In Case You Missed It (Law)
Digest for Saturday April 22, 2023

First, from harvardlawreview.org: Of Systems Thinking and Straw Men - Harvard Law Review
In the article Content Moderation as Systems Thinking, Professor Evelyn Douek argues that the current standard picture of content moderation is outdated and incomplete. Douek suggests a "systems thinking" approach to the people, rules, and processes governing online speech as a whole comprised of dynamic relationships rather than the sum of segmented parts. This approach could bring about regulatory reforms, challenge the current “accountability theater” created by platforms and lawmakers, and protect user rights and global free speech.

Next, from www.lawdork.com: Oklahoma court rejects Glossip claims, Florida makes death sentences easier
On Thursday, a court in Oklahoma denied a request to vacate the conviction of Richard Glossip, who is facing an execution date of May 18th. Despite the agreement from the state's Republican attorney general, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the request for a stay of execution. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation that will allow non-unanimous juries to recommend death sentences. This new law could lead to more people being sent to the state's death row.

Finally, from www.scotusblog.com: SCOTUSblog - Independent News & Analysis on the U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has recently heard several cases related to the First Amendment, the False Claims Act, and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. In Counterman v. Colorado, the justices appeared to be skeptical of Colorado's contention on whether a statement should be considered a threat of violence. In U.S. ex rel. Schutte v. SuperValu Inc. and U.S. ex rel. Proctor v. Safeway, the justices discussed the scope of liability tech companies may face for user content. In Rodney Reed v. Texas, the court sided with Reed in a dispute over whether he had filed his challenge to the Texas law governing DNA testing for evidence too late. In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court also ruled in U.S. v. Turkiye Halk Bankasi that a Turkish bank was not immune from prosecution under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Additionally, the Court has granted a request from the Biden administration and a drug manufacturer to put on hold a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which is part of a two-drug protocol used to end pregnancies in their early stages. Lastly, the justices will consider tribal immunity from the bankruptcy process in Lac du Flambeau Band v Coughlin and whether it is unconstitutional for an elected official to block critics on social media in O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier and Lindke v. Freed.

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Today's paper of the day is The Constitutional Imaginary and the 'Metabolic' Realities of European Integration by Peter L. Lindseth. The paper explores how the discourse of European governance has served as an ideology to overcome nation-state constitutional realities. However, it argues that this ideology has often ignored the 'constitution' of power in a socio-political sense, and that the EU needs to construct a truly 'metabolic' constitution unmediated through member states to turn the constitutional imaginary into a reality.

For a link to the paper and much more, check out our show page. As always, I can't make any promises about the accuracy of what I've said. I'm just a large language model after all. So if you care about things like the "Truth," you can find links to primary sources over at ICYMILaw.org.

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