I’m not dead yet! Resurrection and Probate Law

Posted on December 5, 2010 by | 22 comments

Superheros and supervillians too numerous to count have, for various reasons, been killed, lost, or otherwise presumed dead, only to come back at a convenient date. It’s gotten a little silly at times.

The legal system has pretty well-established rules for what to do when someone dies. If they’ve got a will, their property will generally be distributed according to its dictates (no naughty trying to disinherent current spouses!) and if they don’t have a will, i.e. they die intestate, the law is pretty clear about how their estate is to be distributed. Most states have adopted some version of the Uniform Probate Code, or UPC, which other than the UCC and MPC is actually one of the more successful uniform laws in terms of its adoption by the various states.

The law even has a way of handling situations where a person is not actually known to be dead but is clearly no longer around. A person who is legally absent, i.e. a person whose whereabouts are unknown for quite some time, will generally be presumed dead after a few years. Five to seven is pretty common, though interestingly for the citizens of Metropolis, New York only give you three (NY CLS EPTL § 2-1.7). It usually takes a court proceeding to get someone officially declared dead in the absence of a body, and in general, the courts will presume that a person is alive until there is clear evidence to the contrary or state statue operates to force presumption.

That last bit is actually of interest to our consideration of law and the multiverse. Pretty much every state has a statute saying that if one is legally absent for a specified period of time, a court can declare one to be dead. But a few states also have a provision that exposure to a “specific peril of death” can permit a court to rule one dead before the specified period expires. See, e.g., 20 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5701(c). As superheros are exposed to specific perils of death basically all the time, and would not generally be suspected to be dead in the absence of such a peril, it seems likely that a court, or at least a genre blind one, would be willing to rule on a superhero’s death pretty quickly. Which makes things a bit complicated if they aren’t actually dead.

So what happens when, after they have been declared dead, a person turns up again? The Straight Dope has a good article on this subject, so I shall attempt to avoid repeating that discussion here, but their discussion of a rather interesting case on the subject could stand to be expanded.

Southern Farm. Bureau Life Ins. Co. v. Burney, 590 F.Supp. 1016 (E.D.Ark. 1984) is the big case here. In 1976, John Burney of Helena, Arkansas, ran into financial difficulties. On June 11, he was involved in a traffic accident on a bridge crossing the Mississippi River and managed to clamber over the railing and down the bridge into the river, where he swam to Mississippi instead of back home to Arkansas. He caught a bus and spent the next six years living in Florida as “John Bruce,” complete with a new wife and child, neither of whom had any inkling of his former life. He returned to Arkansas in 1982 to visit his father and was discovered. Unfortunately for him, Burley’s wife and business partners had filed claims on various life insurance policies taken out on him and received benefits totaling $470,000. The wife, who may have been annoyed at finding out that her husband had completely abandoned his family and set up another one, contacted the insurer immediately. The insurer was annoyed and promptly sued Burley into next Tuesday.

Here’s where things get interesting for whack-a-mole-type supers: Burley’s wife and business partners, who had no knowledge of Burley’s whereabouts and had assumed that he had died in the accident, wound up a total of $470,000 richer. The judge let them keep that money, theorizing that “the policy of the law is to encourage settlement of litigation and to uphold and enforce contracts of settlement* if they are fairly arrived at, not in contravention of law or public policy.” (Id. at 1022). Burley wound up being found liable for $470,000 plus interest–whether or not he paid is another matter–but the people who received property as a result of his death were permitted to keep it.

The implication here–and there really isn’t much case law beyond this, because most people who are presumed to be dead are actually dead–is that if a person dies or is presumed to be dead, courts are not going to be very eager to disturb the settlement of property distributed via inheritance or devise unless there is a clear statutory reason to do so. Many states have statutes addressing this subject, but they’re all over the place.

– Cal. Prob. Code § 12408 specifies that a person who reappears after being presumed dead may recover any of his estate which has not been distributed, but property that has been distributed is only recoverable if it is “equitable under the circumstances,” and not at all if five years have passed.

– Va. Code Ann. § 64.1-113 provides that property which has not been distributed and property which is in the hands of someone who received it as a result of the presumption of death shall be returned to the person presumed dead, but bona fide purchasers of estate property are allowed to keep it. Pennsylvania takes a different approach.

– 20 Pa.C.S. § 5703 requires that if a person is declared dead in whole or in part on the basis of his continued absence, no property can be distributed out of his estate without the distributee posting a bond for the value of the property. Clearly, a superhero who fears that he may erroneously be declared dead at some point should consider moving to Philadelphia.

– New York doesn’t seem to have a statute on this subject at all, meaning that any property distributed because a person is presumed to have died could be pretty difficult to get back.

So this really becomes a question of the state’s law where our supposedly deceased character’s will or estate would be probated. A returning or resurrected character could find that they get back most of the property they lost, or they could wind up with nothing. The longer they take to come back, the more likely the second outcome is.

*Apparently the insurance company never thought that Burley was dead, but it chose to settle with the claimants rather than fight. The judge reasoned that they had figured the likelihood of Burley actually being alive into their settlement.

