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Constitutional right to privacy: June 7, 1965

Most Americans consider privacy one of their most prized rights, yet the word isn’t even mentioned in the United States Constitution. It wasn’t until June 7, 1965 that the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law, reasoning that certain guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. According to the Court, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments together create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations. The case remains one of the Court’s most hotly debated rulings and led directly to an even more controversial decision in Roe v. Wade (1973).

Readings in Legal Information, pt. 10


Somehow or other we got this far without mentioning Kendall Svengalis’ Legal Information Buyer’s Guide and Reference Manual. We should not have neglected it for so long. It is what the title claims: a guide to legal information products written from the perspective of the buyer. That alone makes it one of the most innovative legal information products ever, and Svengalis the man least likely to have lunch bought for him by a legal publisher. It’s a godsend to anyone who actually has to buy legal information. From our point of view, it’s an interesting catalog of the many ways in which people make practical decisions about the acquisition and use of legal information — and how practice departs from theory in the realm of legal research.

The FRCP as a business engine

Today’s post started out as one of those cute-law-stats things we do so often when we can’t think of anything else, but it quickly morphed into something different. We thought it might be fun to see who was interested in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and which rule was most popular with the Teeming Millions. Surprise, surprise — it’s Rule 26. No doubt the rule regarding discovery was always popular, but new provisions concerning the discovery of electronic records have given it a real edge.

Since we started writing this post, fourteen new records-management businesses have sprung up (OK, that number we made up, but then again you have no idea how slowly we type). Every one of them uses a a sales pitch like this one. Law-driven FUD tactics are of course nothing new in the world of marketing (our favorite is the company that was selling US flags advertised as “Title 4, Section 1 compliant”) , but this is very big indeed: one company alone has more than 100,000 clients including a majority of the Fortune 500. Growth projections for this industry are hard to read — they tend to compare apples and oranges — but Gartner Group is predicting a 25% per year growth rate for the records-management business as a whole.

We’re just saying.


We missed the press release, but Robert Ambrogi didn’t — his LawSites blog reports that Thomson West has announced a major revamping of its web site. The announcement trumpets any number of improvements, but we were fascinated by six digits near the end of Ambrogi’s report. West reports that it receives more than 200,000 visits to its site each month.

That’d be about the same number we get for our WEX legal encyclopedia, about half as many as we receive on the Supreme Court collection, and a third of our US Code traffic.

Of course, they have a key number system, and we don’t. Yet.

Our favorite quotes: James Madison

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

Attributed to James Madison (1751–1836): The Federalist, ed. Benjamin F. Wright, no. 62, pp. 411–12 (1961).

Our favorite quotes: Edmund Burke

In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.

Edmund Burke (1729–97): “Tract on the Popery Laws,” chapter 3, part 1, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, vol. 6, p. 320 (1899).

On the horizon

Some of us here at the LII are already looking forward to the 9th International Law via the Internet Conference in October 2008. Part of the reason — but only part of the reason, really! — is that the Conference will be held in Florence, Italy, the home town of its host, L’Istituto di Teoria e Tecniche dell’Informazione Giuridica (the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques). We met the ITTIG folks for the first time last year at the conference in Montreal, and we found them to be fun and knowledgeable colleagues. We have much in common and much to learn from each other, and the conference will be a good chance to talk more about what we can work on together.

The International Law and the Internet Conference is an annual event of the Legal Information Institute network that explores progress and emerging problems related to new technologies and law. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute was the first LII, but since we began operation in 1992 the name has been widely adopted by other projects that also provide free online access to legal information. The meeting in Florence will focus on ways in which the use of new technologies can become an irreplaceable tool of democracy for the citizens of the e-society.

Our favorite quotes: Niccolò Machiavelli

Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527): Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, trans. Allan Gilbert, book 1, chapter 18, p. 241 (1965).

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