MISSING THE BIG PICTURE: THE SUPREME COURT’S WILLFUL BLINDNESS TO FOURTH AMENDMENT FUNDAMENTALS IN FLORIDA V. WHITE
George M. Dery III
Suppose the United States Supreme Court treated itself to a visit to the National Gallery of Art. One doubts whether the Justices would be able to fully appreciate the artwork. In particular, imagine the members of the Court observing the paintings of Georges Seurat, the Post-Impressionist who created controversy by inventing “Divisionism,” a method sometimes called “Pointillism.” In his paintings, Seurat meticulously juxtaposed “minute touches of unmixed pigments,” relying on the mechanism of sight itself to cause the viewer’s eye to combine the different colors into a whole “when viewed at the proper distance.” Thus, in placing each individual speck of paint on the canvas, Seurat intended that his audience would see the bigger picture. Yet, the current Court might foil Seurat’s best plans. Indeed, it seems that Justice Clarence Thomas would lead a majority of the Court right up to a Seurat painting, such as The Lighthouse at Honfleur, with a magnifying glass, and say, “That one dot is pink!” Apparently, four other Justices, huddled near the painting, would nod in agreement, missing the overall picture of a landscape of the beach.
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CHISHOLM, THE ELEVENTH AMENDMENT, AND SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY: ON ALDEN’S RETURN TO CONFEDERATION PRINCIPLES
Mark Strasser
Over the past several years, the relationship between the federal and state governments has changed, at least in part, because the U.S. Supreme Court has begun to take federalism concerns quite seriously and has treated the Eleventh Amendment as offering much more protection to the states than it ever before had been thought to offer. One of the most interesting facets of the Court’s recent discovery of the breadth and depth of the Eleventh Amendment lies in the explanation offered for that interpretation, which cannot be grounded in its text, original intent, or even good public policy, but nonetheless has gained the allegiance of a majority of the Court.
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PREYING ON THE WEB: TAX COLLECTION IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD
William V. Vetter
The evolution of “The Internet” is engendering debates in a multitude of realms—economic, intellectual, moral, political, legal, tangible, virtual, and others. Many, if not most, of these debates are based on the premise that the Internet is something sui generis, totally new in the universe. As they do with any person, event, or thing, political governments seek to impose their authority on the Internet and persons interacting with and through it.
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ENGLE V. R.J. REYNOLDS: THE IMPROPER ASSESSMENT OF PUNITIVE DAMAGES FOR AN ENTIRE CLASS OF INJURED SMOKERS
Brian H. Barr
For nearly fifty years, a war has been raging in courts throughout this country. The opponents are as follows: the tobacco industry and plaintiffs alleging smoking-related injuries. Until recently, the tobacco industry had won every battle in this ongoing war. In fact, no smoker recovered damages via verdict or settlement against a tobacco company until the 1990s. However, the tide of this great legal battle has shifted.
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CONFUSION IN THE WAKE OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1996: WHAT STANDARD OF REVIEW SHOULD COURTS EMPLOY WHEN EVALUATING INTERCONNECTION AGREEMENTS?
Kimberly L. Sharkey
Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (“the Act”) to “promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.” While the Act covers several aspects of the telecommunications industry, including broadcast services and cable television, one of the most important goals of the Act centers on the local telephone sector. The Act aims to foster local competition by “break[ing] down the local monopol[ies] . . . and . . . encourag[ing] competitors to enter the local telephone market.”
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