Author Archives: Colin Starger

Perhaps good ideas replicate themselves. Just a few days after this site suggested that the campaign to hack the Eighth Amendment was given a lift by Justice Kennedy’s recent testimony before the House, the New York Times editorial board published a great … Continue reading →

Last week, I taught the Flag Desecration Cases in my First Amendment class. It’s an interesting closed citation network since it contains only five cases. (Of course, the First Amendment doctrine implicated by these cases extends widely, but there are … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago, Slate published an excellent interview with Berkeley law professor Jonathan Simon, author of Mass Incarceration on Trial. In the interview, Simon characterizes the fight against mass incarceration as a moral imperative and suggests that lawsuits have a role … Continue reading →

Earlier this week, I looked at the challenges of editing a Supreme Court citation network through the lens of the First Amendment line of cases pertaining to commercial speech. Today I want to fill in the doctrinal picture just a little and highlight a different … Continue reading →

This semester I’m teaching First Amendment law for the very first time and it’s proving to be a wonderful experience. First Amendment cases have great stories behind them and the Supreme Court’s doctrine is complex and highly contested. To navigate … Continue reading →

Hacking complex systems can improve them. White-hat hackers can open up needlessly closed systems, knock down senseless limitations, and then make connections and create solutions that improve that system for everyone. So here’s a thought: our system of mass incarceration … Continue reading →

Last week, the Baltimore Sun published an editorial I wrote linking the phenomenon of exonerations to the problem of mass incarceration. Our justice system is overwhelmed by sheer volume, I argued, making wrongful convictions inevitable. I concluded by suggesting that we … Continue reading →

Over the weekend, law student and PhD candidate Ryan Whalen posted a fascinating map of the Law Prof Twitter Network. Ryan created the map by crunching data compiled by Prof. Bridget Crawford over at the Faculty Lounge. The image is massive, striking … Continue reading →

This week I’ve been mapping out the Supreme Court’s “clear and present danger” doctrine. Post #1 visualized the 50 years from Schenck (1919) to Brandenburg (1969) according to the narrative in Sullivan & Feldman’s leading Con Law textbook. Post #2 examined an apparent gap … Continue reading →

This is the second installment in a series charting out the Supreme Court’s famous “clear and present danger” line of decisions. In my first post, I proposed a map of this doctrine hyperlinked to the cases analyzed in Sullivan & Feldman, First Amendment (4th Edition). The … Continue reading →