Discourse publishes shorter articles that are timely, interdisciplinary, and novel. Discourse strives to serve as a platform for scholars, ideas, and discussions that have often been overlooked in traditional law review settings. Because we seek to publish pieces that are accessible to legal and non-legal audiences alike, Discourse articles are generally between 3,000 and 10,000 words. Like our print journal, Discourse articles are published on Westlaw, Lexis, and in other legal databases, as well as our own website.
Abstract How would society react to “the Watcher,” a technology capable of efficiently, unerringly, and immediately reporting the perpetrator of virtually every crime? This Essay treats that speculative question as an opportunity to explore the relationship between governmental surveillance and criminal justice. The resulting argument is unabashedly fictional but draws attention to pressures...
Abstract This Article sets forth a new way to think about the ethics and law of choosing genetic traits in future children. And it applies this framework of offspring to controversies over efforts to select offspring traits including sex, race, intelligence, and deafness using methods ranging from donor selection to embryo screening and gene editing. I adapt the lens of ambivalence that...
Abstract Recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase in digital information and connected devices, but constant revelations about hacks make painfully clear that security has not kept pace. Societies today network first, and ask questions later. This Essay argues that while digitization and networking will continue to accelerate, cybersecurity concerns will also prompt some strategic...
Abstract Recent bills have allocated federal funding to states and localities as an incentive to adopt handheld genome sequencing devices, smooth the ongoing transition from older forensic typing methods to “next generation sequencing” (NGS), and facilitate law enforcement access to medical and recreational DNA databases. At the request of legislators considering these bills, the Congressional...
Introduction1 Imagine a world that is aggressively engineered for us to achieve highly desirable objectives. In this hypothetical future, technology will serve as the means for governing—or one might say, micromanaging—our world to prioritize three distinctive yet interrelated normative ends: optimized transactional efficiency, resource productivity, and human happiness. Now, even though we do...
Abstract Not since the invention that launched the entire biotech industry has a life science invention offered as much promise as the CRISPR technique for editing genes. Gene editing techniques existed before CRISPR, but they were slow, inaccurate, and expensive. The CRISPR invention is like moving from the manual typewriter—click, clack, slide across—to modern word processing. As we stand at...
Abstract Immersive virtual reality may change the way we interact with each other. In the future, we may be technologically capable of experiencing every aspect of an interaction except its physiological consequences. So what does this mean for interpersonal violence? If virtual reality creates a strong sense of “presence,” such that virtual experiences seem comparable to their physical...
Abstract This science-fiction legal Essay is set in the year 2030. It anticipates the development and mass adoption of a device called the "Ruby" that records everything a person does. By imagining how law and society would adjust to such a device, the Essay uncovers two surprising insights about public policy: first, policy debates are slow to change when a new technology pushes out the...
Abstract Effective management of societal risks from technological innovation requires two types of conditions: sufficient knowledge about the nature and severity of risks to identify preferred responses; and sufficient control capacity (legal, political, and managerial) to adopt and implement preferred responses. While it has been recognized since the 1970s that technological innovation creates...
Each year, the UCLA School of Law presents the Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching to an outstanding law professor. On April 20, 2016, this honor was given to Professor Seana Shiffrin. UCLA Law Review Discourse is proud to continue its tradition of publishing a modified version of the ceremony speech delivered by the award recipient. I’m grateful to the Dean, to the Rutter committee...
Introduction In February 2016, a federal district court in Fields v. City of Philadelphia1 held there is no First Amendment2 right to record images of police performing duties in public places, “absent any criticism or challenge to police conduct.”3 Specifically, U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney found “no basis to craft a new First Amendment right based solely on ‘observing and recording’...
Introduction This Article builds on an intervention Luke Harris and Uma Narayan made more than two decades ago in the Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal repudiating the conceptualization of affirmative action as a racial preference.1 The central claim we advance is that affirmative action levels the playing field for all African Americans students, not just those who are class-disadvantaged. ...
This Essay reviews and synthesizes contemporary social science research relevant to the constitutional question, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin and more broadly, of whether consideration of socioeconomic status and percent plan admissions based on high school rank represent viable race-neutral alternatives to race-based affirmative action programs. The strong weight of the evidence...
Introduction When I attended Michigan Law School in 1966, as a 2L Harvard transfer, there was only one, or perhaps two, African Americans in a student body of about 1100 students, and if there were any students of Latino heritage their presence went unnoticed. When I began teaching at Michigan in the fall of 1968, the situation had begun to change. There were eight or nine African American...