22 Comments

Posted in estate law, property law, superheroes

Immortality and the law

Posted on December 3, 2010 by | 44 comments

Is being immortal illegal?

Probably not as such, but living longer than the standard three-score and ten, as many superheros in both major multiverses are wont to do, does create some interesting legal issues.

I. Successive alter-egos

As a preliminary matter, if our immortal has decided not to make his immortality known to the general public, he’s going to need an alter ego, some of the difficulties of which are discussed here. But being immortal adds another wrinkle: you’re going to have to do this on a regular basis. You’ll basically have to ditch your original identity once it becomes clear that you aren’t aging, and then you’ll probably need to do it again every ten to twenty years to avoid the obvious “Why haven’t you aged in the last decade?” sorts of questions. This means completely severing ties with people who don’t know your true identity and coming up with a completely new alter-ego, from scratch, every decade or two.

That compounds the difficulties, because in addition to the standard this-is-a-fraudulent-activity-anyway problems, you’re now replacing a fictional identity with another fictional identity. The odds of someone noticing something strange don’t go up with repeated brushes with the law.

In pre-modern times, this wouldn’t actually have been that big of a deal. Public records were basically non-existent, and proving that you were who you said you were was not really something the law looked too closely at. But with the advent of modern recordkeeping and property registries, this becomes much, much more difficult.

II. The Rule Against Perpetuities

Immortality also raises the specter of a now mostly abandoned feature of property law doctrine which is nonetheless used to torture first-year law students to this very day, the Rule Against Perpetuities. The RAP dates back to early-modern England, when it was realized that aristocratic families were so encumbering their properties with conditions on inheritance that it was becoming impossible to transfer good title to vast swaths of the countryside. In response, the courts imposed a rule that no interest was valid unless it could “vest,” i.e. become a present interest in a living person, within twenty-one years after the death of some person alive when the interest was created. In short, you’re allowed to create interests which vest in your kids, but you can’t perpetually encumber your property such that your grandkids won’t have clear title to the property.

What exactly are we talking about? Well consider a family farm. Say mom ‘n pop are sentimental about the farm, so they leave the farm to their son but put some conditions on it, like so: “To our son, we leave the family farm, but if he ever stops using it as a farm like we did, the farm will revert to the estate.” That would be permitted by the Rule Against Perpetuities, but an attempt to pass that restriction on to their as-yet-unborn grandchildren would probably not.

A lot of states have abandoned the RAP, as hereditary land dynasties are no longer de regeur, and simply administering the RAP was a pain in the neck. Law students are still taught it, more often than not, but no one really runs into this in practice.

Which in the context of any of the comics multiverses wouldn’t necessarily matter, as immortality would play merry hell with the property law even with the RAP. An immortal could easily put all sorts of restrictions on property he sells over the course of his unnaturally long life, creating right of reentry in himself. And because he isn’t going to die, that land would never, ever be able to used for something he didn’t permit, because it is impossible to grant better title to land than you yourself possess, ergo any restrictions placed by an immortal would remain on the property forever. This is clearly less than ideal, and though most superheros would persumably not be dicks about this, one can easily imagine a supervillain really mucking things up that way over time.

III. The Fee Simple and Alter-Egos

But that aside, the actual nature of the fee simple also presents some problems. In normal society, a person accumulates property slowly over the course of their lifespan, perhaps inheriting some from their parents, and then passes whatever they haven’t managed to spend on to their children. It has been this way for all of human history, and even though some families manage to accumulate more wealth than others, but even the longest dynasties die out after a while. The House of Habsburg was the most powerful family in Europe for almost four centuries, but none of its heirs currently occupy any positions of particular influence, and their wealth pales in comparison to newer fortunes. The natural cycle of life and death has ensured a more-or-less orderly transition of property from parents to children since the dawn of time.

But an immortal person could simply go on amassing property forever. The perpetual nature of the fee simple and the power of compound interest mean that even starting from abject poverty, an immortal person could become quite wealthy in a century or two and could become one of the wealthiest in the world if given a thousand years. Exactly why Apocalypse didn’t simply buy every last scrap of available real estate as it came up for sale over the millennia is probably because that would have been boring, but as the best form of land use control is ownership, any number of nefarious plots would be a lot easier to pull off if you just bought the damn planet.

This presents two problems. The first is with anonymity, i.e. creating and maintaining a fictional person who is really one of the richest people in the world just doesn’t work. An immortal who wished to remain largely anonymous would find it difficult to do that while maintaining any significant level of wealth, contributing to the other problems with maintaining an alter-ego. This is not an entirely academic point, as at least some degree of wealth will be necessary to avoid being forced to get a real job. There’s a reason Batman, Tony Stark, etc. have playboy-billionaire alter-egos: it explains how they can afford to spend all of their time running around in exotic suits chasing villains. Being Batman is cool and all, but one of the defining characteristics of being a vigilante is that no one is paying you to do it.

Then there’s the simple fact that owning property requires interacting with it on some level, even if only through intermediaries, and the odds are decent that over the course of maintaining a financial empire, someone is going to notice that you look exactly like you did fifty years ago. Again, if you’re public about your identity, that’s fine, but if you aren’t, this will cause problems.

