen. The 14th Amendment provides that "all persons born...in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens." But what does it mean to be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof?" These two texts have been the subject of controversy throughout the past dec...

In 2014, Roxanne Torres pleaded guilty to three crimes: aggravated fleeing from a law enforcement officer, assault on a police officer, and unlawfully taking a motor vehicle. All of these crimes occurred while Ms. Torres was under the influence of methamphetamine. Ms. Torres was stopped by two police officers only after one shot and wounded her. In October of 2016, she filed a civil rights complai...

Consolidated with United States v. Collins, United States v. Briggs challenges the idea that a rape charge may only be prosecuted if it is discovered within five years of the crime. Michael Briggs was found guilty of rape in 2014; however, Briggs claimed that the statute of limitations had expired, as the crime happened in 2005. Briggs was convicted by the U.S. Air Force Criminal Court and, after...

Liability in motor vehicle accidents is frequently an issue necessitating litigation, but not typically at the level of the Supreme Court. In this case, though, two incidents rose all the way to our highest court. In a Minnesota accident, a passenger driving a Ford vehicle suffered severe brain injury when the passenger-side airbags failed to deploy during an accident. Ford found itself in another...

There was surprising momentum on the issue of insider trading reform at the start of 2020. On December 9, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Insider Trading Prohibition Act with wide bi-partisan support. In January 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission sponsored Bharara Task Force on Insider Trading released a report containing proposed legislation. Both the House bill and t...