3L wins national award for law review note on spam

Third-year law student Jeremiah Kelman (pictured left) has received the 2005 Scribes Award for best law review note in the nation. The award, sponsored by the American Society of Writers on Legal Subjects, recognizes the most outstanding law review note published by a student in a student-edited law review. Kelman is the first USC student to win since the award was established in 1987.

Kelman’s note, “E-Nuisance: Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail at the Boundaries of Common Law Property Rights,” was published in the November 2004 edition of the Southern California Law Review. The article examines whether common law nuisance could be used to help stem the onslaught of spam.

“When I was trying to come up with an idea for my note, I thought about spam because, well, like everyone, I get a lot of it,” said Kelman, who has a professional background in Web design. “An analogy popped into my head: Spam is a lot like someone throwing a huge barrage of annoying flyers through an open window in someone’s house. Opening your window, of course, does not give others the right to throw things through it. Like an open window, I thought that the inbox could be viewed as a conduit for intangible invasions to property.”

Kelman’s note argues that nuisance law’s flexibility in covering intangibles like odors, sounds, sights and fears could offer a legal remedy for spam, depending on the gravity of the harm inflicted by unsolicited e-mail and the legitimacy of the e-mail’s purpose. But, ultimately, Kelman concludes that responsibility for stopping spam lies with lawmakers and software designers. “The most successful solution,” he writes, “will come from rewriting the protocols behind the Web and e-mail system.”