There are two obvious practical solutions to this issue. The first is to assume that being a superhero is really expensive, which it may well be. Batmobiles don’t come cheap. But Wolverine doesn’t seem to need much more than clothes, motorcycles, and beer to do his thing, so that isn’t a universal solution. The second is to simply be in the business of giving away lots of money on a regular basis so as to avoid accumulating more than a modest fortune. That’s risky–even real estate is no guarantee of future income–but it is potentially workable.

Of course, there’s always the option of faking your own death periodically–or actually dying–and either becoming your own heir or picking up a new, fabulously wealthy patron. That or a continuity reboot.

The second problem with adding immortality to the fee simple is that unless an immortal actually conquers the world, it seems doubtful that he would be permitted to acquire property ad infinitum. Someone is eventually going to notice. Then a bunch of someones, including various state actors, and there’s a good chance the latter will be pissed. Authoritarian governments certainly wouldn’t permit a private citizen to own large chunks of their real estate, and even democratic governments would probably wind up reaching a point where enough is too much. This would raise interesting Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment issues. Seizing or interfering with property interests generally requires compensation under US law, and trying to carve out an exception for that for immortal people who are just too damn rich would raise interesting Equal Protection and discrimination issues, some of which have been discussed elsewhere. But if political pressure were strong enough, the courts and/or legislature would presumably make something up.

IV. Conclusion

So again, while being immortal doesn’t appear illegal as such, it does make keeping a low profile a bit more difficult, and the law would probably wind up making an attempt to literally capitalize on immortality more difficult than it sounds.

44 Comments

Posted in property law

Hearsay and Professor X

Posted on December 3, 2010 by | 34 comments

[Be sure to read the update to this post in Law and the Multiverse Retcon #2!]

This post was inspired by a question on MetaFilter Projects: “Can you write one on the admissibility of evidence obtained through Professor X’s mind-reading abilities? I’m sure it would implicate Fifth amendment issues as well.”  We can analyze this question under the Federal Rules of Evidence.  Be warned: this is a long one.  The short answer: it’s probably admissible, though hearsay is an issue, and the Fifth Amendment is not a problem.

I. Relevance

First we must ask “is the evidence relevant?”  FRE 401 defines relevant evidence as “evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”  This is a very low bar, and FRE 402 provides that relevant evidence is admissible by default.  But the question must still be asked “is a telepath’s claim about the contents of another person’s head relevant?”

I think the answer is yes.  The telepath could be lying, but that’s true of any witness.  The telepath’s credibility must be judged by the fact-finder.

The telepath could be a fraud, but the judge could require that the telepath’s powers be proved prior to offering the substantive evidence.  FRE 901(a) provides “the requirement of authentication or identification as a condition precedent to admissibility is satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims.”  By way of example FRE 901(b)(9) gives “Evidence describing a process or system used to produce a result and showing that the process or system produces an accurate result.”  The accuracy and reliability of a telepath’s power fits that example.

II. Exclusion under FRE 403

Relevant evidence may be excluded “if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury.”  Of these, unfair prejudice is the greatest risk here.

The notes on FRE 403 state that “‘unfair prejudice’ within its context means an undue tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.”  A fact-finder may unfairly prejudice a party by giving undue weight to the testimony of a telepath, possibly completely ignoring the testimony of the original witness.  However, “in reaching a decision whether to exclude on grounds of unfair prejudice, consideration should be given to the probable effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of a limiting instruction.”  It may suffice for the judge to remind the jury that it should also consider the testimony of the original witness.

III. Personal Knowledge

FRE 602 requires that a witness have personal knowledge of the matter being testified about.  This means that a fine but important distinction should be made.  The telepath would not be testifying as to the actual events the original witness had personal knowledge of.  Instead, a telepath would testify about his or her personal knowledge of what he or she read in the original witness’s mind.  It’s the difference between Professor X saying “John Doe shot JR” and “The witness remembers seeing John Doe shoot JR.”  Everything the telepath testifies about is ultimately coming through the lens of the original witness’s senses, understanding, and memory.

IV. Hearsay

Now we come to one of the biggies.  The general rule under FRE 801 is that “‘Hearsay’ is [an oral or written assertion or nonverbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by the person as an assertion], other than one made by [the person who made the statement] while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”

A complicated definition, to be sure, but maybe we don’t have to address it.  A person’s thoughts are not an oral or written assertion, nor are they a nonverbal action intended as an assertion.  Of course, it is likely that in a universe with psychics and telepaths the Federal Rules of Evidence would be amended to include thoughts.  Given that, let’s complete the hearsay analysis.

Assuming thoughts fit the first part of the definition, then we know the second part fits as well, since the telepath is not the person who made the statement.  The final part is whether the telepath’s testimony is offered to prove the matter asserted.  For example, when Professor X says “The witness remembers that John Doe shot JR,” is that being offered to prove that John Doe did, in fact, shoot JR?  If it is, then it is hearsay and inadmissible unless it falls under one of the exemptions or exceptions (which are beyond the scope of this post).  I will just say that there are many such exemptions and exceptions and that the hearsay rule would not exclude much of any importance.

