In 2004, Crawford v. Washington, authored by Justice Scalia, revolutionized the law of confrontation by requiring that, aside from two discrete exceptions, all testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will serve to prosecute the accused) be subject to cross-examination.  This new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause has profoundly affected domestic violence cases, making it much harder to prosecute them successfully.

   Although Justice Scalia’s approach to confrontation is new, it is strikingly similar to the analysis in Regina v. Bedingfield, a notorious English murder case, which excluded from the evidence an alleged statement by the murder victim.  The analysis of the res gestae hearsay exception, which was central to excluding the victim’s statement in Bedingfield, focused on the timing of her statement, her intent in making it, and whether an ongoing emergency existed when the declaration was made.  Justice Scalia’s rigid, formalistic approach to testimonial statements in Davis v. Washington, another in the line of new confrontation cases, is analogous and ultimately as confusing and unworkable as Bedingfield’s res gestae analysis.

   Although Bedingfield arose in 1879, its facts, replete with verbal abuse, intoxication, unheeded pleas for police protection, and ultimately, murder when the victim tried to break off the relationship, resonate with modern experiences of domestic violence.  Both the Bedingfield case and Justice Scalia’s confrontation jurisprudence fail to account for the practical realities of domestic violence cases and ignore the voices of victims who cannot or will not testify on their own behalf.  The facts of Bedingfield, which present a serious question whether the victim’s statement was ever uttered, demonstrate another flaw in Justice Scalia’s new approach.  In addition to being too rigid in rejecting unconfronted testimonial statements, the new confrontation doctrine is also too lax regarding nontestimonial statements, which now receive no constitutional protection at all.

   Insider trading defendants are sentenced under the general economic crime provisions of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.  These provisions provide a chart, which prescribes a gradually increasing offense level based on “the gain resulting from the offense.”  Only two circuit courts have yet to define “gain” for sentencing purposes, resulting in a split in methodology.  Due to the tremendous weight the Guidelines place on the amount of “gain” when calculating a sentence, the potential result of using different methodologies to calculate “gain” is the difference between freedom and years of incarceration.

   This Note examines the problems involved with both of the methods of calculating “gain” for sentencing purposes applied by the circuits.  This Note proposes a reexamination and restructuring of the Guidelines’ economic crime provisions in order to focus the determination of a defendant’s sentence away from an unstable monetary figure and toward other factors that truly reflect the culpability of the defendant.  This Note argues that a complete restructuring of the economic crime provisions is required to fulfill the original objectives upon which the Guidelines were created.

   This Note explores whether a condition of supervised release that restricts computer and Internet access violates the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions.  Although a circuit split has developed regarding the scope of a permissible restriction, as Courts of Appeals have been inundated with cases challenging the validity of these technology restrictions, no court has yet viewed these limits through the lens of the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions.  This Note begins with a discussion of the First Amendment and the theory of unconstitutional conditions, tracing their respective developments in cases relating to prisoners, speech, and the Internet age.  Next, it synthesizes the oft-criticized idea of unconstitutional conditions into a new three-prong framework, judging the propriety of a condition based on the government’s coerciveness in making the offer, the purpose for pursuing the condition, and the condition’s effect on protected speech.  Then, this Note surveys cases where courts have ruled on the validity of a computer or Internet restriction, and recasts their reasoning to discuss whether such a condition may be constitutional, using the coercion-purpose-effect framework.  Finally, this Note concludes that a condition is constitutional where it is accepted knowingly and voluntarily, is intended to protect the public rather than regulate speech indirectly, and where computer-monitoring and Internet-filtering technology is maximized to minimize First Amendment infringement.

   The history of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause is virtually nonexistent.  For at least the last century, the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted its public use language broadly, allowing takings for the purposes of rectifying urban blight, facilitating land redistribution, and most recently, in Kelo v. City of New London, promoting economic benefit.  In that case, Justice Thomas dissented vigorously, arguing that the Kelo Court had strayed from the original meaning of public use and urging it to return to requiring actual use by the public when property is condemned.

   In light of Justice Thomas’s argument that the Court had abandoned the original meaning of the Takings Clause, this Note considers whether historical evidence regarding original meaning provides a coherent limiting principle.  Particularly in the area of property expropriations, the historical record does not indicate that the founding generation had a concrete conception of the extent to which the right should be protected.  As a result, scholarship on both sides of the public use debate presents the best evidence supporting its particular thesis, but no piece satisfactorily incorporates all of the historical evidence.  In light of these considerations, this Note concludes by proposing how to reconcile originalism as a method of Constitutional interpretation for a text with an essentially unattainable original meaning and over a hundred years of case law divorced from an originalist analysis.

   The raging debate about comprehensive immigration reform is ripe ground to overhaul federal exclusivity in the immigration context and move toward a cooperative federal and state-local model.  The proliferation of immigration-related ordinances at the state and local level reflects “lawful” attempts to enforce immigration law to conserve limited resources for citizens and legal residents.  Although the federal immigration statutes contemplate state and local involvement, the broad federal preemption model used to analyze immigration laws displaces many state-local ordinances, resulting in frustration at the inability to enforce the community’s resolve that is manifested through violence against Latino immigrants.  Broad federal preemption analyses alter the traditional scope of the states’ police powers, and set the stage for “brown sundown towns”— where Latinos are not welcomed.

   This Note evaluates the preemption analyses used in Lozano v. City of Hazleton and Chicanos Por La Causa, Inc. v. Napolitano, and looks at the aftermath effects of the decisions at the communal level.  It argues that the narrow preemption analysis in Chicanos Por La Causa strikes the correct balance between federal and state-local interests.  A narrow approach better weighs state-local concerns and generates notoriety, which can incentivize action at the federal level.  The Note then studies three scholarship models that balance differently the federal and state-local relationship in the immigration context.  It posits that the narrow preemption approach can pave the way for the cooperative federalism model, and contain a new wave of sundown towns.  As narrow preemption analysis considers state-local concerns, cooperative federalism addresses the reality that it is states and localities, rather than the federal government, which must incorporate immigrants into the communal fabric.  Accordingly, this Note calls attention to the relationship between preemption analysis, practical reality at the state-local level, and how these two factors correlate with the creation of brown sundown towns.

   Due to the daunting possibilities of cyberwarfare, and the ease with which cyberattacks may be conducted, the United Nations has warned that the next world war could be initiated through worldwide cyberattacks between countries.  In response to the growing threat of cyberwarfare and the increasing importance of information security, Congress passed the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA).  FISMA recognizes the importance of information security to the national economic and security interests of the United States.  However, this Note argues that FISMA has failed to significantly bolster information security, primarily because FISMA treats information security as a technological problem and not an economic problem.  This Note analyzes existing proposals to incentivize heightened software quality assurance, and proposes a new solution designed to strengthen federal information security in light of the failings of FISMA and the trappings of Congress’s 2001 amendment to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.