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A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up 'locational privacy.'
Corporations have enormous treasuries, and there are a lot of things they want from government, many of which clash with the public interest.
Liberal judges tend to be expansive about things like equal protection, while conservatives read more into ones like 'the right to bear arms.'
Age discrimination is illegal. But when compared with discrimination against racial minorities and women, it is a second-class civil rights issue.
There is no need for neighborhood informants and paper dossiers if the government can see citizens' every Web site visit, e-mail and text message.
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets have a great deal of information about all of us - and the government wants to be able to see it.
It is hard to imagine an area in which Congress has more express constitutional authority to act than in protecting the right of minorities to vote.
If a company knows it may have to pay a large amount of money if it poses an unreasonable threat to others, it will have a strong incentive to act better.
It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.
People's genes can say a great deal about their health. There are genes that reveal an increased likelihood of getting cancer, heart disease or Alzheimer's.
The blogosphere makes it possible to have a sprawling national conversation about the hard times - often among people who would never find each other offline.
Law graduates have always ended up in business, government, journalism and other fields. Law schools could do more to build these subjects into their coursework.
The first thing to understand about surveillance video in public places is that there is already a lot of it going on - though it is impossible to know how much.
When locational information is collected, people should be given advance notice and a chance to opt out. Data should be erased as soon as its main purpose is met.
There was a rule, back when I was an education lawyer in Alabama, about visiting public schools: always go on a rainy day so you can see how badly the roofs leak.
Civil lawsuits do two important things: they compensate people who are injured by the bad acts of others, and they penalize people and companies for bad behavior.
For technology companies, information about what people do online is extremely valuable - it can be used to sell targeted advertising or sold to data clearinghouses.
If the FBI gets the 'back doors' it wants, Internet services would be required to create a massive online infrastructure for law enforcement to spy on members of the public.
The whole New Deal was in a sense just a series of public options, some more optional than others, that offered government as an alternative to the often-flawed private market.
Vampires are sleek demons for good times. They suavely leech off society - like investment bankers who plunder outsize shares of deals for themselves or rapacious fund managers.
Set in the advertising world of the 1960s, 'Mad Men' is stunning to look at - a Camelot-era parade of smartly dressed professionals lounging around on midcentury modern furniture.
There is no way to undo what happened in the Zimmerman-Martin encounter, but some good can still come of it: it could lead states to repeal their misguided 'Stand your ground' laws.
If you're going to call a book 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History,' readers will expect some serious carrying on about race, and Thomas Woods Jr. does not disappoint.
The public has a right to know what kind of monitoring the government is doing, and there should be a public discussion of the appropriate trade-offs between law enforcement and privacy rights.
Our movements reveal a great deal about who we are. A record of our locations over time can reveal whether we go to tent revivals or radical political meetings, abortion clinics or AIDS doctors.
In zombie horror, the juxtaposition of the calm world of the living and the menace of the undead inspires terror. In zombie comedy, like 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' it is played for laughs.
With increased awareness should come greater caution about how confessions are used at trial - and a greater willingness to overturn convictions when it becomes clear that a confession was untrue.
A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court.
We should craft our laws to allow images of criminal suspects to be captured in public - but also to make sure that the government does not unduly infringe on the privacy rights of innocent citizens.
It is one thing to say that there is a constitutional right to keep a gun at home for protection. It is quite another to say there is a constitutional right to bring a hidden gun into a daycare center.
An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world's leading democracy.
To be rejected on account of old age may or may not feel the same as being rejected on the basis of race or sex. But it is clearly unjust and dehumanizing, and the law should take it more seriously than it does.
When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers. When bubbles burst, nothing is left but soapy residue. But the Internet revolution, for all its speculative excesses, really is changing the world.
Mississippi's loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with perfectly legal conflicts of interest.
Amazon is holding its own because the service it provides - offering millions of books and other items quickly and easily from home at any hour of the day or night - is a real one, and one that was impossible before there was an Internet.
When the government takes video of people in public places, the images should only be kept as long as they may reasonably be needed to investigate a crime. After a few days, if there has not been a report of a crime, they should be destroyed.
The press should not get special privileges - if they drive recklessly or put people in danger, they should be subject to every reckless driving and endangerment law on the books - but they should also not be singled out for special punishment.
The remarkable thing about 'Avatar' is the degree to which the technology is integral to the story. It is important to show Pandora and its Na'Vi natives in 3-D because 'Avatar' is fundamentally about the moral necessity of seeing other beings fully.
It's tempting to engage in anti-gun polemics and hope that popular opinion will dramatically shift, but it is also likely a mistake. The smarter course for those who want stronger federal gun-control laws anytime soon is legislative stewardship and compromise.
It is not hard to see why the FBI wants wiretapping backdoors. It would certainly make its job easier. But rejiggering the Internet so government can conveniently monitor everything we say and do online is too high a price to pay for making law enforcement more efficient.
Republicans and blacks had an unlikely alliance around 'max black' after the 1990 census. By concentrating black voters in some districts, the strategy elected a record number of black congressmen in 1992. But the remaining 'bleached' districts were more likely to elect white Republicans.
To a generation beaten down by skyrocketing unemployment, plunging retirement savings, and mounting home foreclosures, 'Mad Men' offers the schadenfreude-filled message that their predecessors were equally unhappy - and that the bleakness meter in American life has always been set on high.
Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like 'free speech' or 'due process' - or potato chip.
The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.
In the James Cameron blockbuster 'Avatar,' 3-D cinematography is the real star. The bugs and crawling creatures seem to slither into the theater seats. The floating mountains of the planet Pandora hover gloriously overhead. And the Na'Vi, Pandora's 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned natives, come convincingly to life.
If the courts regarded tweets and other social media information as private, it would not prevent the law enforcement from getting information it really needs. But the government would have to get a search warrant, which requires it to show that it has probable cause connecting what is being searched to a crime.
The Supreme Court's most conservative Justices have presented themselves as great respecters of precedent and opponents of 'judicial activism' - of judges using the Constitution to strike down laws passed by the elected branches of government. If they are true to those principles, they should uphold rent control.
It makes sense to have cameras in places where terrorism and crime are of particular concern - such as in Times Square or near major bridges and tunnels. It would be more troubling to learn, however, that the government has focused cameras on the front doors of our homes just to keep track of our comings and goings.
There is a lot of talk in conservative circles about judicial modesty and deferring to the political branches. That view of judging often overlooks the important role that courts have in protecting people's rights. But if there was ever a time to defer, it is when Congress is protecting voting rights in the exact way the Constitution directs it to.