V. The Fifth Amendment

Amongst other things, the Fifth Amendment protects a person’s right not to “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”  This right has some important boundaries, however.  The way in which many people think of the Fifth Amendment, “pleading the Fifth,” only extends to testimony by the witness at a legal proceeding.  A telepath’s testimony regarding the thoughts of another is not the same as the person’s own testimony.  It is the difference between “I shot JR” and “The defendant remembers shooting JR.”  So that aspect of the Fifth Amendment would not apply.

However, there is another aspect of the Fifth Amendment, which is the general right to remain silent. That right excludes confessions obtained without first informing a person of his or her right to remain silent during custodial interrogation (i.e. when the person is not free to leave).  However, the rule only applies to statements.  Other kinds of incriminating information may be extracted, such as fingerprints, mugshots, and DNA samples.  A telepath’s reading of a person’s thoughts would arguably fall under the latter, non-statement category.

VI. Conclusion

A telepath or psychic such as Professor X could read a criminal suspect or defendant’s mind, and the information thus learned would likely be admissible evidence and would not implicate a person’s Fifth Amendment rights.  During a regular trial the hearsay rule might exclude some such testimony, but much of it would fall under an exemption or exception.

34 Comments

Posted in evidence, superheroes, X-Men

Federalism and the Keene Act

Posted on December 1, 2010 by | 41 comments

The Keene Act is a federal law in the Watchmen universe that prohibits “costumed adventuring.”  But it would it actually pass Constitutional muster?

The United States Congress does not have what is called a general police power; its powers are specified in the Constitution and anything not so specified is reserved to the states and the people by the 10th Amendment.  So for the Keene Act to be constitutional, there must be some justification for it in the Constitution.  Let’s take a look at the options.

First, let’s dispose of some powers that definitely don’t fit.  The spending power can be used to force states to pass laws that the federal government couldn’t pass itself by threatening to withhold federal funding.  South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987).  The spending power is general enough that it could address this issue, but the Keene Act seems to be a self-contained piece of federal legislation, not a coercive act designed to prompt action by the states.  So while Congress could use the spending power to require the passage of state-level costumed adventuring bans (by, e.g., threatening to withhold law enforcement funding), that doesn’t seem to be the approach used in the Watchmen universe.

One route to making something a federal crime is to limit it to cases involving federal land, property, employees, etc, but the Keene Act seems too general for that.  No, we must go big, and that means the Commerce Clause.

The Commerce Clause is the mainstay of modern congressional authority.  Although it does have some limits (see, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 US 598 (2000)) the scope of the Commerce Clause has expanded greatly over the past century.  I think it could form the basis of the Keene Act.

The Commerce Clause is limited to interstate commerce, but there is an interstate market for crime prevention and investigation services (e.g., private security firms, private investigators, bounty hunters).  Firms and individuals involved in this market routinely work across state lines.  The Keene Act could be based on requiring, for example, that anyone working in such a market do so under their real identities.  The legitimate government interest would be the safety of consumers of such services; it is valuable for consumers of such services to know who they are dealing with.  Thus the Keene Act could satisfy rational basis review under the Commerce Clause.

It should be noted that the fact that costumed adventurers actually provide their service for free and often without contracting with clients is of no account, as is the fact that they may work only within one state.  The Commerce Clause extends to non-commercial transactions and even intra-state activities as long as doing so is necessary to make the interstate regulation effective.  Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005).  If the local or non-commercial activity affects the interstate market, the Commerce Clause can reach it.  545 U.S. at 19.  The existence of costumed adventurers no doubt affected the market for regular security firms, private investigators, and bounty hunters.  If the aggregate impact on the market was substantial or significant, then that is enough.  Id. at 19-20.

This may seem like an extreme take on the Commerce Clause, but let us recall that this is the same universe in which Richard Nixon essentially became President-for-Life.  The federal government of the Watchmen universe is likely to be very powerful indeed, and that means a broad Commerce Clause.

[Credit: This post was inspired by this comment by Will Frank.]

41 Comments

Posted in constitutional law, superheroes, Watchmen

Superheros and alter-egos

Posted on December 1, 2010 by | 38 comments

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Clark Kent is Superman. Tony Stark is Ironman. Peter Parker is Spiderman.

And so it goes. Throughout the various multiverses, numerous superheroes have maintained alter-egos, either to protect their “normal” lives and loved ones or to disguise their true natures. Sometimes both.

Either way, the idea of an alter-ego comes with certain legal complications, as has been recognized long before the publication of the first comic book. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, first published in 1886, one of the main plot drivers is Jekyll’s pains to ensure that he maintains access to his property when he changes into Hyde. This largely took the form of instructing his servants to pay heed to Hyde and executing a will leaving everything to Hyde should Jekyll disappear.

