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
November 1st, 2013
Legislators may vote on same-sex marriage next week, according to GateHouse Media: "Advocates for same-sex marriage in Illinois say they're ready for a vote next week. It's been months of energetic lobbying, but there are signals lawmakers may be prepared for a tally after the measure was set aside earlier this year." Continue Reading
October 31st, 2013
The maker of a mockbuster film about hobbits didn't have any luck in arguing that they weren't infringing on the trademarked fictional creatures from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Global Asylum tried to argue that it was fair use to make a film referencing hobbits because it's a "reference to a real-life human subspecies, Homo Floresiensis, discovered in 2003 in... Continue Reading
October 31st, 2013
In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings, Connecticut has been having a huge debate on where to draw the line between public access to law enforcement records like 911 calls and protecting victims' families from further trauma and further invasions of their privacy. During testimony before a legislative task force, the spouse of one of the adults killed in the shooting suggested a compromise, according to the Hartford Courant: "... Continue Reading
October 31st, 2013
The Hawaii Senate has passed a bill to authorize same-sex marriage. The bill is expected to pass the House of Representatives too, Reuters reported. If the legislation is enacted, Hawaii could become the 15th state to legalize same-sex matrimony. The bill exempts houses of worship from having to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies.
October 30th, 2013
New Yorkers will vote on a ballot measure that would increase the age at which appellate judges have to retire to age 80. The New York Times reports that Governor Andrew Cuomo has been quietly opposing Proposition 6. One reason may be that if the ballot meaure passes it would "allow two Republican judges to serve longer terms, limiting his ability to put a lasting liberal stamp on the Court of Appeals," The Times reports.
Raising... Continue Reading
October 30th, 2013
ProPublica reports on the lack of regulation for assisted living and how this puts the elderly at risk.
Nursing homes for elder Americans (who tend to need much more skilled nursing care than the elderly living in assisted living facilities) face much stricter regulation. Not so with "assisted living facilities, [which] at least initially, were meant to provide housing, meals and help to elderly people who could no longer live on... Continue Reading
October 30th, 2013
After a committee in the Hawaii Senate passed a same-sex marriage, "SB 1 now awaits a vote in the full Senate, where it is expected to pass comfortably. It will then be heard by the House Judiciary and Finance committees Thursday morning, where its fate is less certain," The Huffingon Post reported. Continue Reading
October 30th, 2013
With new patent reform legislation introduced in the House of Representatives, Corporate Counsel asks if patent reform should be left to the judiciary, not Congress. But the judiciary may be moving faster anyway: "Most of the key features of the anti-patent troll bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, dubbed the 'Innovation Act of 2013', could actually end up duplicating moves made by... Continue Reading
October 30th, 2013
After Missouri State Trooper Dennis Engelhard was killed while investigating a traffic accident, his same-sex partner sought survivor benefits. Missouri pays benefits to the surivors of highway patrol officers killed in the line of duty, the Associated Press reported. The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that because the couple were not married that no benefits are owed, according to the AP.
While Missouri prohibits same-sex marriage... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2013
The unseen part of the digital economy is how much power it takes for Google and Amazon and Facebook and Netflix to be available to us all the time, whenever we want. Aereo, one of the streaming services retransmitting broadcast TV over the Internet, also faces a huge electrical bill. The Wall Street Journal estimates that 90,000-135,000 subscribers in New York City could cost Aereo $2 million a year. The Journal further reports: "Power... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2013
Employees who are lesbian, bisexual, gay or transgendered do not have any federal protection from being discriminated against by their employers. The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate is going to take up a bill that would bar employment discrimination against Americans who are LGBT. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act "would prohibit discrimination by nonreligious entities against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender... Continue Reading
October 29th, 2013
The Detroit Free Press reports on Gov. Rick Snyder's historic testimony in a federal court trial over whether Detroit qualifies for bankruptcy. Snyder testified that he "knew that he had the power to make Detroit’s bankruptcy filing contingent on protecting pensions — but he chose not to exercise it and impede efforts to fix the beleaguered city," the newspaper reports.
The Free Press also reports: "The... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2013
The Seventh Circuit's Judge Richard Posner has been getting a lot of criticism for allegedly expressing some sort of regret for writing the opinion upholding Indiana's voter identification law.
The line in Posner's new book that caused the stir was: "I plead guilty to having written the majority opinion (affirmed by the Supreme Court) upholding Indiana’s requirement that prospective voters prove their identity with a... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2013
Hawaii has started a marathon special legislative session over same-sex marriage in which 1,800 people are expected to testify and 4,000 pages of prepared testimony has been submitted, the Associated Press reports. One special issue for Hawaii is that it is no small thing for same-sex couples to travel to another state to get married elsewhere in the United States: Hawaii Attorney General David Louie testified "that traveling to... Continue Reading
October 28th, 2013
The national trend of litigation to challenge bans on same-sex marriage is continuing in the Lone Star State. Two couples in Texas have filed a federal lawsuit to challenge that state's ban on same-sex marriage, arguing the ban violates the federal constitution and the Texas state constitution, the San Antonio Express-News reports. “There is no rational basis, much less a compelling government purpose, for Texas to deny plaintiffs... Continue Reading
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