Dean Howard Eisenberg–Appellate Litigator

Howard Eisenberg, dean of Marquette law school from 1995 until his untimely death at age 55 in 2002, was renowned as an appellate litigator. After his death, the American Academy of Appellate Litigators created the Howard Eisenberg Award in his honor to be given annually to the best article on appellate practice and procedure published in a journal. (One of the winners of this award is our own Prof. Oldfather.)

Howard’s talents evidenced themselves early in his career, beginning with a highly successful performance in Moot Court at the University of Wisconsin Law School. The picture below recently resurfaced on the Internet and shows Howard’s championship moot court team from 1970. Howard is the individual on the far right of the photo.

A fuller description of Dean Eisenberg’s career can be found here.

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Why Google’s Wi-Spy Argument Is Stronger Than It First Appears

Google Street View Car(This is Part 2 of 4 posts on the issue of whether the Wiretap Act bars interception of unencrypted wi-fi signals. See Part I.)

When we last tuned in I was explaining the arguments in the Google “Wi-Spy” case, involving Google’s Street View vehicles’ interception of home wireless network transmissions. Google argues that unencrypted wireless network transmissions are not protected by the Wiretap Act. Forget to set your wi-fi password? Then all of your network communications are free for the taking by your neighbor, local hacker, or multi-national conglomerate driving down the street. Sure, that sounds counter-intuitive, Google might admit, but the Wiretap Act is a counter-intuitive statute (they’ve got that part right, at least).

The plaintiffs argue that Google is simply engaged in lawyer games, willfully contorting the statute in order to save its bacon. There’s a provision in the Wiretap Act that (roughly speaking) defines unencrypted communications to be publicly accessible, but it only applies to radio communications. And, the plaintiffs argue, “radio communications . . . readily accessible to the general public” is only used in one place in the statute, a provision that talks only about “governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communications system[s].” Home wireless routers clearly aren’t any of those. The exception that Google needs refers to “electronic communication[s] . . . readily accessible to the general public.” There’s no definition for that use of “readily accessible,” however, so the ordinary English reading will have to suffice.

The district court didn’t take quite the same tack as the plaintiffs.

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A Response to the Bolton & Yoo Op-ed on the Arms Trade Treaty

A few months ago John Bolton and John Yoo published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the Obama Administration for promoting U.S. ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty, which the UN General Assembly adopted in April. The op-ed argues that the ATT would enable the Administration to circumvent Congress and require new domestic limits on small arms in violation of the Second and Tenth Amendments. I just read the piece and was surprised at how unpersuasive I found it to be, so I decided to write a quick response. I have already explained why the Second Amendment argument isn’t particularly compelling, but a few additional points deserve emphasis:

First, in arguing that Articles 5 and 10 of the treaty would require the United states to adopt new restrictions, Bolton and Yoo overlook existing federal law. They acknowledge that the United States “already has the world’s most serious export controls in place.” What they fail to mention is that current laws also impose permit and registration requirements on arms importers, bar some imports based on country of origin, mandate broker registration, and even authorize criminal penalties against violators. I see nothing in Articles 5 and 10, or in the op-ed, indicating that these laws would be insufficient. That being the case, it’s at least questionable that the United States would have to adopt new import restrictions after ratification. While some might perceive the sufficiency of existing U.S. law as an argument against ratification, that view ignores the positive diplomatic implications of U.S. participation—an arms treaty backed by the world’s largest arms exporter would enjoy much greater legitimacy.

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