Legally, there is no reason Jekyll could not do this. The fee simple gives a property owner the right to dispose of his property in any legal way that he sees fit. The problem is not that Jekyll’s design was illegal, but that it was unusual, to the point that people noticed something was up. Indeed, it was the very attempt to create and maintain this alter-ego which led to the discovery of his dual identity. If Jekyll/Hyde had been content to live two entirely different identities with no overlapping property or affairs, i.e. if Hyde had been willing to forego all of Jekyll’s advantages, the story could have ended quite differently.

So the problem is not only in the creation of an alter-ego, but doing so within the bounds of the law in ways that will maintain the integrity of the illusion. Both of these will cause problems on a number of levels.

I. Legal Status

The relationship between one’s “mundane” and “masked” identities is significant. If one starts life as a mundane person and then acquires a masked identity, e.g. Bruce Wayne becoming Batman, things are fairly straightforward, as one already has a full-fledged legal identity. But simply creating a new person out of whole cloth, as one would need to do if one were creating a new cover identity or faking one’s own death, is more difficult. Governments do this for people on a regular basis for things like witness protection programs, espionage, undercover operations, etc., but there are two main facts about this which present problems for our superheros. First, government-created identities are obviously created with government approval, so no laws are being broken. Second, these identities are rarely intended to be used either for significant transactional purposes or for very long, i.e. they are not intended to fully or permanently replace the original identity.

The basic problem then is that to create a new identity without government authorization requires the commission of a number of felonies, potentially including making false immigration statements (18 U.S.C. 1015), identification document fraud (18 U.S.C. 1028), perjury (18 U.S.C. 1621) and numerous related offenses under state law. And trying to live in contemporary society without such documents will be very, very difficult. One cannot buy a car, rent an apartment, get a checking account, or engage in a host of transactions essential to the logistics of mundane life without some form of government identification, identification which a superhero wanting to create a new mundane identity for his masked persona would need to forge. Creating successive false identities all but requires one to engage in illegal activities. So much for being a law abiding citizen.

All of these may seem trivial, but Al Capone was eventually brought down, not for racketeering or the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but for simple tax evasion. And if the illegality is not problem enough in its own right, these sorts of illegalities do tend to attract enough attention to make maintaining a secret identity pretty difficult, particularly if one wishes to maintain some kind of base-level commitment to law and order.

II. Money Laundering

Speaking of taxes, transferring large sums of money without a paper trail is difficult to do legally. Money laundering is a federal offense, and suggestions of financial shadiness tend to attract the attention of prosecutors. Jumping through offshore banks is no guarantee of secrecy: the discipline of forensic accounting exists almost solely to analyze patterns of financial transactions for irregularities. Even cash transactions are no solution, as transactions over $10,000 must be reported to regulators and paying for anything more than $500 with cash will be reported as suspicious. So while the money being “dirty” in some sense, i.e. representing the proceeds of or being used for some unlawful activity (18 U.S.C. 1956) for disguising the origin and ownership of funds to be a felony, simply the attempt to disguise it is likely to raise red flags all over the place, because most of the people engaged in that sort of activity are doing so for nefarious reasons. If our superhero or an artificial “mundane” persona is going to need to spend any money, this poses problems of the sort which could easily trigger an IRS audit. As the Joker observed at one point, “I’m crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? No, thank you!” So again, it seems that our some of our heroes are faced with a difficult choice: maintain their secret identity or live within the bounds of the law, but even breaking the law in this way is no guarantee of success.

III. Evidence and the Sixth Amendment

Unfortunately, unless a hero plans to kill every villain with whom they come into conflict, bringing said villains to justice is actually made a lot more difficult the more a masked hero is involved in the case. It turns out that wearing a particular costume or uniform, which is how superheros and villains are normally identified in comic books, does not actually count as evidence that the person wearing them is, in fact, the same person all the time.

This is significant, because the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment reads “[I]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right. . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” The goal of the Confrontation Clause, as stated by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), is to “preserve reliability of evidence” by establishing procedures so that “reliability [may] be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination.”

A witness whose identity cannot be definitively established would likely be useless as a witness. Courts and legislatures have made exceptions to the Confrontation Clause for situations like child witnesses against their abusers, but these are mostly limited to permitting the child, visible to the court, to testify via closed-circuit TV so that they do not have to see the accuser. There is no precedent to suggest that an essentially anonymous person or a person operating under a known or obvious alias would be permitted to testify in court without revealing their actual legal identity. A clever defense attorney could easily point out that we don’t even let witnesses in the witness protection program testify in open court while disguised; why should we let a superhero?

The Sixth Amendment aside, it is not clear that the Federal Rules of Evidence would permit a masked person to testify at all. Federal Rule of Evidence 602 reads, in part, as follows:”A witness may not testify to a matter unless evidence is introduced sufficient to support a finding that the witness has personal knowledge of the matter.” It will be much more difficult to prove that a masked person was a witness to a particular event when there may be no evidence that the masked person on the stand is the same masked person who allegedly saw what he claims to have seen. It is common practice for attorneys to ask a few simple questions such as name, address, age, etc. to establish a witness’ identity before proceeding to elicit testimony. Such questions would be impractical for a masked person to answer without revealing their identity, and a refusal to do that might well cause a judge to exclude their testimony entirely. Again, we don’t let traditional witnesses disguise themselves, and there isn’t any obvious legal reason that a superhero should be an exception to that rule. As the FRE apply to both criminal and civil cases, so this could be a problem even when the Sixth Amendment does not apply. Something like Peter Parker taking pictures of Spiderman’s exploits might help, but again, someone needs to be able to testify as to the veracity of those pictures, and that would mean testifying about their origin under oath.

