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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October 23rd, 2013
The Third Circuit has ruled that the Delaware Court of Chancery's private arbitration program violates the public's First Amendment right to access court proceedings, The Legal Intelligencer reports. The panel was divided 2-1.
"Allowing public access to state-sponsored arbitrations would give stockholders and the public a better understanding of how Delaware resolves major business disputes," according to The... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the Philadelphia area earlier this week, told a group of college students that "'nobody is born a justice,"' The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The first Latina to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and the third woman to serve on the court recalled that her first goal was to graduate college, then to finish law school and now it is to become a better justice. '... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
Due to Obamacare's expansion under the Medicaid program in the states that have opted for it, more people facing criminal charges might have access to health care and might get diverted away from the justice system. According to The Crime Report, "for law enforcement and courts, that could mean a greater ability to quickly identify alternatives to incarceration for those with mental illness and substance abuse issues. Tim Murray... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, might have broken into tears because the lack of a global agreement on climate change is "condemning future generations before they are even born," BBC reported. But Figueres still said that a deal can be done by 2015 and the pitfalls that doomed the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations for an international climate-change... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
The New Mexico Supreme Court heard oral argument today on whether that state's laws would allow same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports. New Mexico is the rare state that does not explicitly authorize or bar same-sex marriage. While "the marriage laws — unchanged since 1961 — include a marriage license application with sections for male and female applicants" and references husbands-and-wives, at... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
Chet Kanojia, CEO of television Internet streaming service Aereo, said that his business model of transmitting free broadcast television on the Internet through individual antennas dedicated to each subscriber “has gone from the back of my napkin two years ago, in my house, to in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and national policy in about a 20-month period. So, what else could you ask for, right?” Xconomy reported.
Broadcasters... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
The European Parliament voted to suspend a data-sharing agreement with the United States that allows access to financial transactions for the purposes of tracking the financing of terrorists, GigaOm reported, although only the European Commission can actually suspend the agreement.
Edward Snowden's leaks exposed that the National Security Agency has been tapping the SWIFT database of international transactions "directly in order to... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
New York Times reporter James Risen has asked the Fourth Circuit to put on hold its ruling denying that a reporters privilege applies in a criminal case in which he could be forced to testify, Politico reports. Meanwhile, Risen will seek for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue.
The underlying criminal case involves former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who "has been indicted for leaking Risen information about a CIA operation to... Continue Reading
October 23rd, 2013
Reuters reports the "state-run New Express tabloid printed a front-page commentary begging police in the south-central city of Changsha to set reporter Chen Yongzhou free under the headline: 'Please release him."'
Chen was detained on defamation charges after "writing more than a dozen stories criticizing the finances of a major state-owned construction equipment maker," including that the company "engaged... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
A younger group of American Indians are challenging the Washington Redskins trademark after prior challengers to the trademark lost on the grounds that they waited too long to bring their challenge. "The current petitioners are five Native Americans from different tribes who say they are offended by the team’s name. A decision by the trademark appeal board could come any day," The Wall Street Journal reported. The footbal team... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
Two same-sex couples who wedded in other states have filed a lawsuit to challenge both Tennessee's constitutional provision and statute banning same-sex marriage, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The Journal also reports that Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said "the lawsuit is the 19th filed since the [U.S. Supreme Court] Windsor ruling [striking the federal Defense of Marriage Act ]... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
The Associated Press has this primer on everything you need to know about elder abuse, including that the abuse rarely results in criminal proseuctions because of the stereotype that their abuse is tough to prove and that older people make poor witnesses.
A couple highlights:
* By 2050, there will be more old people on earth than children for the first time in history;
* the most common abusers of the elderly are family members or... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
Drug and Device Blog reports on a California Court of Appeal decision in which an intermediate appellate panel held that the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act does not allow for plaintiffs to sue over the negligent maintenance of their confidential medical information unless their information was accessed wrongfully or without authorization.
In the underlying case, a doctor took home a hard drive containing the personal... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
Even though the Third Circuit has held that "secular, for-profit companies aren't afforded religious protection and the constitutional rights of their owners don't pass through to the corporate entity," a district-court federal judge sided with employers that are challenging Obamacare's contraceptive-coverage mandate on the grounds that it violates their freedom of religion, The Legal Intelligencer, Pennsylvania's... Continue Reading
October 22nd, 2013
James Anaya, U.N. special rapporteur on indigenous rights, said during a visit to Canada that "there's a crisis in Canada with regard to indigenous issues, notwithstanding some important developments within Canada over the last decades," the Associated Press reported.
The disparities include: one in five indigenous Canadians live in dilapidated and often overcrowded homes, Anaya said, and "funding for aboriginal housing... Continue Reading
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