2014 – Page 36 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

The Supreme Court Considers Google Street View

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:June 30, 2014
Post category:Computer Law Privacy Rights Public

Google Street View Car All of the interest in the Supreme Court tomorrow is likely to be focused on Hobby Lobby and, to a lesser extent, Harris v. Quinn. But I’ll be watching something that happens before either of those decisions is announced. I’ll be looking to see if the Supreme Court granted cert in the StreetView case. I hope the answer is no.

The StreetView case — Google v. Joffe — is one that I’ve blogged extensively about over the past year. See Part I, Part II; see also my coverage of the Ninth Circuit opinion, Google’s petition for rehearing, and the filing of Google’s cert. petition.) Briefly, Google’s StreetView cars intercepted the contents of transmissions from residential wi-fi routers whose owners had not turned on encryption. A number of class actions have been filed claiming that the interceptions were violations of the federal Wiretap Act. Google moved to dismiss them, arguing that radio communications (like wi-fi) basically have to be encrypted to be protected by the Wiretap Act. The district court and the Ninth Circuit disagreed, holding that the exception Google points to applies only to traditional AM/FM radio broadcasts.

Although I disagree with the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning and would find it professionally advantageous if the Supreme Court decided to take the case, I hope it denies cert. Here’s why.

US Supreme Court Review: Crime and Causation

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 27, 2014
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Judges & Judicial Process Public U.S. Supreme Court

(This is the first post in our series, Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term. Other posts, when they appear, can be found here.) The Court’s criminal docket this term included two interesting causation cases that came to somewhat different conclusions. The cases were Burrage v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 881, which dealt with criminal responsibility for a drug-related death, and Paroline v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1710, which dealt with restitution for a child pornography victim. In both cases, the Court had to grapple with tensions between traditional, narrow understandings of causal responsibility in the law and a natural human desire to hold bad actors accountable for tragic harms with which they seem to have some connection, even if that connection is a tenuous or uncertain one.

Burrage nicely illustrates the tension.

Series: Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:June 27, 2014
Post category:Public U.S. Supreme Court

I’m excited to announce a new summer series here at the Marquette Law Faculty Blog, one in which members of our faculty will be analyzing some of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions in their areas from the term that just concluded. Our first post is from Michael O’Hear on Burrage v. United States and Paroline v. United States, two important criminal law cases decided in January and April 2014, respectively. Posts in the series will have titles starting with “US Supreme Court Review.”