Our July guest blogger with be rising 3L Joel Gracyk. Joel hails from Chaska, Minnesota, and is interested in constitutional law and legal writing. He is the incoming Editor in Chief of the Marquette Law Review.
And a belated thank-you for the excellent series of posts from our previous guests, Ric Gass ’70 and 2L Danielle Nardick!
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.
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.”