Robert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who served as solicitor general of the United States from 1973 until 1977. A professor by training, he was acting United States Attorney General and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1982 to 1988. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Senate rejected his nomination after a contentious and highly publicized confirmation hearing.
A video rental shop/store is a physical retail business that rents home videos such as movies, prerecorded TV shows, video game discs and other media content. Typically, a rental shop conducts business with customers under conditions and terms agreed upon in a rental agreement or contract, which may be implied, explicit, or written. Many video rental stores also sell previously viewed movies and/or new, unopened movies.
Personality rights, sometimes referred to as the right of publicity, are rights for an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers. They are generally considered as property rights, rather than personal rights, and so the validity of personality rights of publicity may survive the death of the individual to varying degrees, depending on the jurisdiction.
Civil liberties in the United States are certain unalienable rights retained by citizens of the United States under the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted and clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States and lower federal courts. Civil liberties are simply defined as individual legal and constitutional protections from entities more powerful than an individual, for example, parts of the government, other individuals, or corporations. The explicitly defined liberties make up the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to privacy. There are also many liberties of people not defined in the Constitution, as stated in the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), originally written to guarantee individual rights of everyone everywhere; while right to privacy does not appear in the document, many interpret this through Article 12, which states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
The Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events that took place in the United States on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal. US President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork carried out the dismissal as Nixon asked. Bork stated that he intended to resign afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department.
Douglas Howard Ginsburg is an American lawyer, jurist, and academic who serves as a senior U.S. circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is also a professor of law at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School.
Ralph G. Neas is an American civil rights activist and executive. He is best known for directing a series of national campaigns to strengthen and protect civil rights laws during the Reagan and Bush presidencies. He is also known for chairing the national coalition that helped defeat the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.
Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School.
The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) is a bill that was passed by the United States Congress in 1988 as Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 100–618 and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It was created to prevent what it refers to as "wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records" or similar audio visual materials, to cover items such as video games and the future DVD format. Congress passed the VPPA after Robert Bork's video rental history was published during his Supreme Court nomination and it became known as the "Bork bill". It makes any "video tape service provider" that discloses rental information outside the ordinary course of business liable for up to $2500 in actual damages.
Michael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of four books on copyright law and privacy law, and he edits two newsletters on Canadian information technology and privacy law.
Peter Douglas Keisler is an American lawyer whose 2006 nomination by President George W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit became embroiled in partisan controversy. He is a partner at the firm of Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and used to be the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Upon the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, until November 9, 2007, he was also the Acting Attorney General of the United States.
Telephone call recording laws are legislation enacted in many jurisdictions, such as countries, states, provinces, that regulate the practice of telephone call recording. Call recording or monitoring is permitted or restricted with various levels of privacy protection, law enforcement requirements, anti-fraud measures, or individual party consent.
On July 1, 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to succeed Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had earlier announced his retirement. At the time of his nomination, Bork was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position to which he had been appointed by President Reagan in 1982.
Speculation abounded over potential nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States by Ronald Reagan even before his presidency officially began, due to the advanced ages of several justices, and Reagan's own highlighting of Supreme Court nominations as a campaign issue. Reagan had promised "to appoint only those opposed to abortion and the 'judicial activism' of the Warren and Burger Courts". Conversely, some opposed to Reagan argued that he could "appoint as many as five Justices" and would "use the opportunity to stack the Court against women, minorities and social justice".
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988. After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786 (2011), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court that struck down a 2005 California law banning the sale of certain violent video games to children without parental supervision. In a 7–2 decision, the Court affirmed the lower court decisions and nullified the law, ruling that video games were protected speech under the First Amendment as other forms of media.
Lane vs. Facebook was a class-action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California regarding internet privacy and social media. In December 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, which resulted in users' private information being posted on Facebook without the users' consent. Facebook ended up terminating the Beacon program and created a $9.5 million fund for privacy and security. There was no monetary compensation awarded to Facebook users affected negatively by the Beacon program.
James Daniel Bishop is an American attorney and politician serving as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 8th congressional district since 2019, when the district was numbered as the 9th. A Republican, his district includes south-central Mecklenburg, Union, Anson, Richmond, Scotland, Robeson, Hoke, and southern Moore Counties. He served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2015 to 2017 and the Mecklenburg County Commission from 2005 to 2009. He served in the North Carolina State Senate from 2017 to 2019.
Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) is an Indian digital rights organisation that advances liberty, equality, fraternity and social justice in the digital age. IFF has three verticals of work that include strategic litigation, policy engagement and civic literacy.
