Spring and Fall

As Professor Mazzie noted below, April is National Poetry Month. (How have you been celebrating?) I thought I would take the occasion to post one of my favorites, from a poet who is not that well known any more: Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins wrote poems in a peculiar style; among other things, the stress marks in the lines below are intended to indicate emphasis — I think the poem works better if you follow them.

Spring and Fall

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

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Can a Prospective Employer Request Facebook Login Information?

I’ve been remiss in posting on the recent stories about potential employers requesting social networking login information in job interviews, but I see that noted cybercrime expert Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, was on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, and his comments in the first few minutes of this recording basically sum up what I had to say on this issue: it’s unclear, but such activity may be prohibited by federal law. I just have one additional point to add: although the specific policy result here may seem obvious, the larger question of when use of a dodgily-obtained password violates unauthorized access statutes is actually a much more difficult one.

The civil case Orin refers to in the recording is Pietrylo v. Hillstone Restaurant Group, No. 06-5754 (FSH), 2009 WL 3128420, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88702 (D.N.J. Sept. 25, 2009). In Pietrylo, the District of New Jersey upheld a jury verdict against the defendant employer under the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2701, which prohibits any person from “intentionally access[ing] without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided . . . and thereby obtain[ing], alter[ing], or prevent[ing] authorized access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.” Pietrylo and other employees participated in a private chat group on MySpace in which they were critical of Hillstone management. One of the managers requested that one of the participants give him her password, which she did, on the reasonable supposition that she “felt that [she] probably would have gotten in trouble” if she refused.

Continue ReadingCan a Prospective Employer Request Facebook Login Information?

Humor and the Law, Part Two

In honor of April Fools’ Day, the editors of the blog asked the faculty of the Law School to share their favorite examples of legal humor. Every day we will share a different faculty member’s submission.  Today’s submission is from Professor Bruce Boyden.

 

A new lawyer is trying his first criminal case, representing a man accused of biting another man’s ear off in a bar fight.  Eager to show off his trial skills, he begins to cross-examine the prosecution’s first witness: the bartender on the night of the fight.

Q. You were tending bar that night, isn’t that correct?

A. Yes I was.

Q. And the bar was quite crowded that night, wasn’t it?

A. Yes.

Q. There were quite a lot of people standing in front of the bar, ordering drinks, isn’t that right?

A. Yes, that’s right.

Q. And the defendant was standing 10 to 20 feet away from the bar when the fight started, correct?

A. Yes he was.

Q. So there were several people between you and him?

A. Yes, there were.

Q. And you were quite busy serving drinks to those people, weren’t you?

A. Yes I was.

Q. So that you weren’t looking at the defendant when the fight started, were you?

A. No I wasn’t.

Q. And in fact, you couldn’t see the defendant when the fight started, could you?

A. No, I don’t think I could.

Q. Therefore, isn’t it true that you did not actually see the defendant bite the ear of the other man?

A. Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t see him bite the ear off.

Proud of his cross-examining prowess, the young lawyer smiled at the jury and asked one more question.

Q. So why did you testify that the defendant bit the man’s ear off?

A. Because I saw him spit it out a second later.

 

 

Continue ReadingHumor and the Law, Part Two
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