I am teaching Information Privacy this semester (yes I use Solove/Schwartz for the text), and it is a great class to teach. In addition to the rich material, the class provides a way to show students that the first year, silo approach to law is just the starting point. To advance they must synthesize different areas — torts, contracts, constitutional law, statutory regulations, and more. Thinking about privacy shows how concepts from one area apply in other areas. Put differently, I often ask students what philosophical views or judicial concepts from early readings are ignored or embraced by seemingly separate areas of law. As such I hope to stimulate students to move beyond the linear aspects of their outlines and think about how something from the first week of class may connect to the third and eighth week of class. One benefit is that they start to see that many issues may be connected (Dan’s taxonomy idea in action perhaps). Another is that privacy news crosses their minds much more and they feed me that information. Here is one that a student sent. Hat tip to the student and Huffington Post.
Stewart takes on O’Reilly. Although one may think this battle is stale, here Stewart shows a dissonance that riddles privacy. It is funny and highlights the paradoxes of privacy.