Favorite Wisconsin Cases to Teach: State v. Stewart

Kodanko waits alone for the bus in a three-sided plexiglass bus shelter in downtown Milwaukee.  Three men approach.  Stewart and Moore enter the bus shelter, while their companion, Levy, remains outside.  They block Kodanko’s exit from the shelter.  Stewart says to Kodanko, “Give us some change, man.”  When Kodanko refuses, Stewart repeats his request three or four time in an increasingly loud voice.  Stewart then begins to reach into his coat.  Moore says, “Put that gun away.”  At the same time, Levy enters the shelter and tells his companions, “Let’s go.”  The three of them enter a restaurant across the street.  Moore returns a few minutes later to make small talk with Kodanko.  In due course, the police arrest Stewart for attempted robbery.  But was it really a robbery attempt, or just aggressive panhandling?

This is the subject of State v. Stewart, 420 N.W.2d 44 (Wis. 1988), which I teach in my Criminal Law course.  The case resonates with me on several different levels.

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Is Congress About to Require Home Users to Keep Wi-Fi Logs?

According to this breathless story on CNET, sinister congressional forces are afoot attempting to impose a record-keeping requirement on home networks. But as I warn my Internet Law students every year, you just can’t rely on CNET posts on legislative developments, particularly the more sensational the headline. And that turns out to be true here as well. I doubt anyone in Congress actually intends to require home network users to maintain visitor logs. If that unexpected result does come about, it’s because Congress and the courts are miscommunicating. There’s a deeper problem with the relevant statutory language here, but it’s one that’s been around for a while.

Here’s the situation: wrongdoing on the Internet is often difficult to track down, because often the only reliable traces a malfeaser leaves behind is their computer’s IP address. It’s a bit like having someone’s phone number show up on caller ID. But unlike phone numbers, IP addresses often change. If the phone company didn’t keep any track of who had what phone numbers, the police or victims of harassment wouldn’t have any way of using the number to track the perpetrator down. It’s the same with IP addresses. Usually internet access providers keep track of who they assign IP addresses to, but there’s no requirement that they do so. There’s also no requirement that they keep such information for any particular length of time—it’s purely up to them, and storing data costs money, so ISPs purge their logs on a regular basis. So suppose a kidnapper logs into Gmail and sends an email with a ransom demand to the victim’s family. If Google chooses not to keep any access logs, there may be no way for the police to track the kidnapper down, even if the kidnapper took no steps to cover his or her tracks.

Enter the Internet SAFETY Act, yet another in the long line of recent Congressional bills with cutesy acronyms.

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McCormick on the Persistence of Ex Parte Young

The faculty at Marquette Law School welcomed Professor Marcia McCormick of the Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law to a faculty workshop this past Tuesday.  Professor McCormick, who focuses on the law of federal courts and employment discrimination, among other areas, discussed her new paper on the persistence of the case of Ex Parte Young in the face of the Federalism Revolution of the last two decades or so.

In her presentation, Professor McCormcick described the large number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the last twenty-five years that have touched on the relationship between the federal government and the states. In this time, the Court seems to have substantially limited the power of the federal government and expanded that of the states, as many Commerce Clause, Tenth Amendment, and Eleventh Amendment cases suggest.

She also maintained that despite what were seen by many to be revolutionary shifts, two doctrines that provide great power to the federal government seem to have survived so far with little or no change: Congress’ power under the Spending Clause to require states to engage in or refrain from engaging in certain conduct; and the federal courts’ power under Ex Parte Young to hear suits by private parties to force state officials to follow federal law, including laws created under the Spending Clause. The combination of these two doctrines provides for quite a bit of federal power, she argued, and it is the extent of that power which makes the continued survival of the doctrines so surprising.

Professor McCormick then explored the extent of power the federal courts and Congress can exercise over the states through the use of those combined doctrines and suggested some reasons the Court has not removed that power.  In this vein, she argued that it was likely that the Court sees this limited federal power as a necessary check on the states to ensure the supremacy of federal law, to maximize the efficient use of both federal and state power, and to maximize accountability and the rule of law for both the states and federal government.

A lively question and answer session followed Professor McCormick’s talk.   I have it on good authority that Professor McCormick’s favorite culinary adventure involved Kopp’s Custard in Greenfield.

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