Online Journal — Columbia Undergraduate Law Review

Media and the Right to a Fair Trial: Juror Impartiality in the Information Age

A 2021 study by Pew Research Center found that nearly 90% of Americans use the internet, social media, or smartphones regularly to access the news. [1] The proliferation of online information is particularly influential in high publicity cases—cases that involve terrorism or violent crime, garnering high levels of national media attention—in which juries may be skewed by the media they consume. In United States v. Tsarnaev (2021), the case of the Boston Marathon bomber currently on appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court, the risks of media bias are especially clear. In Tsarnaev’s case and similarly high publicity cases, trial judges ought to exercise more rigorous voir dire questioning on media consumption in order to protect defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to a “trial by an impartial jury.”

The FBI’s Searches of Black Lives Matter Activists: A Budding Fourth Amendment Issue

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many activists initiated protests of all forms to voice their discontent with the American government. Social media emerged as one prominent medium for activists to advertise their beliefs and organize protests—predominantly under the umbrella of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. However, law enforcement, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has utilized the very social media platforms that BLM activists make use of in an effort to connect them to terrorist activity.

Raymond SterlingJanuary 19, 2022media, Fourth Amendment, Black Lives Matter, activism, privacy

The Unconstitutionality of Real ID Legislation and Its Effects on Undocumented Immigrants in the U.S.

On September 11, 2001, the United States experienced the deadliest terrorr attack in its history. In turn, the events of 9/11 have had a lasting legacy on American immigration policies, leading to the creation of the erDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS), which is in charge of Customs and Border Protection, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). [1] Moreover, in 2005, Real ID legislation was introduced at the federal level as a post-9/11 policy to aid in combating future terrorist attacks. This legislation was passed as a way to standardize drivers’ licenses throughout the U.S. by setting minimum guidelines individual states would need to follow to grant identification and driving permits, including requiring the verification of legal status for every applicant. [2]

Poland’s Memory Wars: The Legal Governance of History

In January 2018, the Polish parliament adopted the 2018 Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, which criminalized public speech claiming that the Polish state was responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich. [1] The controversial act details that such claims “grossly diminish the responsibility of the true perpetrators of said crimes” and render individuals liable to a fine or three-year prison sentence. [2] Although the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance was established in 1998 to prevent Holocaust denialism, an undeniably positive aspiration, the 2018 amendment has resulted in the Act becoming a coercive mechanism for distorting and censoring national history. [3] On February 8, 2021, two Polish historians, Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking, were convicted of violating Article 55a of the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance (2018) in their novel Dalej jest noc [Night without End] for having accused Edward Malinowski, the mayor of the Polish village Malinowo during the Second World War, of abetting the Nazis. [4] Though the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance sought to protect Holocaust remembrance and demystify Poland’s ambiguous role under the Third Reich, the proceedings of the subsequent case—Leszczyńska v. Engelking and Grabowski (2021)—reveal the inherent threat memory laws pose to historical scholarship.

Stephanie ChanJanuary 19, 2022Poland, memory laws, holocaust, history, war crimes

SEC v. Ripple: The Regulation of Cryptocurrencies as Securities

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple—a current case regarding the legal status of cryptocurrency—could be taken to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (if not the Supreme Court) and set a precedent for the amount of jurisdiction that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) holds over future cryptocurrency transactions. [1] Because this case could designate a new legal “guardian” for cryptocurrency, it has generated significant interest within the cryptocurrency community. [2] However, an evaluation of cryptocurrency against the standards established in the 1946 Supreme Court case Securities and Exchange Commission v. W. J. Howey Co. points to an ambiguous legal future for cryptocurrency. XRP, the cryptocurrency at issue in Ripple, appears more likely to satisfy the Howey test due to the centrality in its distribution and its exhibition of vertical and horizontal commonality. Thus, despite the furor regarding this case, the final decision in Ripple may not constitute a conclusive legal determination for all cryptocurrencies.

