Constitutional Rights

Annually, agents collect the forensic digital data of over 40,000 international travelers. This Comment addresses the splintering doctrine between the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits regarding the Fourth Amendment limitations to performing forensic electronic searches at the border. Use restrictions consider each use of data—extracting, retaining, querying, and sharing—as a separate Fourth Amendment search, subject to a separate reasonableness analysis. This Comment will argue that applying such restrictions in the border context prevents the government from using data collected under a narrow exception for broader purposes that would otherwise require a warrant.

Sovereign immunity protects the government from liability arising in suits brought against it by citizens. The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) broadly waives sovereign immunity for tort claims against the United States. The discretionary function exception maintains immunity for tortious acts committed by employees acting within the valid bounds of their discretion. There is a circuit split about whether the discretionary function exception immunizes tortious conduct that is also unconstitutional.
This Comment argues that the discretionary function exception should only immunize unconstitutional tortious conduct when the actions do not violate clearly established constitutional rights of which a reasonable officer would have known.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), individuals who have experienced past persecution or fear future persecution because of their religious beliefs can apply for asylum in the United States. Although individuals are afforded these protections under the statutory provisions of the INA, there is a fundamental problem in the way courts have treated religious asylum claims. Rather than holistically considering religion, courts have instead focused on religion’s fragmentary aspects. This Comment argues that courts must first adopt an understanding of religion in the context of religious asylum claims in order to determine what it means to be persecuted on account of religion under the INA. To avoid inconsistent reasoning among immigration and federal courts as it relates to the one central reason standard, this Comment proposes a four-part definitional methodology of religion and argues that a but-for causation standard as used in Title VII claims is sufficient in adjudicating religious asylum claims.

In 2024, President Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), which required TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok to a company in a “non-adversarial” country or be banned from the United States. TikTok challenged the regulation, in part, as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, which would permit the government to ban TikTok so long as it compensates ByteDance. Because PAFACA applies to applications beyond TikTok, it raises a broader question: does the Takings Clause require government compensation for bans on foreign web services? This Comment argues the answer is no.

The 2023 Supreme Court case Twitter v. Taamneh found that defendant social media companies were not liable for aiding and abetting a terrorist attack overseas. The Court alluded to the existence of an alternative set of facts that might alter their analysis or produce a different outcome. This Comment explores those “other contexts” and seeks to identify what factors could produce a successful Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) aiding and abetting claim against a social media company for an act of terrorism overseas. Ultimately, this Comment concludes that it would take an extraordinary set of facts to find social media companies secondarily liable for an act of terrorism. This Comment then suggests other avenues to encourage social media companies to heighten their detection of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) activity and prevent future attacks.

The notion of an “absolute” First Amendment has been around for generations. Talk of an absolute First Amendment, however, is just that—talk.

In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a notorious bandit who would abduct travelers and then offer them a rather macabre form of hospitality.

This article focuses on two procedural mechanisms for strengthening the First Amendment within the criminal legal system: robust grand jury/indictment and unanimity requirements. These requirements help vindicate the First Amendment by testing the facts of a case against the constitutionalized elements of the offense.

Prayer in the public sphere has been part of American daily life since the founding. Historically, both legislative sessions and school days began with Bible readings or prayers to solemnize the day.