Law & Society

Protecting Kids and Adults Online: Device-Level Age Authentication

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Recently, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which involves a constitutional challenge to a Texas age verification law for websites containing sexually explicit material. The case offers the Court the opportunity to revisit two cases decided at the dawn of the Internet Age finding such requirements violated the First Amendment. This post looks at the legal and practical arguments against the law, and asks whether shifting verification from websites to devices might alleviate some of those concerns.

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The Long Shadow of Home: A Reflection on Legacies and the Cycles of Law

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This guest post was written by Marco Cobian ’25. A slightly different version is appearing as BC Law Magazine’s Winter 2025 In Closing column.

Growing up in Ramona, California–a rural and dispossessed, secluded and dust-strewn town tucked into the upper-hinterlands of San Diego County–I was acquainted with the rhythms and cycles natural to a certain way of life. Among these were the buzz and crackles of the morning commute, of pickup trucks leaving early for their daily pilgrimages only to return in the evening to start over again the next morning. This is the cycle that defines Ramona–the departure and the inevitable return, week after week, year after year, generation after generation.

This too, is the cycle that defined my family. I was born and raised in Ramona, just like my father before me. Moreover, I was born and raised in Ramona, the son of a first-generation American, the grandson of two undocumented Mexican-immigrants who settled in Ramona in their late-teens; I was born and raised the proverbial and vaunted embodiment of their hopes and dreams. As all three generations of my family ventured outside of Ramona and glanced at horizons just beyond the town’s borders, the gravitational pull of this cycle wrenched them back in, and just like that, the cycle repeated. And with each iteration, a certain impression of reality solidified in the psyche of my family–fortified by structural barriers and generational trauma, this cycle created limits on what one could imagine oneself being and doing. 

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After Net Neutrality: The Return of the States

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

I recently discussed the Sixth Circuit decision classifying broadband as a Title I information service and effectively eliminating the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) general power to regulate broadband. But like nature, regulators abhor a vacuum. While closing the door to federal regulators, the decision also creates opportunities for states to act. This post examines the present and potential future of state-level broadband regulation.

Historically, state regulators were key players in the telecommunications space. The Communications Act of 1934 divided the telecommunications world into two neat hemispheres: The FCC regulated interstate long-distance service, while state commissions regulated local and intrastate long distance. This division of authority made sense in a world where 98 percent of calls were local, and long-distance calls were a luxury. But the Telecommunications Act of 1996 dramatically rearranged the balance of power between the federal government and the states. Meanwhile, local telephone service largely disappeared as a separate market, before communication shifted from the telephone to broadband networks. As a result, most states shuttered their telecommunications regulators early in the 21st century.

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Legal Podcast Review: ‘Rebuttal’ Pod

/ Samantha Torre / Leave a comment

If you’ve ever seen Once Upon A Time in Hollywood – or are chronically online (like me) — you’re familiar with the image of Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo Dicaprio in a violently yellow t-shirt, pointing furiously at an (off-camera) television screen. The image was reenacted by me recently, as I poured over my criminal law reading this week. 

The reason I was furiously pointing at a case from the 1800s? Well, I recognized it. Not from a previous class, but from a podcast I had listened to on my commute to work this summer – ‘Rebuttal,’

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Environmental Law and the Climate Apocalypse

/ Ian Hurley / Leave a comment

He rounded a bend to hear the roar of the conflagration and see a fire a half mile ahead like a black-and-red curtain dropped from a night sky. Even from that distance the heat stopped him. He collapsed to his knees, sat in the warm ashes through which he’d been wading, and wept.  – Denis Johnson, Train Dreams.

Fire has always been an inherent part of life in the American West. The mountains, plains, and forests that sprawl from the Mississippi to the Pacific see conflagrations that can reduce thousands of acres of landscape into smoldering ash in just a few days. Then, over time, the plants and wildlife return, and the ecology and lifestyles of the place return to normal over time. But nothing is normal anymore. And I fear we are long past the point where any legal efforts can save humanity from the bed it has made for itself.

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Sixth Circuit Strikes Net Neutrality in Victory for Tech, Administrative Law

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

My fellow tech policy enthusiasts, our long national nightmare is over. Last week, the Sixth Circuit brought an end to the decade-long fight over net neutrality by prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from applying Title II common carrier regulation to broadband providers. The decision is a victory for tech policy, freeing Internet access from the shadow of overbearing regulation. It’s also a win for administrative law, as it aligns with the Supreme Court’s guidance that courts, not agencies, should resolve disputes over statutory interpretations. The ruling reaffirms the principle that important policy decisions should be made by Congress, not by agencies under the guise of interpreting ambiguous statutes.

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What’s Next After Court Upholds TikTok Ban

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Last week, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the TikTok divest-or-ban bill against a constitutional challenge. The result was unsurprising given how poorly TikTok fared at September’s oral argument. The decision itself contains many intriguing legal insights at the nexus of national security and free speech. This post examines the Court’s First Amendment analysis and explains why, despite the loss, the popular but problematic platform is unlikely to be shut down.

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Assessing the Rosenworcel Era: Lessons for Incoming FCC Chairman Carr

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This guest post by BC Law Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Daniel Lyons first appeared in the AEIdeas Blog.

Blair Levin is one of telecommunications policy’s respected elder statesmen. He served as chief of staff to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Reed Hundt, executive director of the National Broadband Plan, and played a key role for the Obama transition team. His insightful commentary on tech issues, offered from his current perches at Brookings and New Street Research, is followed closely by power players both in Washington and on Wall Street.

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The COP Chronicles: Combating Climate Change on the Frontlines 

/ Sangeeta Kishore / Leave a comment

I’ve been following COP for as long as I can remember. As an International Relations major in undergrad, one of my student research positions was listing every sentence made by a world leader at COP into a monstrous Excel spreadsheet. And now, as a law student interested in human rights and environmental law, I read about COP nearly every day. 

But many of you must be thinking, what am I even talking about? 

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My Answer to ‘Why Did You Go to Law School’

/ Alexandra Staller / Leave a comment

When I walked into my last Critical Perspectives class of the semester this past Monday, written on the board was the question: ‘Why did you go to law school?’ This question was nothing new – law students get asked by family, friends, and most law school applications ask why you want to go to law school – but in class that day, it felt like a very personal one.

Sunday night I was working on my cover letter, as one does on their Sunday evening. As I was writing, I was thinking about all of the experiences and skills I had that might separate me from the hundreds of cover letters that 1Ls across the country will be sending to summer employers. My entire professional life flashed before my eyes: school nights picking up trash after college basketball games, a few summers lifeguarding and babysitting, and that one cashier job at Home Depot. But I landed on my experience last year working for a mass tort litigation firm, where I was a paralegal on the Boy Scouts of America sexual abuse class action case. That role absolutely changed my life in more than a professional sense, and gave me my answer to the question on the board that morning in Critical Perspectives.

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