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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January 19th, 2014
Vermont is considering two pieces of legislation to seek the prevention of wrongful convictions. One bill would require blind lineups "in which the officer conducting them doesn’t know which participant is the suspect and therefore can’t influence the witness," The Rutland Herald reports. The other bill would call for taping police interogations in homicide and sexual-assault interrogations, the paper further reports. Continue Reading
January 19th, 2014
Here's an excerpt of a story I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford's oral history project documenting Jewish lawyers and judges in Connecticut:
When Gerry Roisman graduated law school in 1962, one of the partners at the law firm where his mother worked as a legal secretary said he would help Roisman find a job.
As he sat in the partner's office, Roisman listened as the... Continue Reading
January 18th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in two cases on whether police making an arrest must get a warrant before searching a suspect's mobile phone, Bloomberg reports. "More than 90 percent of American adults own mobile phones, giving the cases broad practical significance. The outcome also may hint at how the justices would view the National Security Agency’s telephone-data program, an issue likely bound for the high court,... Continue Reading
January 17th, 2014
Pennsylvania's voter ID law has been struck down, The Legal Intelligencer's Sara Spencer reports. The judge reasoned: “'The right to vote, fundamental in Pennsylvania, is irreplaceable, necessitating its protection before any deprivation occurs. Deprivation of the franchise is neither compensable nor replaceable by after-the-fact legal remedies, necessitating injunctive and declaratory relief,'" Spencer writes. Oddly... Continue Reading
January 17th, 2014
Judge Steven W. Rhodes of United States Bankruptcy Court blocked Detroit's plan to "pay $165 million to two big banks to extricate itself from some long-term financial contracts that have been costing the bankrupt city tens of millions of dollars a year," The New York Times reports. The judge said that the payment is too expensive.
The judge's rejection of the payout was a surprise, The Times further reports. The judge... Continue Reading
January 17th, 2014
President Obama finally weighed in on where the line should be drawn between surveillance and privacy in a speech today. The New York Times reports: the president "will require intelligence agencies to obtain permission from a secret court before tapping into a vast storehouse of telephone data, and will ultimately move that data out of the hands of the government."
The president also said surveillance of foreign leaders will be... Continue Reading
January 16th, 2014
Philadelphia City Paper cross-posted my report on how the city of Philadelphia is back to square one in its plan to develop an Office of Conflict Counsel to represent criminal defendants and family-court defendants when the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Community Legal Services or the Support Center for Child Advocates is already representing another person in the case. An excerpt:
The city of Philadelphia will not be entering... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
The Legal Intelligencer's Gina Passarella (my former cubicle-mate!) reports on a Commonwealth Court ruling today that the Pennsylvania Senate must disclose legal bills as well as client names for the attorneys hired by the legislative chamber to represent former state Senator Robert J. Mellow and other Democratic caucus employees. "After already determining attorney-client privilege doesn’t protect from disclosure of client... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
The city of Philadelphia is not going to be entering a contract right away to start a for-profit Office of Conflict Counsel after all.
Mayor Michael A. Nutter's press secretary, Mark McDonald, said in an email that the winning bidder did not have the same name in place at the start of the process as at the end of the process, so the contract can't be issued legally.
Philadelphia attorney Daniel-Paul Alva was the winner of the bid... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
John Bates, the former presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, has "warned against a proposal to include in the court's proceedings an outside privacy and civil liberties advocate, who might take positions counter to the government when it seeks permission to collect huge swaths of Internet traffic, email addresses, and phone communications," Foreign Policy reports.
Bates, in consultation with other... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
The Wall Street Journal reports on the options that the FCC still has to ensure that Internet content is treated equally and neutrally after the D.C. Circuit ruled yesterday the governmental agency's net neutrality-rules overstepped its authority. One option would be to reclassify broadband providers as common carriers because "'the Communications Act doesn’t clearly address broadband providers, which means their regulatory... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision on whether it is constitutional for the president to make appointments during legislative recesses will not only have a big impact on the separation of powers. A decision rejecting recess appointments will upend hundreds of labor disputes decided by the National Labor Relations Board, The Washington Post reports. '“Regardless of whether you’re in the business community or organized labor,... Continue Reading
January 15th, 2014
While only 24 percent of people purchasing health insurance through the federal exchange are between the age of 18 and 34 (which is 14 percentage points lower than what the law needs to keep premiums low), The Washington Post's Ezra Kkein reports that younger, healthier people tend to sign up only when the penalty is about to hit. This enrollment behavior happened when Massachusetts rolled out its state insurance exchange. " Obamacare... Continue Reading
January 14th, 2014
New York Times reporter James Risen, who federal prosecutors are seeking to have identify his confidential sources in a criminal case against an alleged CIA leaker, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether he is entitled to reporters privilege, Politico reports. At issue Risen's counsel argued in the petition is if journalists have a a qualified First Amendment privilege regarding confidential sources in criminal trials and if... Continue Reading
January 14th, 2014
Another state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage has been struck down. A federal judge ruled today that Oklahoma's ban on same-sex marriage violates the guarantee of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution, USA Today reports. The ban, the judge reasoned is "'an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit,"' USA Today further reports. The ruling, unlike a... Continue Reading
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