Skylar WuJanuary 19, 2022cryptocurrency, Ripple, securities regulation, Defi

Rectifying Bad Precedence: A Re-Examination of Strickland v Washington (1984) in New York State Courts

Gideon v Wainwright (1963) is a landmark Supreme Court case that incorporated the Sixth Amendment through the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring states to provide public defenders to criminal defendants that cannot afford counsel. [1] However, since the Supreme Court’s ruling, it has been commonly observed that defendants receive less than effective representation from counsel, as public defenders are often stretched too thin and forced to grapple with enormous case loads, back-to-back trials, and abysmal funding by the state. Attempting to rectify this, the Supreme Court defined “effective assistance of counsel” in Strickland v Washington (1984), with the majority opinion adopting a loose set of requirements public defenders should meet. [2] This, however, has spawned its own issues. As Justice Marshall’s dissenting opinion predicted, the Court’s attempt to define counsel ironically exacerbated the issue by allowing courts to determine that lawyers have met the criteria of effective counsel without actually having provided it. Therefore, revisiting Strickland reveals that the Strickland test has done more harm than good, the dissenting opinion should have been considered more seriously, and the Supreme Court has a responsibility to rectify the injustices it has caused through this decision.

Jake PetrilloJanuary 19, 2022civil rights, precedence, justice system, sixth amendment, right to counsel

The Andy Warhol of Cryptocurrency: Legal Pursuit of Non-Fungible Tokens

The works of Andy Warhol are known for their popular element and pragmatic flair. Not unlike blockchain technology, the repetitive faces of Marilyn Monroe are an appealing democratization of society’s likenesses. Indeed, both pose questions about cultural and individual copyright, and whether popularity excuses infringements on ownership. Cryptocurrency has given birth to a new form of technology responsible for enormous growth in the art trade and an accompanying slew of legal discrepancies. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are a revolutionary kind of digital ledger that allows creators of art and music to tokenize unique online assets of their work. [1] Yet they come almost as an anachronism to a legal environment not entirely prepared to regulate them. [2]

Henry WagerJanuary 19, 2022NFTs, art, intellectual property law, copyright law

Hostile Architecture meets COVID-19: Why Anti-Homelessness Laws Must be Re-evaluated

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Martin v. Boise (2018), which asserted that “an ordinance violates the Eighth Amendment insofar as it imposes criminal sanctions against homeless individuals for sleeping outdoors, on public property, when no alternative shelter is available to them.” [1] The Supreme Court’s refusal renders the Martin decision final, setting a national precedent for the civil rights of those experiencing homelessness. However, the increased presence of hostile, or anti-homelessness, architecture in urban areas still inhibits the homeless individuals’ access to public spaces, essentially placing criminal sanctions on one’s status of homelessness. The COVID-19 pandemic increases the vulnerability of the homeless population by increasing financial instability and limiting shelter capacity. The Martin v. Boise decision does not explicitly protect those experiencing homelessness from anti-homeless architecture; however, its basis on the Eighth Amendment’s protection from cruel and unusual punishment suggests that hostile architecture similarly violates the Eighth Amendment rights of those experiencing homelessness. Hostile architecture must be explicitly challenged in courts to protect the rights of those experiencing homelessness during this particularly exigent time.

Munirat SuleimanJanuary 18, 2022hostile architecture, homelessness, eighth amendment, COVID-19

The Clean Air Act and Space Tourism: A Case Study in the Ambiguous Standards for Resolving Statutory Conflict

With the acceleration of man-made global warming, environmental regulatory frameworks have come under severe scrutiny for not tackling climate issues with enough urgency. The advent of space tourism presents even greater challenges, since environmental regulations must now encompass innovations they were never intended to govern. At the center of this ambiguity is the Clean Air Act (CAA), the landmark 1970 law responsible for regulating U.S. atmospheric pollutants. The CAA laid the groundwork for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish air quality standards for a variety of pollutants, including particles whose environmental implications were discovered after the law’s passage. Notably, the CAA does not explicitly regulate any emissions sources, but rather establishes different standards based on the classification of the emission source as either stationary or mobile. [1] However, the growing space tourism industry raises new concerns about the CAA’s regulatory prowess, because space rockets exhibit characteristics of both mobile sources (lower emissions standards) and stationary sources (higher emissions standards). Yet, the CAA does not include a resolution for potential mobile-stationary source classification overlap. [2] Given that technology moguls such as Richard Branson intend to expand space tourism thirty-fold in the next decade, space tourism has the potential to become one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the near future. Hence, the classification of rockets as mobile or stationary is incredibly consequential. [3]