Cultivated Compendium is my personal website with the occasional link to my reporting and to important, cutting-edge or interesting legal news.
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News and Reporting
June 22nd, 2014
While the federal government is planning a significant expansion of benefits for same-sex spouses, federal laws bar the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Social Security Administration from extending some benefits, the Wall Street Journal reports. Benefits will mostly only extend to spouses that live in states that recognize their marriages.
June 22nd, 2014
The Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments last week on a case of first impression: does California's procedure for consolidating mass torts violate the federal Class Action Fairness Act? While two drug companies argued federal law requires mass torts be tried in federal court, the Ninth Circuit panel appeared reluctant to accept that view, The National Law Journal's Amanda Bronstad reports. The plaintiffs sought to coordinate the cases in... Continue Reading
June 21st, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that software based on an abstract idea isn't eligible for patent protection, Politico reports. The decision in Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International did not end the patentability of all software nor provide a clearer test for when software can be patented, Politico further reports. Continue Reading
June 20th, 2014
Kentucky is the latest state to consider legislation to prohibit the warrantless use of drones by law enforcement, the Kentucky Enquirer reports. A Northern Kentucky legislator is reintroducing a bill to bar law enforcement agencies from using drones to gather evidence without warrants. Fourteen states have passed laws limiting the use of drones, the Enquirer reports.
Meanwhile, there are three drone bills pending in Pennsylvania, including... Continue Reading
June 18th, 2014
Only 352 of 15,000 New York City residents seeking aid to fix homes wrecked by Superstorm Sandy have received federal assistance so far, Wall Street Journal said. The aid has been "slowed by a combination of federal rules invoked to prevent fraud and misspending after Hurricane Katrina, local rules, and certain missteps by local officials and contractors," WSJ reports. Aid also has been very slow on the New Jersey Shore. Continue Reading
June 17th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court will not take up Argentina's appeal over a judgment requiring it to pay investors in its defaulted bonds, Agence France-Presse reports. The investors refused to participate in the restructuring of the debt on which Argentina defaulted in 2001.
One issue was whether Argentina has to turn over information about its government assets held in the United States, and the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Foreign... Continue Reading
June 17th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in a criminal case involving the free speech rights of a criminal defendant who used threatening language in the form of rap lyrics on Facebook, the Associated Press reports. (I covered the trial of Anthony Elonis when I worked for the Legal Intelligencer, Pennsylvania's legal newspaper.)
Federal prosecutors successfully got the district judge to apply an objective... Continue Reading
June 17th, 2014
The Seventh Circuit has overturned a "landmark order requiring the government to show defense lawyers foreign-intelligence-related surveillance on how a terrorism investigation developed," Politico's Josh Gerstein reports. Judge Richard Posner reasoned that "'the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to strike a balance between the interest in full openness of legal proceedings and the interest in... Continue Reading
June 17th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that two conservative groups have standing to challenge an Ohio law that penalizes false statements made about political candidates, Reuters' Lawrence Hurley reports. The challenge can be pursued even though the Ohio Elections Commission has not said whether it would seek to penalize Susan B. Anthony List and another group. Here is coverage I did for the Supreme Court Review podcast of the oral arguments in... Continue Reading
June 16th, 2014
Two separate reports are showing the privacy issues raised by the growing use of drones.
The Hartford Courant's Kelly Glista reports about how a beachgoer called the police because a teenager was flying his drone at the public park. He wasn't breaking any laws, but the incident raised the question of what expectation of privacy people have in a public place: "The right to personal privacy is both profoundly valued and... Continue Reading
June 15th, 2014
If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the theory that share prices reflect all publicly available information and that there is a fraud on the market when corporations misrepresent the truth publicly, major companies in the banking, pharmaceutical and casino industries would benefit, Reuters reports.
At least during oral argument, it seemed that the justices weren't in favor of completely overthrowing the fraud on the market... Continue Reading
June 14th, 2014
ProPublica's Julia Angwin reported this week on how marketers' tracking of customers is getting more intrusive: "Online marketers are increasingly seeking to track users offline, as well, by collecting data about people's offline habits—such as recent purchases, where you live, how many kids you have, and what kind of car you drive."
Angwin goes on to explain how it works: after sharing your e-mail address with a... Continue Reading
June 13th, 2014
Law professor Ingrid Wuerth, writing in Lawfare, says that the U.S. Supreme Court showed in its recent ruling in Bond v. United States that Chief Justice Roberts' court is showing less deference to the executive branch in interpreting foreign relations matters.
At issue was a woman's conviction under an international chemical-weapons treaty when she put an arsenic-based poison on the mailbox of her husband's... Continue Reading
June 13th, 2014
There is a growing movement to have dogs provide comfort to distraught victims or other witnesses testifying in court. In an issue of first impression, a Connecticut appellate court has joined a handful of other courts that have said that dogs can come into the courtroom under certain circumstances. Here's the piece I wrote and that was published by the Connecticut Law Tribune:
Dogs in court are a growing national... Continue Reading
June 13th, 2014
David Zvenyach, GC to the Council of the District of Columbia, is using an application written in JavaScript to crawl the U.S. Supreme Court's opinions to find changes made without notice to the public, Gigaom reports.
The New York Times' Adam Liptak recently reported on how the justices are surreptiously changing their opinions after they have been issued, sometimes replacing language with something entirely different.
Changes... Continue Reading
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