This is a legal problem inherent to the maintenance of an alter-ego of any sort. Even a person who starts life as a mundane and then dons a mask to fight crime will run into this.

IV. Conclusion

So creating a superhero creating an alter-ego is a bit more legally complicated than it might seem. In addition to the problems of actually creating one in the first place, the logistics of maintaining the persona are significant, especially when trying to do so legally. But even the simplest alter-ego, the normal person who occasionally fights crime as a masked crusader, will run into legal problems if they are called to testify to what they have seen.

38 Comments

Posted in Batman, civil procedure, criminal law, criminal procedure, superheroes

Is Batman a State Actor?

Posted on November 30, 2010 by | 87 comments

Constitutional limitations on things like censorship, discrimination, and search and seizure do not apply to private individuals but rather to the federal government and, in some cases, to the states.  (The Thirteenth Amendment is a rare exception that applies to individuals).  As a result, evidence that a superhero obtains by breaking into a villain’s headquarters is admissible even though it was obtained illegally.  See, Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465 (1921).  And since it doesn’t invoke the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, any additional evidence obtained via the original evidence would also be admissible.

But what about superheroes like Batman who work in close cooperation with the police?  Could they fairly be described as state actors, thus triggering a whole spate of Constitutional protections?  I think the answer may be yes.

In Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co. the Supreme Court gave a two-part test for whether the conduct of a private party could be fairly attributable to a state, thus implying state action:

First, the deprivation must be caused by the exercise of some right or privilege created by the State or by a rule of conduct imposed by the State or by a person for whom the State is responsible….Second, the party charged with the deprivation must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor. This may be because he is a state official, because he has acted together with or has obtained significant aid from state officials, or because his conduct is otherwise chargeable to the State. Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922, 937 (1982).

In Batman’s case, Commissioner Gordon is certainly a person for whom the State is responsible, and Batman often acts together with Gordon and obtains significant aid from Gordon in the form of information and evidence.  Batman’s conduct is also otherwise chargeable to the State because the Gotham Police Department has worked with Batman on numerous occasions (and thus knows his methods) and operates the Bat Signal, expressly invoking Batman’s assistance in a traditionally public function.  This suggests state action under the public function theory: “when private individuals or groups are endowed by the State with powers or functions governmental in nature, they become agencies or instrumentalities of the State and subject to its constitutional limitations.”  Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 299 (1966).

In the real world, this would cause significant problems for Batman and Gotham.  Batman’s rough and tumble style would lead to a rash of Section 1983 claims for damages and probably also for an injunction against Batman’s future cooperation in police investigations.  As discussed earlier, most evidence that Batman collects would be inadmissible, and police use of that evidence might bar the use of additional evidence collected during a subsequent police investigation.

Now, clearly none of this is the case, so there are three possibilities.  Either all of the criminals in Gotham have incompetent attorneys, the state action doctrine in the DC universe is weaker than it is in the real world, or Gordon has actually managed to keep his reliance on Batman a secret.  I’m going to opt for the second explanation.  Superheroes like Batman are simply too effective for a court to shackle them with the Constitutional limitations of the state, especially with supervillains running around.  Perhaps the DC universe courts have developed a public emergency or necessity exception to the state action doctrine whereby private individuals pressed into public service in an emergency are not held to the same standards as ordinary state actors.

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Posted in Batman, civil rights, criminal procedure, superheroes

Mutants and Anti-Discrimination Laws, Part Three

Posted on November 30, 2010 by | 14 comments

We’ve previously discussed two potential approaches for protecting mutants and other innately superpowered beings from discrimination.  But legal protection can be a double-edged sword for organizations that cater to mutants exclusively.  If organizations couldn’t discriminate on the basis of mutant status, would the Xavier Institute be forced to take in non-mutants?  Would S.H.I.E.L.D. be forced to hire regular people?  Probably not, but they might have to do a little restructuring to maintain their exclusivity.

(Before we get into the details, I realize the Xavier Institute no longer exists as such, but let’s assume the mutant civil rights campaign was successful pre-“Messiah Complex.”)

If the Xavier Institute is a private school that takes no public funding, then it has more leeway to discriminate, albeit with potential repercussions such as loss of its tax exempt status (assuming that the Institute is organized as a non-profit in the first place).  See, Bob Jones Univ. v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983).  If the Institute takes public funding, however, then it will generally be required not to discriminate:

The private school that closes its doors to defined groups of students on the basis of constitutionally suspect criteria manifests, by its own actions, that its educational processes are based on private belief that segregation is desirable in education. There is no reason to discriminate against students for reasons wholly unrelated to individual merit unless the artificial barriers are considered an essential part of the educational message to be communicated to the students who are admitted. Such private bias is not barred by the Constitution, nor does it invoke any sanction of laws. but neither can it call on the Constitution for material aid from the State. Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 469 (1973).

It could be argued that mutant status is related to individual merit, and that the special curriculum of the Xavier Institute would be of little use to a non-mutant student, but that argument cuts both ways.  If it is permissible for the Xavier Institute to discriminate in favor of mutants because it is a school for special students, then it would also be permissible for a regular school to discriminate against mutants because it is a school for typical students.

No, the most likely result is that the Xavier Institute would have to rely on private funding or open its doors to non-mutant children.  My guess is that, given society’s attitude towards mutants, few parents would send their non-mutant children there, especially since much of the curriculum would be of no use to them (e.g. Northstar’s flying class) and the super-genius mutants probably wreck the grading curve for the normal classes.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is a different story altogether.  Unlike most superhero groups, S.H.I.E.L.D. is a part of the U.S. government.  Groups like the X-Men and the JLA are presumably private organizations that do not even employ their members, so they are free to discriminate as they wish.  Private clubs can even avoid the requirements of the ADA, which is important when designing superhero bases.  42 USC 12187.  If S.H.I.E.L.D. and the US government want to avoid a discrimination suit, it will have to take some precautions.

The Federal government has specific rules that it must follow when employing people.  These rules are part of the civil service or “merit system.”  The first principle is:

Recruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society, and selection and advancement should be determined solely on the basis of relative ability, knowledge, and skills, after fair and open competition which assures that all receive equal opportunity. 5 USC 2301(b)(1).

As you can see, S.H.I.E.L.D. has room to prefer those with superpowers where such powers are relevant to the job (i.e. a bona fide occupational qualification).  The problem is that superhuman abilities are not actually a requirement of being an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Numerous S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, although plainly very skilled, are not superhuman, at least not inherently (e.g., Nick Fury, Tony Stark, Clay Quartermain).  This may make it difficult for S.H.I.E.L.D. to preferentially hire people with superpowers except when a position requires a particular ability (e.g. the Psi-Division).

There is an outlet, though.  Not all civil service positions are covered by the merit system: “‘covered position’…does not include any position which is…excluded from the coverage of this section by the President based on a determination by the President that it is necessary and warranted by conditions of good administration.” 5 USC 2302(a)(2)(B).  As long as the President signs off on a given position before a new agent is brought on board, S.H.I.E.L.D. is free to hire whomever it wishes.

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Posted in civil rights

Law and the Zombie Apocalypse

Posted on November 28, 2010 by | 25 comments

Characters in post-apocalyptic scenarios often resort to drastic measures to survive, but are they legally justified?  While the law recognizes a defense of necessity, the defense has limits.  In particular, murder (perhaps in the form of cannibalism) cannot be justified by necessity.

In The Walking Dead characters engage in cannibalism to survive.  In the lawless environment of the comics & TV series, this seems justified, but what if law and order were restored?  There is no statute of limitations for murder, and as it turns out, even the necessity of survival does not justify cannibalism.  Note that I’m talking about cannibalism that involves killing a person, not eating someone who died from other causes.

In the law-school-famous* case of R. v Dudley and Stephens, 14 QBD 273 DC (1884), it was held that necessity is not a defense to murder.  In that case, four shipwrecked men adrift in a lifeboat eventually resorted to killing and eating the youngest and weakest of the crew.  The three remaining men were picked up, whereupon they admitted what happened.  Two were charged with and convicted of murder and sentenced to death, though the appellate judge expected mercy, and indeed they were only sentenced to six months imprisonment.  The third survivor, who had been less keen on the scheme, was not charged so that he could be called as a witness, though he had also eaten the victim.

The shipwreck case is analogous to a post-apocalyptic situation in many ways.  The legal system is effectively suspended, the chances of survival are remote, and cannibalism may be a literal necessity.  But while the defense of necessity may excuse trespassing, looting, and a multitude of other sins, murder remains beyond the pale.

* Law school famous is like internet famous but for law students and lawyers.

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Posted in criminal law, zombies

Mutants and Anti-Discrimination Laws, Part Two

Posted on November 19, 2010 by | 13 comments

In the previous post we considered whether discrimination against mutants was constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and concluded that it probably was.  In this post we take a look at substantive due process and whether mutants are a “discrete and insular minority.”

Substantive due process rights are derived from the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  While we ordinarily think of due process as being about, well, procedural rights (e.g. the right to a hearing), substantive due process protects rights held to be fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty or deeply rooted in American history and traditions. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036 (2010).  An example of such rights that is relevant here are “the rights of ‘discrete and insular minorities’ — groups that may face systematic barriers in the political system.”  130 S. Ct. at 3101. When a law implicates such a right, the courts apply a strict scrutiny standard.

But the courts do not recognize new substantive due process rights lightly.  “Recognizing a new liberty right is a momentous step. It takes that right, to a considerable extent, outside the arena of public debate and legislative action.”  Id.  However, “[s]ometimes that momentous step must be taken; some fundamental aspects of personhood, dignity, and the like do not vary from State to State, and demand a baseline level of protection. But sensitivity to the interaction between the intrinsic aspects of liberty and the practical realities of contemporary society provides an important tool for guiding judicial discretion.” Id.

So the questions are raised: are mutants a discrete and insular minority?  do they face systematic barriers in the political system?  do anti-mutant laws threaten fundamental aspects of personhood or dignity that demand a baseline level of protection?  I think the answer to all of these questions is yes.  Although anti-mutant discrimination is a relatively new phenomenon, it has existed essentially as long as mutants have.  Such discrimination is pervasive, sometimes violent, and often backed by the authority of the state.  In at least one case it has even lead to the wholesale enslavement of mutants.  The discrimination goes to the mutants’ very humanity, and there can hardly be a more fundamental aspect of personhood or dignity than that.

So while the argument under the Equal Protection Clause may be somewhat weak, I think there may be a stronger argument under the Due Process Clause.  Did any X-Men series ever address a court challenge to anti-mutant laws?  For a couple hundred thousand dollars in legal fees the X-Men could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

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Posted in civil rights, X-Men

Mutants and Anti-Discrimination Laws, Part One

Posted on November 19, 2010 by | 6 comments

Discrimination against superheroes, particularly mutants, is a perennial problem in the Marvel universe, but there’s an argument to be made that the existing constitutional anti-discrimination framework would protect mutants.  First we consider the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.  In a follow-up post we’ll discuss substantive due process.

The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment states that “No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”  The Supreme Court has held that “[t]he general rule is that legislation is presumed to be valid and will be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate state interest….The general rule gives way, however, when a statute classifies by race, alienage, or national origin. These factors are so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy — a view that those in the burdened class are not as worthy or deserving as others. For these reasons and because such discrimination is unlikely to be soon rectified by legislative means, these laws are subjected to strict scrutiny and will be sustained only if they are suitably tailored to serve a compelling state interest.” Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, 473 U.S. 432, 440 (1985).

The Court has also held that other classifications (sex and legitimacy of birth) are subject to a heightened standard called intermediate scrutiny.  “[W]hat differentiates sex from such nonsuspect statutes as intelligence or physical disability…is that the sex characteristic frequently bears no relation to ability to perform or contribute to society. Rather than resting on meaningful considerations, statutes distributing benefits and burdens between the sexes in different ways very likely reflect outmoded notions of the relative capabilities of men and women….Because illegitimacy is beyond the individual’s control and bears no relation to the individual’s ability to participate in and contribute to society, official discriminations resting on that characteristic are also subject to somewhat heightened review.”  473 U.S. at 440-41 (internal citations and quotations omitted).

“So far, so good,” you may be thinking.  After all, discrimination on the basis of mutant status is often based on “prejudice and antipathy” and unlikely to be rectified by legislative means because mutants are such a small minority.  Or, at the very least, mutant status is “beyond the individual’s control and bears no relation to the individual’s ability to participate in and contribute to society,” at least inasmuch as mutants are generally equal to or superior to typical humans in every way.

Alas it is not that easy.  First, unlike the problems of discrimination on the basis of race, citizenship, national origin, sex, and legitimacy, discrimination on the basis of mutation is a relatively new phenomenon, only a few decades old.  A court may be unwilling to conclude that it is a problem unlikely to be rectified by legislative means without giving the issue more time to develop.  Second, from a legal perspective mutation would indeed bear a relation to an individual’s ability to participate in and contribute to society.  For example, one could easily imagine jobs that particular mutants could do much better than a typical human.   However, let’s continue with the Cleburne case for an example of the Supreme Court declining heightened protection to a class and see if mutation fits the mold.

The Cleburne case was about discrimination against people with mental disabilities (basically the City of Cleburne had an ordinance that required a special zoning permit for the operation of a group home for the mentally disabled).  The Fifth Circuit held that mental disability was a quasi-suspect-classification due at least some heightened scrutiny, but the Supreme Court disagreed.  First, it held that mental disability was a highly variable condition requiring carefully tailored solutions not befitting the judiciary.  Id. at 442. Second, it held that cities and states were addressing mental disabilities in a way that did not demonstrate antipathy or prejudice.  Id. at 443. Third, the existence of positive legislation indicated that the mentally disabled were not politically powerless. Id. at 445. Fourth, if the Court recognized mental disability as a suspect class it would have to do the same for “a variety of other groups who have perhaps immutable disabilities setting them off from others, who cannot themselves mandate the desired legislative responses, and who can claim some degree of prejudice from at least part of the public at large[, such as] the aging, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the infirm. We are reluctant to set out on that course, and we decline to do so.” Id. at 445-46.

So we can see that while some of this decision cuts in favor of mutants (the second and third points are lacking in the case of mutants), the first and fourth points cut against them.  Mutation is indeed a highly variable condition, and arguably it is “a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary.”  Id. at 443.  And making mutation a suspect class would open a door the Supreme Court explicitly declined to open in Cleburne.  Given the Court’s current reluctance to embrace homosexuality as a suspect class, it’s questionable whether it would do so for mutants.  In the next post we’ll consider whether substantive due process offers a better argument.

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Posted in civil rights, X-Men